Tales from Facebook - by Daniel Miller (Paperback)

About the Book

Facebook is used by nearly 500 million people throughout the world. Once the preserve of youth, the largest increase in usage today is amongst the older sections of the population. This book examines how Facebook transforms the lives of particular individuals, but it also presents a general theory of Facebook as culture and considers the likely consequences of social networking in the future.

From the Back Cover

Facebook is now used by nearly 500 million people throughout the world, many of whom spend several hours a day on this site. Once the preserve of youth, the largest increase in usage today is amongst the older sections of the population. Yet until now there has been no major study of the impact of these social networking sites upon the lives of their users. This book demonstrates that it can be profound. The tales in this book reveal how Facebook can become the means by which people find and cultivate relationships, but can also be instrumental in breaking up marriage. They reveal how Facebook can bring back the lives of people isolated in their homes by illness or age, by shyness or failure, but equally Facebook can devastate privacy and create scandal. We discover why some people believe that the truth of another person lies more in what you see online than face-to-face. We also see how Facebook has become a vehicle for business, the church, sex and memorialisation.

After a century in which we have assumed social networking and community to be in decline, Facebook has suddenly hugely expanded our social relationships, challenging the central assumptions of social science. It demonstrates one of the main tenets of anthropology - that individuals have always been social networking sites. This book examines in detail how Facebook transforms the lives of particular individuals, but it also presents a general theory of Facebook as culture and considers the likely consequences of social networking in the future.

Review Quotes

"It is Miller's focus on Trinidad and his beguilingly intimate style of writing that makes this work special. Prepare to have your expectations confounded."
The Age

"A very welcome and distinctive contribution to what is currently a small body of work on emerging online social networks."
LSE Politics Blog

"With social media playing an increasingly dominant role in our lives, it was about time somebody undertook a serious academic study of the way the Facebook phenomenon is changing and shaping behavior.... Whatever your feelings about the ever-present Facebook, Twitter etc., they are here to stay, so this book is an intriguing guide to as-yet uncharted territory."
The Style King

"Miller has written an insightful and engaging look at what Facebook has done to Trinidad and, more intriguingly, what Trinidad is doing to Facebook. For anyone keen to understand what human culture is becoming as the internet becomes its nearly universal vehicle, Tales from Facebook is obligatory reading."
Julian Dibbell, contributing editor for Wired magazine and author of My Tiny Life and Play Money

"Tales from Facebook is a genre-busting tour de force. Miller moves between fascinating stories of the often unexpected ways Trinidadians (for whom the verb 'to friend' is over a century old) use Facebook to thought-provoking discussions of the broad implications of social networking sites. Readers from a wide range of backgrounds will find this book an insightful treasure."
Tom Boellstorff, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine, and author of Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human

About the Author

Daniel Miller is Professor of Anthropology at University College London.