Please note: Due to the rapidly developing spread of COVID-19 and attendant new university regulations the conference is postponed to a later date.

"The Connected Society: Lessons from Gatherer-Hunter Cultures to the Digital Age"

In what ways can scholarship about gatherer-hunter cultures shed light on our understanding of sociality in the Digital Age?

The 2020 Jensen lectures explore this question from a theoretical perspective that employs the comparative power of gatherer-hunter cases while regarding scale/ability as key to the insights they offer to contemporary life. The series examines how gatherer-hunters connect among and beyond themselves; how they perform and imagine communal affiliations; how they figure "society" into their more-than-human heterogeneous world. Drawing on their perspective, we reflect on our emergent culture of connectedness, its euphoric visions of a connective world marked by sharing and trust among strangers, and dystopic fears of loss of privacy and agency in the global digital ecosystem. We ask, can gatherer-hunters be considered the original networked society?