Overview
Fills a substantial gap in the scholarly and academic literature addressing social studies of technology
Timely, topical and unique exposition of the subject, which will be required reading for years to come
Cutting-edge resource for students in anthropology, STS courses and related disciplines
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Table of contents (39 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Perspectives, Fields, and Approaches
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Front Matter
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Knowing, Unknowing, and Re-knowing
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Front Matter
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Keywords
About this book
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.
Chapters 11 and 31 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
Reviews
“This extraordinarily ambitious and comprehensive volume shows how many things we might have previously considered merely the context for studying technologies are themselves technologies. Through this perspective, we come to learn how technologies facilitate the creation of moral norms, social orders, infrastructures and power. Examples range from datafication and energy to committees, knowledge, gender, authenticity, food and many forms of classification. Such a holistic sensibility is surely apt for the discipline of anthropology, continuing a tradition that recognises that technologies are as much concerned with making people as with making things.” (Daniel Miller, Univesity College London, author of The Global Smartphone)
“Whether you take up this Handbook as an introduction or a review, these writings expand and update our conceptual framework for thinking with anthropology about technology. Technologies, in these writings, are inseparable from the knowledge practices, collectives, controversies and infrastructures that configure them and render their significance. Framed as technological, socio-material relations have been incorporated into histories and political economies specific to colonial and instrumentalist logics of development and progress. Locating technology as one among the many tropes, processes and practices that conjoin matter and meaning, this collection opens lines of analysis able to generate radically different stories.” (Lucy Suchman, Lancaster University, author of Human-Machine Reconfigurations)
“A monument to the unison of hand, book and tool, this ambitious compendium offers resounding proof that the anthropology of technology has come of age. In their sheer richness and diversity, the volume’s many contributions show that researching technology, far from a narrow specialism, seeks nothing less than to place human being and becoming in a world undergoing unprecedented, and potentially cataclysmic transformation. From the climate emergency, through the energy transition and public health, to race and inequality, these studies address some of the most pressing questions of our time. Authoritative, wide-ranging and forward-looking, the Handbook will be an indispensable source for years to come.” (Tim Ingold, University of Aberdeen, author of Imagining for Real)
“This is a handbook in the best sense of the word, a convincing expansion of anthropological approaches to technical systems to dozens of contemporary hot topics: energy transition, robotics, digital culture, issues of discrimination, welfare austerity, emerging technologies. The articles analyzing the body, gestures, and objects will provide the reader with excellent theoretical and methodological syntheses, and scores of up-to-date references.” (Pierre Lemonnier, The French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), author of Mundane Objects)
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Maja Hojer Bruun is Associate Professor at the Department of Educational Anthropology, Aarhus University.
Ayo Wahlberg is Professor MSO at the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen.
Rachel Douglas-Jones is Associate Professor at the Department of BusinessIT, IT University of Copenhagen.
Cathrine Hasse is Professor at the Department of Educational Anthropology, Aarhus University.
Klaus Hoeyer is Professor at the Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen.
Dorthe Brogård Kristensen is Associate Professor at the Department of Business and Management, University of Southern Denmark.
Brit Ross Winthereik is Professor at the Department of BusinessIT, IT University of Copenhagen.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Palgrave Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology
Editors: Maja Hojer Bruun, Ayo Wahlberg, Rachel Douglas-Jones, Cathrine Hasse, Klaus Hoeyer, Dorthe Brogård Kristensen, Brit Ross Winthereik
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7084-8
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Singapore
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-981-16-7083-1Published: 24 March 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-981-16-7086-2Published: 25 March 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-981-16-7084-8Published: 23 March 2022
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXIV, 808
Number of Illustrations: 7 b/w illustrations, 16 illustrations in colour
Topics: Anthropology, Sociology, general, Social Sciences, general, Medical Anthropology, Medical Anthropology