TY - JOUR
T1 - Introduction
T2 - Towards an anthropology of data
AU - Douglas-Jones, Rachel
AU - Walford, Antonia
AU - Seaver, Nick
PY - 2021/3/15
Y1 - 2021/3/15
N2 - The world is talking ‘data’. The early cross‐disciplinary, business‐orientated hype around the potential of ‘big’ data, with its promises of unprecedented insight into social life, has given way. Data now motivates a sweep of dystopian visions, from rampant commodification to the invasion of privacy, political manipulation, and shadowy data doubles. Yet anthropologists have been cautious in taking data itself as their object, even as the social life of data practices becomes manifest in our ethnographies. In this introduction, we argue for an anthropology of data that is ethnographically specific and theoretically ambitious, putting forward a case for why anthropological engagements with the data moment might be not only politically important but also conceptually generative.
AB - The world is talking ‘data’. The early cross‐disciplinary, business‐orientated hype around the potential of ‘big’ data, with its promises of unprecedented insight into social life, has given way. Data now motivates a sweep of dystopian visions, from rampant commodification to the invasion of privacy, political manipulation, and shadowy data doubles. Yet anthropologists have been cautious in taking data itself as their object, even as the social life of data practices becomes manifest in our ethnographies. In this introduction, we argue for an anthropology of data that is ethnographically specific and theoretically ambitious, putting forward a case for why anthropological engagements with the data moment might be not only politically important but also conceptually generative.
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13477
DO - https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13477
M3 - Journal article
SN - 1359-0987
VL - 27
SP - 9
EP - 25
JO - Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
JF - Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
IS - s1
ER -