Culture, Technology & Design

Techno-anthropology derives from transformative, functional, socio-cultural thought. Its practitioners advocate for understanding and creation of an inclusive techno-cultural society. The field’s humanistic perspectives and approaches resonate in spaces dedicated to creativity and innovation—laboratories, universities, consultancies, etcetera—spaces where new technologies and their challenges, the needs of digital society, and techno-culture with its corresponding requirements and values of a society of knowledge come together.

Techno-anthropology emerged at the beginning of the 1990’s, and approaches the study of technology as its own cultural system. It draws on analyses of social contexts and cultural knowledge, through which technology is developed and new feedback cycles of social adaptation and innovative frameworks of knowledge emerge. Techno-anthropology finds its roots in the encounter between anthropology, the ethos of open innovation, and user-focused design; it draws on both research methods and human experience to develop new technologies and analyze their impact on contemporary and future societies.

This volume continues the analyses presented in Case Studies: Technoanthropology (2015); its essays invite the reader to reflect on the world, the nature of this emerging field, and its focus, development, and evolution from diverse disciplinary perspectives and fields of action.