Overview

The Digital Orient project was setup by Professor Alan Macfarlane and Xiaoxiao Yan in December 2003. It is based in the Department of Social Anthropology at Cambridge University. It aims to create:

- A programme to record, present and understand the oriental cultures of China, Japan, Nepal and the rest of the world in a comparative way, by virtue of the integration of multimedia, huge data storage available on demand, and the dynamic interactivity of broadband capacities.

- An international online community for anthropologists and other individuals to share their knowledge (contribute collections and diaries), and to get closer to them from anywhere in the world.

- A window displaying our understanding of the role that broadband is playing in the construction of local culture and in the formulation of social identity in different countries. At the same time, an attempt to explore the possibilities of a new approach to conducting ethnography with the help of broadband.