Inuit in Cyberspace: Embedding Offline, Identities OnlineIn this cyber-ethnography, Neil Blair Christensen explores the processes by which a wide selection of personal, local, cultural and national identities are expressed and understood on the Internet. The different Inuit peoples of the circumpolar Arctic have always taken active part in the world, but their contemporary use of Internet(s) has affected even more their relative isolation -- one that comes from living in a peripheral region of the world. Yet, Inuit and others are constructing web pages with social and physical references that sustain an imagined Arctic remoteness; a logic that seems to be a key aspect of Inuit identities and cultures. The book brings together in analysis and discussion the realities of contemporary Inuit, the myth of cyberspace and a selection of dynamic strategies for identification. It concludes that Inuit dynamically remain Inuit, in all their diversity, regardless of an imagined compression of time and space; their use of changing technologies, or participation in enlarged social networks. |
Contents
Contents | 9 |
Going Nowhere to get Everywhere | 25 |
Content analysis of Web pages | 39 |
Peripherality on the | 52 |
A Common Web of Difference and Similarity | 67 |
Native language | 84 |
Perceiving Cyberspace | 97 |
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abstract Alaska anthropological Arctic Arctic community aspects assert Canada personal communication Canadian Chukchi Sea computer-mediated constructed cultural identity cultural stuff cultural traits culture and identity cyber cybercultures cyberspace dimensions discussion diversity dynamics e-mail exist fieldwork genre globalisation Greenland Greenlandic language Grønlands guestbooks hypertext identification identity and culture images in-group Innaarsuit interaction Internet Inuit Ataqatigiit Inuit Circumpolar Conference Inuit culture Inuit identity Inuit users Inuit Web pages Inuit Web users Inuktitut Inuktitut Syllabic Inuvik Iqaluit ISPs July language live locations Male masters medium nevertheless non-space Northwestel Nunatsiaq Nunavut Nuuk offline culture offline space out-group Pangnirtung peripheral personal communication 1998 perspective physical space political potential Qitsualik Rankin Inlet reality reference regard regional rural seems Sejersen sense of belonging social boundaries social meaning social organisation specific symbolic Taloyoak tion traditional transcendence utopian Yup'ik