All Tomorrow's Cultures

From the conclusion to my contribution on " Social Media " in Wiley's "The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology:" Anthropologists are still coming to terms with social media and its impact on every level of our lives.  No matter what new SNS platforms develop, though, it is certain that social media will continue to be a source of controversy in the field. The reasons for controversy may vary, but they will all pivot on the essential liminality of social media. By definition, it occupies spaces between worlds: between people, between online and offline, between official and unofficial, between private and public, between resistance and accommodation, between horizontality and verticality. For all of these reasons, anthropologists are unlikely to be entirely comfortable with the social media they and their interlocutors utilize, whatever new platforms may develop in the future. But that discomfort can also be a source of strength, one that can help to h...