engleski

E-mail is (not) a letter

After the introductory, short review on the letter as a subject of anthropological/ethnological research in Croatian context, the presentation deals with the issue of saving letters and e-mails, which is regarded as an element that can help in understanding of personal texts that people write and send to each other, and characterizing them as letters or e-mails, or both. The title of the presentation refers to two ways of thinking about e-mails, which are pretty different if not opposed to each other. According to widespread opinion, letters cannot be sent by electronic mailing system which means that the special types of texts are strongly connected to one or another type of medium of communication. One type of text is connected to the paper-letter, with its materiality and other characteristics, and the other to the e-mail. The article argues that this division or classification is not so simple. The article is partly based on published correspondence and partly on ethnographic research which is limited in generational, gender, geographical, temporal and other senses, but is opened to individual perspectives of people included in particular practice.

correspondence practice; letter; e-mail; saving; ethnology/ethnography; Croatia

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