ANDERSON Kevin

ETHNOGRAPHIC HYPERMEDIA: TRANSCENDING THICK DESCRIPTIONS
In 1986 Marcus and Clifford compiled a series of essays entitled Writing Culture, which spawned critical academic debate and reassessment of the practice of ethnography itself. Yet, for all of the arguments and debates contained within the book, and those which have followed (Behar and Gordon 1995; Clifford 1988; Fox 1991; Strathern 1991, amongst some of them), the discourse has remained within the confines of writing culture; the text itself. Within the body of this paper I am proposing the production of ethnographic research in a new format which can combine the traditional technologies of text and image into a hybrid computer-based document: hyp/ermedia. It should be noted that I am not suggesting that ethnographic books and films will, or should, be replaced by hypermedia - as books were not displaced through the advent of ethnographic film - but that hypermedia is yet another format for ethnographic representation available to the anthropologist. I propose to show how hypermedia is a valuable and effective option for producing ethnographic representations, while also highlighting some of its potential limitations.