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
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