On Being Italian, Canadian and Global

Knowledge, power and the implications of digitization for

ethnographic practice

Ethnographic practice ‘Knowledge, however interesting, can never

be disinterested’ (Acciaioli, 1981, p. 23). Participant observation is the central and

innovative method of anthropology. It provides the research with grounded close observation of individual and collective social action within a cultural context.

Multicultural Canada

Digital democratisation Globalisation Circulation (multiculturalisms) and local

productions - nationalisms Knowledge/power - abundant, tacit, elided, and

secret Objects of Knowledge? Community, nation, data

Mark Poster - What’s the Matter With the Internet (2001)

Internet is ‘underdetermined’ because it doesn’t direct users into clear paths and encourages ‘social construction and cultural creation… it remains an invitation to a new imaginary.’

The internet is transgressive because it enables instantaneous many to many communications, dislocates communication from the space of the nation

The Global Gathering Place and Inspector Relic

The Multicultural History Society of Ontario

Schools, culture and history

Globalisation - locally produced

The Lucky Immigrant

Networks and Linkages

Boundaries and Borders

Sophia Loren

Narratives of seeing

Workers of the World

Civic incorporation

Citizenship Agency and

bureaucracy/ government policy

Knowledge silences

Italian Lives in Western AustraliaA cultural history and archives of migrants

and migrationARC Linkage Project Project Website www.italianlives.arts.uwa.edu.auItalo-Australian Welfare and Cultural Centre JS Battye Library Western Australian Museum Office of Multicultural Interests Cassamarca Foundation

Project Aims:

To produce a comprehensive historical study of Italian migrants and migration in Western Australia.

•the need for migration and impact of government attempts to control migration flows;

•the merits of multiculturalism as a government policy to ‘manage’ difference;

•the challenge to traditional concepts of nationhood posed by transnational migration networks

•the ageing migrant community and its needs.

Community Engagement

• Project Launch (November 2004)

• Media Campaign (Italian & English) Ongoing

Naples, Italy and underground economies

Creative ‘immigrant’ economies

Technologies of migration

Surveillance and Digital Controls