Towards an Anthropology of Data

This volume explores the role of data in anthropology, highlighting how it can be used to generate new concepts and rethink our understanding of topics such as bodies, persons, and the social. It demonstrates how ethnographers are finding data in their field sites around the world and discusses how data has motivated dystopian visions and influenced the practice of anthropology.

\n Format: Paperback / softback
\n Length: 180 pages
\n Publication date: 03 June 2021
\n Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Ltd
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This volume presents a collection of theoretically innovative pieces that engage with data across its diverse locations, ranging from government databases to ecological field stations, from kitchen tables to concrete bunkers. Contributors demonstrate how thinking with data can be conceptually generative for anthropology, prompting us to reconsider our understanding of topics such as bodies, persons, and the social itself.

Shows how big data, which 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. Examines how data has motivated a sweep of dystopian visions, signaling the invasion of privacy, political manipulation, or shadowy data doubles. Discusses how 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. By putting data in its place, the chapters collected here develop conceptual tools that will prove useful for anthropologists who find data in their data.

\n Weight: 290g\n
Dimension: 171 x 245 x 9 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9781119816768\n \n