Anthropology of Science, Data, and Technology

4 credits · Undergraduate

We are now in a world where science, technology, and data-rich computing practices are fundamental to our sense of selves and the spaces we inhabit. This course introduces the methodological and analytical issues in knowledge-making in the physical sciences. We explore social and political arrangements mobilized through specific technological objects – from smartwatches to sex robots – that are becoming distinctive features of advanced societies. We investigate data-rich practices like self-tracking or cloud computing and how they shape circuits of knowledge, power, and truth. Using interdisciplinary approaches from Anthropology and Science, Technology and Society Studies we grapple with what it means to be human in the contemporary world.