We are very excited to see the release of Networking Peripheries, the great new book from Anita Say Chan, a faculty in our cohort whose ideas and scholarship have been central to our conversations thus far. A review from Christopher Kelty, editor of Limn:
Anita Chan’s outstanding book stages a fascinating contest over the stubborn difference of human culture and the universalizing aspirations of the Internet and digital culture. Her tour of contemporary Peru shows the reader how Chulucanas pottery can become the digital future of the country and cheap American laptops an object of local artisanal struggle. Whether it is IP Law, entrepreneurialism, software coding or educational technology, she elaborately details the surprise that comes of experiencing a cultural difference in exactly the place one expected more of the same. Networking Peripheries is that rare book that captures the integration of the necessary particularity of life, and universalizing pressures of global technology, finance and politics. It joins a growing body of scholarship that provides rich, well-researched alternatives to the boring echo chamber of Internet punditry.
For more you can also see this week’s review in Nature. Congratulations Anita!