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.

中文翻译：

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简介：迈向数据人类学

世界正在谈论“数据”。围绕“大”数据潜力的早期跨学科，以业务为导向的炒作已被人们所接受，并承诺对社会生活进行前所未有的洞察。如今，数据激发了反乌托邦的眼光，从大宗商品化到侵犯隐私权，政治操纵和影子数据翻倍。然而，即使数据实践的社会生活在我们的人种志中变得很明显，人类学家仍对将数据本身作为对象持谨慎态度。在本导言中，我们主张人类学专门针对数据的人类学，并在理论上雄心勃勃，并提出了一个案例，说明人类学与数据时刻的互动可能不仅在政治上重要，而且在概念上具有生成性。