European University Institute Library

The network inside out, Annelise Riles

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 215-233) and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

The network inside out

bibliography

1082508559

Annelise Riles

"Networks" and other artifacts of institutional life, such as documents, funding proposals, newsletters, and organizational charts, are such ubiquitous aspects of the information age that they go unnoticed to most observers of late modern society. In this new kind of work in the ethnography of legality, Annelise Riles takes a sophisticated theoretical approach to the aesthetics of such artifacts by analyzing the experiences of a group of Fijian bureaucrats and activists preparing for and participating in the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995. In describing and theorizing this aspect of transnational existence, Riles enacts a new ethnographic method for apprehending the network from the inside out. Working with the premise that anthropologists are inside the network<U+0127> that they are producers, consumers, and aesthetes, not simply observers, of the artifacts of late modern institutional life<U+0127> she produces a fascinating study of institutional knowledge practices and makes an important contribution to the anthropology of transnational phenomena.--, Provided by Publisher