Project description
Investigating economic diversity in the digital age
Anthropologists once categorised economic types on an evolutionary ladder. Today, we recognise that these economies exist simultaneously. However, research on digitisation has primarily focused on (post-)industrial contexts, leaving us with limited knowledge of how other economies adopt digital technologies. With this in mind, the EU-funded DOE project will conduct ethnographic research among groups that have resisted assimilation into industrial capitalism. These groups include Brazilian Amazon hunter-gatherers, India’s indigenous agriculturalists, Kyrgyz Republic pastoralists, and Solomon Islands horticulturalists. The project aims to provide insights into economic diversity in the digital age by ethnologically comparing the four sites. Additionally, the research will advance a new theoretical and methodological approach that acknowledges the importance of technological design and contextual adaptations.
Objective
How do longstanding, primarily non-industrial, non-capitalist societies adopt and adapt digital technologies in their daily practices and systems of values?
Classical anthropological theory once arranged basic economic types on an evolutionary ladder ranging from hunter-gatherers, horticulturalists, pastoralists, and agriculturalists to industrialists. Today, the existence of these economies other than industrialism are correctly approached not as anachronisms but as contemporaneous to (post-)industrial life. Still, research on digitization has largely taken place in (post-) industrial contexts, meaning we know next to nothing about how different types of longstanding economies adopt and adapt digital technologies. At the same time, researchers have stipulated that digitization threatens global economic diversity. By comparing digitization to processes of colonization, they have argued that digital technologies facilitate assimilation into (post-)industrial economic systems and their often capitalist values by virtue of their technological design.
This project empirically investigates these claims through in-depth ethnographic research among hunter-gatherers (Brazilian Amazon), pastoralists (Kyrgyz Republic), horticulturalists (Solomon Islands) and indigenous agriculturalists (India) who have long resisted assimilation into industrial-capitalism. Additional ethnological comparison of the four sites will offer unique macro-level insights into the possibilities for economic diversity in the digital age. Finally, the project advances a novel theoretical and methodological approach that advances both ethnographic research and ethnological comparison. This approach recognizes the significance of both technological design and contextual adaptations and provides tools for new research agendas not just on digital industrial-capitalism but on diverse economic systems and values.
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Keywords
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2023-STG
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6708 PB Wageningen
Netherlands
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