Home » Creating Fembot
Some models
Submitted by Carol Stabile on August 13, 2010 – 12:11 pm2 Comments
One of our librarians here (thanks, John Russell) sent me this message, that I thought I'd share with you: “One of the things that came to mind during the meeting today was how anthropologists have tried to create interactive, scholarly communities: Open Anthropology Cooperative: http://openanthcoop.ning.com/ So they use ning to create a discussion arena, a place for book reviews, other publishing options … it's become a fairly robust community. My other thought was the Anthropology of the Contemporary Collaboratory:
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I think there’s also an important lesson (and big difference) between Fembot and anthropos/openanth- both were really a reaction against the terrible professional organization available to anthropologists. Although they filled a much needed gap (an actual intellectual collaborative for anthros), they weren’t able to wrestle a population away from the American Anthropological Association because there was not enough synergy. The communication was clunky, the mission ill-defined, and there was no true means (as in they didn’t own their own platform). The lesson to be learned from them? I believe that a Californian proverb sums it up best: “go big or go home.”
haha. following from this, I think one of the important things about Fembot might be the fact that we’re not trying to wrestle a population away from a disciplinary association or publication — we’re trying to wrestle an interdisciplinary field into being. For me, that’s one of the reasons I wanted to support this — I’m just weary of having to deal with those who want to defend specific media, methodological approaches, or disciplinary truisms. I think the focus of Fembot — should we decide to maintain it — on gender, new media, and technology gives us a way to think outside those old boxes.