SOC SC 210
Data in Theory and Practice
Description
Seminar, three hours. Big data is touted as revolutionizing social science by providing researchers unprecedented access to information about every aspect of social life, from micro-level social interactions to global health trends. The availability of large-scale datasets, along with the development of new analytic tools to organize and analyze data, holds the promise of accelerating the growth and accuracy of social scientific knowledge. But data itself is a fundamentally social phenomenon, with a distinctive history of development and usage. Consideration of the meaning and significance of data for the social sciences. Exploration of the intertwined histories of data and the mode of power Michel Foucault famously identified as "governmentality". Consideration of recent debates about the uses (and abuses) of data in the social sciences. Letter grading.
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