[Air-L] a new book on drones

[Ilana Gershon]

Dear Colleagues,
CaMP anthropology blog just posted an interview with Julia M. Hildebrand
on her book *Aerial Play: Drone Medium, Mobility, Communication, and
Culture. *

Check it out here:
https://campanthropology.org

Best,
Ilana

Press blurb:  This book explores recreational uses of consumer drones from
the lenses of media ecology, mobile communication, mobilities research, and
science and technology studies. In this provocative ethnography, Julia M.
Hildebrand discusses camera drones as mobile media for meaningful play. She
thus widens perspectives onto the flying camera as foremost unmanned
aircraft, spying tool, or dangerous toy towards a more comprehensive
understanding of its potentials.

How should we situate drone practices in recreational spaces? What ways of
seeing, moving, and being do hobby drones open up? Across chapters about
drone geography, communication, mobility, visuality, and human-machine
relations, *Aerial Play* introduces novel frameworks for drone affordances,
such as communication *on the fly*, disembodied mobilities, auratic
vertical play, and drone-mindedness.

In the mobile companionship with her own drone, Hildebrand contributes an
innovative “auto-technographic” method for the self-reflective study of
media and mobility. Ultimately, her grounded and aerial fieldwork
illuminates new technological, mobile, visual, and social relations in
everyday spaces.