[STS-Africa] Fwd: journal issue: Towards an Anthropology of Data

[Gianluca Miscione]

Good weekend,
Gianluca
 
Gianluca Miscione
University College Dublin
 <http://www.ucd.ie/cito/members/gianlucamiscione>
http://www.ucd.ie/cito/members/gianlucamiscione


 
 
 
 
Towards an Anthropology of Data
Special issue of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute Volume
27, Issue S1
 
Currently open access until 14 June 2021. Read it here:
https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14679655/2021/27/S1
 
Launch event with the special issue editors Dr Rachel Douglas-Jones, Dr
Antonia Walford and Dr Nick Seavers, reader/assessor Dr Katherine Smith, and
contributors Dr Vijayanka Nair, Prof Tahani Nadim, Dr Alexander
(A.R.E.) Taylor, Dr Cori Hayden, Dr Hannah Knox, Dr Sarah Blacker and Prof
Bill Maurer; chaired by Prof Haidy Geismar.
 
This event will take place on Zoom, please register for it here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Edcb_GRJT_C_VdR2DHWOLQ
 
Data is everywhere. While 'big' data may have once seemed limited to
business or high tech, ethnographers are now finding data - and its
attendant values and practices - in their field sites around the world.
Data has motivated a sweep of dystopian visions, signalling the invasion of
privacy, political manipulation, or shadowy data doubles. Yet
anthropologists have been cautious in taking data itself as an object of
theoretical interest, even as the effects of data become manifest in our
ethnographies.
 
This volume presents a set of theoretically inventive pieces that engage
with data across its many locations, from government databases to ecological
field stations, from kitchen tables to concrete bunkers. The contributors
demonstrate how thinking with data can be conceptually generative for
anthropology, prompting us to reconsider our understanding of topics
including bodies, persons, and the social itself. 'Data' is a notoriously
slippery concept, often supporting claims to remote objectivity and
universality; by putting data in its place, the pieces collected here
develop conceptual tools that will prove useful for anthropologists who find
'data' in their data.
 
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London
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