Soc Stud Sci
April 2024
What makes one dataset powerful for civic advocacy, and another fall flat? Drawing from a citizen science project on environmental health, I argue that there is an underacknowledged quality of datasets-their topology-that shapes the social, cultural, and political possibilities they can sustain or subvert. Data topologies are formal qualities of a dataset that connect data collectors' intentions with the types of calculations that can and cannot be performed. This configures how numerical arguments are made, and the sociotechnical imaginaries those arguments sustain or subvert.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis paper explores the complex relationship between intellectual property (IP) and the transdisciplinary collaborative design (co-design) of new digital technologies for agriculture (AgTech). More specifically, it explores how prioritizing the capturing of IP as a central researcher responsibility can cause disruptions to research relationships and project outcomes. We argue that boundary-making processes associated with IP create a particular context through which responsibility can, and must, be located and cultivated by researchers working within transdisciplinary collaborations.
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