From the Peripheries of the Wired World: An ethnographic study of everyday digital visual practices in Havana (Cuba) and New Delhi (India).

Questioning the deterministic and Western-centric assumptions that underline the idea of "the digital" as a monolith capable of engendering similar reactions across the globe, the present project aims to offer an ethnographically driven, in-depth analysis of the spread of digital media from a transnational perspective. Focussing on two urban locations representing different types of fringes of the global spread of digital media (the cities of Havana, Cuba and New Delhi, India), this study will approach the topic from the particular vantage point of visual culture. The attention to digital visualities, i.e. to instances of production and consumption of images in a digital landscape, constitutes a concrete opportunity for studying what we could call paraphrasing Manovich (2009) practices of everyday digital life. The attention to concrete mundane engagements with digital image technologies will allow us to generate new insights into the multiple faces of the digital turn. Regarding the sites for the research both Cuba and India host a very rich visual culture, while offering also examples of different trajectories of digital development. While India constitutes a territory where digital technologies are scarce resources but at the same time also symbols for a rich and powerful future, Cuba is just presently witnessing to the public arrival of digital connectivity; it is facing its own digital turn. This is a unique moment in history for studying these contexts.

Keywords:ETHNOGRAPHY

Disciplines:Anthropology, Applied sociology, Policy and administration, Social psychology, Social stratification, Social theory and sociological methods, Sociology of life course, family and health, Other sociology and anthropology