Raw data: Making relations matter

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

  • Antonia Walford

This article takes scientific ‘raw data’ as its ethnographic object in order to investigate the co-implication of nature and culture in scientific knowledge practices. The article traces out some of the activities that are involved in producing numerical climate data from the Brazilian Amazon. Although science and technology studies (STS) makes a strong case for associating relationality with certainty, the article argues that a particular form of data, ‘raw data’, complicates this association. It further argues that scientific data is not simply composed out of relations, but is a relation itself. The article ends with a brief reflection on the possible repercussions of shifting from thinking of science as producing multiple natures and cultures to thinking of it as producing the potential for relations.

Original languageEnglish
JournalSocial Analysis: The International Journal of Anthropology
Volume61
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)65-80
Number of pages16
ISSN0155-977X
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jun 2017

    Research areas

  • Brazilian Amazon, Climate change, Culture, Data, Nature, Relations, Uncertainty

ID: 196881924