Comments on: The Politics of Data http://chnm2011.thatcamp.org/05/25/the-politics-of-data/ The Humanities and Technology Camp Sun, 03 Jul 2011 20:19:02 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.12 By: briancroxall http://chnm2011.thatcamp.org/05/25/the-politics-of-data/#comment-145 Tue, 31 May 2011 20:59:38 +0000 http://chnm2011.thatcamp.org/?p=632#comment-145 In some ways, I wonder if the risk is that humanities people end up subsuming data to their particular “ism.” By this I mean that since humanists aren’t used to working with big data sets or to interpreting from them, people might be inclined to simply put all of the data stuff into a small chart that helps prove the point that they were already trying to make. Just as we can too easily abstract the data’s origins, so too can we shoe horn it into what we want it to be.

To build on what Sarah says, I do think that a risk of Big Data is that it does preclude people at less funded institutions. For example, the Digging Into Data program requires an international team across multiple universities. Is that something that is really accessible for people that are at non-flagship or R1 schools? And do we care? (Maybe this is getting us back to James Neal’s session idea about diversity.

]]> By: sarah.werner http://chnm2011.thatcamp.org/05/25/the-politics-of-data/#comment-114 Mon, 30 May 2011 00:55:54 +0000 http://chnm2011.thatcamp.org/?p=632#comment-114 Hmm. I’m interested in this as well. I’m not sure what more coherent I can add, but Big Data does make me uneasy, both in terms of what it gets applied to and in terms of who applies it. Do the skills and the large amounts of data required need a level of infrastructure that precludes, say, scholars at less-funded institutions or in positions don’t provide institutional support? Does Big Data work as well for studies that pursue the more distant past? I worry, too, that a desire for measuring data–for examining things that can be thought of in terms of data–overshadows the hardwork that many have done to illuminate the understudied, such as minority communities, or the immaterial, or the non-textual.

]]> By: Amanda French http://chnm2011.thatcamp.org/05/25/the-politics-of-data/#comment-62 Thu, 26 May 2011 04:23:37 +0000 http://chnm2011.thatcamp.org/?p=632#comment-62 I wrote a little bit about being uneasy with Big Data recently, Stewart, so I’m in. In in in. For a conversation if nothing else. I do think the concept of “zoom” is important: all Big Data analyses have to have the “equal eye” that sees a million heroes perish and a single sparrow fall. Suggested reading (though not with your interesting Foucauldian approach): Steve Ramsay’s “The Hermeneutics of Screwing Around.” www.playingwithhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/hermeneutics.pdf

]]>