The Palgrave Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology

Description

This Handbook offers an overview of the thriving and diverse field of anthropological studies of technology. It features 39 original chapters, each reviewing the state of the art of current research and enlivening the field of study through ethnographic analysis of human-technology interfaces, forms of social organisation, technological practices and/or systems of belief and meaning in different parts of the world. The Handbook is organised around some of the most important characteristics of anthropological studies of technology today: the diverse knowledge practices that technologies involve and on which they depend; the communities, collectives, and categories that emerge around technologies; anthropology’s contribution to proliferating debates on ethics, values, and morality in relation to technology; and infrastructures that highlight how all technologies are embedded in broader political economies and socio-historical processes that shape and often reinforce inequality and discrimination while also generating diversity. All chapters share a commitment to human experiences, embodiments, practices, and materialities in the daily lives of those people and institutions involved in the development, manufacturing, deployment, and/or use of particular technologies. Preface Contents Introduction 1 The Anthropology of Technology: The Formation of a Field • Maja Hojer Bruun and Ayo Wahlberg Part I: Perspectives, Fields, and Approaches Technique 2 Making ‘Technology’ Visible: Technical Activities and the Chaîne Opératoire • Ludovic Coupaye Skill 3 Technology as Skill in Handwork and Craft: Basketwork and Handweaving • Stephanie Bunn Materiality 4 Material Culture Studies: Objectification, Agency, and Intangibility • Mikkel Bille Feminism 5 Feminist Technoscience and New Imaginaries of Human Reproduction • Merete Lie Post-Structuralism 6 Assemblage Ethnography: Configurations Across Scales, Sites, and Practices • Ayo Wahlberg Posthumanism 7 Humanism, Posthumanism, and New Humanism: How Robots Challenge the Anthropological Object • Cathrine Hasse Biopolitics 8 Structuring Race into the Machine: The Spoiled Promise of Postgenomic Sequencing Technologies • Emma Kowal Design 9 An Interventional Design Anthropology of Emerging Technologies: Working Through an Interdisciplinary Field • Sarah Pink, Kaspar Raats, Thomas Lindgren, Katalin Osz, and Vaike Fors Digital 10 Computational Ethnography: A Case of COVID-19’s Methodological Consequences • Anders Kristian Munk and Brit Ross Winthereik Part II: Knowing, Unknowing, and Re-knowing Introduction 11 Knowing, Unknowing, and Re-knowing • Klaus Hoeyer and Brit Ross Winthereik Art 12 Technology, Environment, and the Ends of Knowledge • Hannah Knox Reflection 13 Charting the Unknown: Tracking the Self, Experimenting with the Digital • Minna Ruckenstein Observation 14 Data, Knowledge Practices, and Naturecultural Worlds: Vehicle Emissions in the Anthropocene • Lindsay Poirier Experiment 15 Set, Setting, and Clinical Trials: Colonial Technologies and Psychedelics • Joseph Dumit and Emilia Sanabria Survey 16 Assembling Population Data in the Field: The Labour, Technologies, and Materialities of Quantification • Cal Biruk Registry 17 Peopled By Data: Statistical Knowledge Practices, Population-Making, and the State • Alison Cool Accounting 18 Data Practices and Sustainable Development Goals: Organising Knowledge for Sustainable Futures • Anne Beaulieu Part III: Communities, Collectives, and Categories Introduction 19 Communities, Collectives, and Categories • Maja Hojer Bruun and Cathrine Hasse Race 20 Un/Doing Race: On Technology, Individuals, and Collectives in Forensic Practice • Irene van Oorschot and Amade M’charek Class 21 Learning, Technology, and the Instrumentalisation of Critique • Christo Sims Gender 22 Technology, Gender, and Nation: Building Modern Citizens in Maoist China • Francesca Bray Kinship 23 Imagineerism: Technology, Robots, Kinship. Perspectives from Japan • Jennifer Robertson Activism 24 Collectivities and Technological Activism: Feminist Hacking • Christina Dunbar-Hester Organisation 25 Inside Technology Organisations: Imaginaries of Digitalisation at Work • Maja Hojer Bruun and Jakob Krause-Jensen Part IV: Ethics, Values, and Morality Introduction 26 Ethics, Values, and Morality • Rachel Douglas-Jones, Maja Hojer Bruun, and Dorthe Brogård Kristensen Personhood 27 Moral Ambiguities: Fleshy and Digital Substitutesin the Life Sciences • Mette N. Svendsen, Mie S. Dam, Laura E. Navne, and Iben M. Gjødsbøl Authenticity 28 Enacting Authenticity: Changing Ontologies of Biological Entities • Linda F. Hogle Beauty 29 Technologies of Beauty: The Materiality, Ethics, and Normativity of Cosmetic Citizenship • Alvaro Jarrín Enhancement 30 The Optimised and Enhanced Self: Experiences of the Self and the Making of Societal Values • Dorthe Brogård Kristensen Regimes 31 Articulations of Ethics: Energy Worlds and Moral Selves • Mette M. High Responsibility 32 Competing Responsibilities and the Ethics of Care in Young People’s Engagements with Digital Mental Health • Susanna Trnka Control 33 Committee Work: Stem Cell Governance in the United States • Rachel Douglas-Jones Part V: Infrastructures, Linkages, and Livelihoods Introduction 34 Infrastructures, Linkages, and Livelihoods • Brit Ross Winthereik and Ayo Wahlberg Energy 35 Accumulation: Exploring the Materiality of Energy Infrastructure • Gökçe Günel Food 36 Food Infrastructures and Technologies of Trust in Contemporary China • Mikkel Bunkenborg Water 37 Water Infrastructures: The Making and Maintenance of Material and Organisational Connections • Astrid Oberborbeck Andersen Electricity 38 Electricity as a Field for Anthropological Theorising and Research • Simone Abram Finance 39 Circuit Board Money: An Infrastructural Perspective on Digital Payments • Sunniva Sandbukt Index