Part of this project has aimed to explore how digital anthropology can help us to understand people’s experiences of London Alternative Market and BDSM, Fetish and Kink objects.

This research has both used and considered the digital practices and technologies that shape the everyday lives of those who attend London Alternative Market. In doing so, it has attempted to represent the voices of participants via textual description, provide a visual and digital analysis of ethnographic findings, and provide a community structured website in order to present the research materials as a whole.  Extensive anthropological theory has been purposely excluded from the main section of the research, to ensure that it is accessible, and open to productive interpretation.  Below however, I will offer some insights as to how London Alternative Market can be ethnographically studied in relation to digital media and digital technologies.  

 

   While more traditional anthropological methods of participant observation and semi-structured interviews, provided a valuable aspect of the research, digital tools were also used for the collection of data. This included participant observation on the platform Fetlife, which offered important insights on the issues of privacy experienced by members of the BDSM, Kink and fetish community. Extensive screen shots were taken of LAM’s own use of social media revealing how LAM advertised events and workshops and connected with buyers and store-holders. Descriptions of BDSM, Fetish and Kink objects from interviews were also compared to screen shots of the digital representations of BDSM, Kink and Fetish objects on popular online websites. This not only helped to demonstrate the permeability between the offline and the online in participants everyday lives but illustrated how the perceived differences between digital representations of objects and objects displayed in an offline context, were practiced and reinforced.  

 

    In relation to anthropological insights, buyers’ views on the ‘personality’ of BDSM, Fetish and Kink objects bought from LAM store-holders, could be analysed in relation to Mauss’s ideas on the ‘spirit of the gift’ (1954). On the other hand, buyers preference for offline BDSM, Kink and Fetish objects at LAM may have some similarity to views of the online as less real as discovered by Boellstorff in the virtual world second life (cf Boellstorff ). Buyers and store holder’s vivid descriptions of the value of buying exact, specific and custom made BDSM, Kink and Fetish objects, could also be understood as following the ideas of consumption articulated by Miller in 1995.  

 

“Consumption then may not be about choice, but rather the sense that we have no choice but to attempt to overcome the experience of rupture using those very same goods and images which create for many the sense of modernity as rupture"(Miller,1995:2).

​

In a globalised world of mass consumption, LAM buyers appreciation of, and preference for exact and specific BDSM, Kink and Fetish objects could be seen as a reclamation of the BDSM, Kink and Fetish goods available online, and an avoidance of the digital images they viewed as misrepresentative of the BDSM, Kink and Fetish community.  

 

   Digital technologies were also employed to analyse and present the findings of this research.  An inconspicuous smart phone was highly useful when it came to asking consent to record participants who were often weary of researchers and journalists.  In addition, creating the digital interactive map of London Alternative Market made it easier to visualise how material space was used within LAM. This map was also designed to help overcome the scary unexpectedness that first timers described when attending LAM.  Drawing the map initially by hand, the applications Adobe capture and Adobe illustrator were used to transform the picture into a digital image. This image was then exported to Genially, a free image generator, so that it could be edited to include interactive elements, directing viewers to particular aspects of the market. The Twine story board was also constructed to provide an alternative, non-linear and experimental means of engaging with the ethnographic findings. By answering and clicking on the different elements, the viewer is directed through a series of questions inspired by the ethnographic material, resulting in a decision over whether to buy a particular BDSM, Fetish and Kink object online or offline. Using twinery.org to initially write the series of questions, the stories code was then converted into a HTML file using Komodo Edit. Having saved the file as a HTML, this was added to Neocities, a free online software, in order to produce the webpage link that could be added to the main Wix webpage.  While perhaps appearing simpler on the surface, the inflexibility of digital code, along with the need to use multiple digital mediums to produce one specific image, highlighted the abstract and specialised knowledge required to produce such digital visualisations.  When deciding which web-based platform to use in order to expand anthropological understandings of London Alternative Market, Wix was chosen for the adaptability and configuration necessary to produce a research and community focussed website. As a digital medium used to present the research findings, Wix allowed the ethnography to be structured in non-conventional ways within anthropology. While still including textual description, Wix’s visual layout, interactive elements and overall architecture, helped provide different insights on the research material.  

 

   Ultimately, digital anthropology, along with its digital methods and the presentation of data in digital forms, has been a successful way to understand people’s experiences of London Alternative market, the BDSM, Kink and Fetish objects displayed within and around them, and the BDSM, Kink and Fetish community more generally.

​

 

References:

​

Boellstorff, T. (2015) Coming of age in Second Life: an anthropologist explores the virtually human. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press.

​

Maccormack, G. (1982) Mauss and the ‘Spirit’ of the Gift. Oceania. [Online] 52 (4), 286–293. Available from: doi:10.1002/j.1834-4461.1982.tb01504.x.

​

Miller, D., Ekholm-Friedman, K. & Friedman, J. (1995) Worlds apart: modernity through the prism of the local. London, Routledge.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​