Towards an Anthropology of Data

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.

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 itselfShows 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 worldExamines how data has motivated a sweep of dystopian visions, signaling the invasion of privacy, political manipulation, or shadowy data doublesDiscusses 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 ethnographiesBy putting data in its place, the chapters collected here develop conceptual tools that will prove useful for anthropologists who find 'data' in their data