Abstract
In this dossier, we bring together researches that describes and analyzes relationships under the effect of big data. From sites that are quite different from each other - the legal, the bureaucratic, the agricultural, the biotechnological, the economic, the pornographic - we turn to the conflicting and creative agencies involved in what data makes us see and what they are capable of creating through their potential for hyper-relationality. We discuss the relationship between voluminous databases and various devices, such as applications, satellites, microscopes, documents and algorithms, capable of arranging and distributing informational elements through comparative practices. We examine big data collection and processing procedures in different sectors and institutions; the spread of algorithmic and statistical languages; the growing demands for transparency, precision and speed; and the link between data processing and the possibilities of democratic and sustainable development. Special attention is paid to the ethical and epistemological transformations involving big data, as well as the effects of the mobilization of computational knowledge by experts, including anthropologists themselves, in different knowledge production environments.
Keywords:
Anthropology; big data; Data; Comparison; Digital technologies