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Rediscovering place: experiences of a quadriplegic anthropologist
Author(s) -
Gold Gerald
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
canadian geographer / le géographe canadien
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.35
H-Index - 46
eISSN - 1541-0064
pISSN - 0008-3658
DOI - 10.1111/j.0008-3658.2003.00036.x
Subject(s) - cyberspace , diaspora , narrative , relocation , sociology , stigma (botany) , gender studies , disabled people , aesthetics , media studies , psychology , the internet , world wide web , art , computer science , literature , life style , psychiatry , programming language , demography
Cyberspace is an ‘archetypal place’(Lifchez) for disabled fieldworkers enhancing opportunities for fieldwork. This article uses a concept of place similar to that used in French‐speaking Louisiana. In this approach, ‘place’ overcomes barriers of accessibility through extended ‘weak’ networks and transnational diaspora. In cyberspace, ‘invisible’ communities are defined only by text and narrative. Yet the boundaries of cyberspace communities are culturally constructed or imagined differences. In this way, fieldwork is independent of a physical definition of place. For example, research with MSN‐L, allows daily fieldwork with an international community, without personal relocation. In this way, cyberspace fieldwork became my first link to disability studies where the stigma of the disabled as ‘damaged’ persons becomes my own .