For an ethnography of data: research on the social profile of the Brazilian military

Authors

  • Celso Castro Escola de Ciências Sociais da Fundação Getulio Vargas, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
  • Silvia Monnerat Escola de Ciências Sociais da Fundação Getulio Vargas, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7458/SPP20199113744

Keywords:

hard data, objects, military, ethnography

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to show how hard data are not “neutral” or “given”; but are instead embedded in a subjective process of production, maintenance and utilization. We propose to describe this process of “social construction of data” by taking as object data obtained from Brazilian military schools on the social profile of their students. The ethnographic observation of these practices allows us to see how they establish selective principles, illuminating certain dimensions of the institution’s life and obscuring others. Thus, a “data fetishism” is avoided: the tendency to see such data as entities with a life of their own, independent on the subjectivity of the individuals who produced them, maintained them and gave access to them.

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Published

2018-11-14

Issue

No. 91 (2019)

Section

Artigos

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