Introduction: Comparative Insights from the ASSA Project

Authors

  • Daniel Miller

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/aa.2023.487

Keywords:

Comparative anthropology, Ageing; Causation, Field sites, Qualitative research

Abstract

This introduction provides a basic description of the Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing (ASSA) project, including the project’s range of field sites, methods, and ethics. I compare this project with prior comparative studies in the anthropology of ageing. I also discuss certain other findings of the ASSA project as they relate to the ASSA researchers’ re-conceptualisation of the smartphone and our work on mHealth. I then consider how an anthropological approach to comparison differs from that of other disciplines, partly through examining methods of comparison found within the articles in this Special Issue. In particular, I contrast the idea that anthropologists can compare data regarded as commensurable because of a standardisation in how they were collected, to a view that anthropologists mostly do not collect commensurable data at all; in which case, perhaps anthropologists are best at making comparison at the level of implied causation, sometimes developing a spectrum of field sites where implied causation can itself act as a parameter of difference.

References

Boyd, d. 2014. It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Bruun, Maja Hojer, Ayo Wahlberg, Rachel Douglas-Jones, Catherine Hase, Klaus Hoeyer, Doethe Brogård Kristensen, and Brit Ross Winthereik, eds. 2022. The Palgrave Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan.

Cairncross, Francis. 1977. The Death of Distance. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Clark, Lynn Schofield. 2014. The Parent App: Understanding Families in the Digital Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Duque, Marilia. 2020. Learning from WhatsApp Best Practices for Health: Communication Protocols for Hospitals and Medical Clinics. London: UCL Anthropology. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10103058/1/Duque_WhatsApp_Handbook_Health.pdf

Ericksen, Thomas 2001. Small Places, Large Issues, London: Pluto Press.

Fry, Christine, and Charlotte Ikels. 2011 “Culture and Meaning: Strategies for Understanding the Well-Being of the Oldest Old in Poon.” In Understanding Well-Being in the Oldest Old, edited by Leonard Poon and Jiska Cohen-Mansfield, 261-280. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Geismar, Haidy, and Hannah Knox, eds. Digital Anthropology. 2nd Edition. London: Routledge.

Gire, James. 2019. “Cultural Variations in Perceptions of Aging.” In Cross‐Cultural Psychology: Contemporary Themes and Perspectives, edited by Kenneth Keith, 216-240. 2nd Edition. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell.

Haapio-Kirk, Laura. In Press. Ageing with Smartphones in Japan. London: UCL Press.

Hawkins, Charlotte. In Press. Ageing with Smartphones in Urban Uganda. London: UCL Press.

Hawkins, Charlotte, and John-Mark Bwanika. Forthcoming. “An Anthropological Approach to Tele-Psychotherapy: Providing ‘Somewhere in-between’ to Go.” In mHealth: An Anthropological Alternative, edited by Charlotte Hawkins, Patrick Awondo and Daniel Miller. London: UCL Press.

Hawkins, Charlotte, Patrick Awondo, and Daniel Miller, eds. Forthcoming. mHealth: An Anthropological Alternative. London: UCL Press.

Higgs, Paul. Gilleard, Chris. 2017. Re-thinking Old Age. Theorising the Fourth Age. London: Bloomsbury.

Keith, Jennie, Christine L. Fry, Anthony P. Glascock, Charlotte Ikels, Jeanette Dickerson-Putman, Henry C. Harpending, and Patricia Draper. 1994. The Aging Experience: Diversity and Commonality across Cultures. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Kavedžija, Iza. 2021 The Process of Wellbeing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lamb, Sarah. 2017. Successful Ageing as a Contemporary Obsession. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Laslett, Peter 1987. “The Emergence of the Third Age.” Ageing and Society 7 (2): 133-160.

Laslett, Peter 1994. “The Third Age, The Fourth Age and The Future.” Ageing & Society 14 (3): 436-447.

Livingstone, Sonia and Alicia Blum-Ross. 2020. Parenting for a Digital Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lock, Margaret. 1993. Encounters with Aging: Mythologies of Menopause in Japan and North America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Miller, Daniel. 2010 Stuff. Cambridge: Polity.

Miller, Daniel. 2021 A Theory of a Theory of the Smartphone. International Journal of Cultural Studies 24 (5): 860-876.

Miller, Daniel. 2022. “Grandparenting as the Resolution of Kinship as Experience.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 28 (3) 975-992.

Miller, Daniel. 2023. “Care and Surveillance – The Good Citizens of Covid-19.” In How to Live Through a Pandemic, edited by Simone Abram, Helen Lambert, Jude Robinson, 158–179. London: Routledge.

Miller, Daniel, Elisabetta Costa, Nell Haynes, Tom McDonald, Razvan Nicolescu, Jolynna Sinanan, Juliano Spyer, Shriram Venkatraman, and Xinyuan Wang. 2016. How the World Changed Social Media. London: UCL Press.

Miller, Daniel and Heath Horst. 2021. “Six Principles for a Digital Anthropology.” In Digital Anthropology, edited by Haidy Geismar and Hannah Knox, 21–43. 2nd Edition. London: Routledge.

Miller Daniel, Laila Abed Rabho, Patrick Awondo, Maya de Vries, Marília Duque, Pauline Garvey, Laura Haapio-Kirk, Charlotte Hawkins, Alfonso Otaegui, Shireen Walton, and Xinyuan Wang. 2021. The Global Smartphone. London: UCL Press.

Otaegui, Alfonso. Forthcoming. “The Healthcare System, the Smartphone, and the Human Factor: Oncological Nurses using WhatsApp at a Public Hospital in Chile.” In mHealth: An Anthropological Alternative, edited by Charlotte Hawkins, Patrick Awondo and Daniel Miller, London UCL Press.

Prendergast, David and Chiara Garattini, eds. 2015. Aging and the Digital Life Course. Oxford: Berghahn Books.

Schröder-Butterfill, Elisabeth, Vita Dewi, Tengku Priantina, Fithry Syawila, and Philip Kreager. 2018. “Gendered Support for Older People in Indonesia: A Comparative Analysis.” In International Handbook on Gender and Demographic Processes, edited by Nancy Riley and Jan Brunson, 247-266. International Handbooks of Population, Volume 8. Dordrecht: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1290-1_17

Sokolovsky, Jay, ed. 2020. The Cultural Context of Aging: Worldwide Perspectives. 4th Edition. Westport: Praeger Publishers.

Walton. Shireen. 2021. Ageing with Smartphones in Urban Italy. London: UCL Press.

Downloads

Published

2023-09-12

Issue

Vol. 44 No. 2 (2023)

Section

Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Aging

License

Copyright (c) 2023 Daniel Miller

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
  2. Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
  3. The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
    1. Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
    with the understanding that the above condition can be waived with permission from the Author and that where the Work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.
  4. The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  5. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a prepublication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
  6. Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
  7. The Author represents and warrants that:
    1. the Work is the Author’s original work;
    2. the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
    3. the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
    4. the Work has not previously been published;
    5. the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
    6. the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
  8. The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.

Revised 7/16/2018. Revision Description: Removed outdated link.