Method in the Machine: Rethinking How We Study the Digital

Speaker
Janaki Srinivasan, PhD
Affiliation
Associate Professor of Digital South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford.
Date and Time:
-
Location:

ICGC Commons for Critical Inquiry (537 Heller Hall) and livestream (register here!).

What does it mean to study digital technologies ethnographically — from and through place? How do we attend to the human and non-human intermediations that shape digital practice and social action? In a world where techno-capital produces new boundaries between users and designers, platforms and marketplaces, this seminar explores how ethnographic methods can recover the social and political life of information. Together, we will consider questions of information inequality, design opacity, and the politics of access, participation, and inclusion through concrete ethnographic cases. Faculty, graduate students, and researchers interested in digital culture, social practice, and method are warmly invited.

Dr. Srinivasan’s ethnographic research traces the social lives of information — from Kerala’s fish markets to contemporary data infrastructures — revealing how digital systems are built from human choices, values, and politics rather than neutral code.

To prepare for the conversation, you can read selections from her work:
  • The Political Lives of Information (MIT Press, 2022): Read excerpt
  • “The myths and moral economies of digital ID and mobile money in India and Myanmar” (2020): Read PDF

About the Speaker

Janaki Srinivasan is Associate Professor of Digital South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford. Her research examines the political economy of information technology-based development initiatives. She uses ethnographic research to examine how gender, caste and class shape the use of such technologies. Her work has explored these interests in the context of Indian digital inclusion initiatives focused on community computer centers, mobile phones, identity systems and open information systems. Some of this work appeared in her recent monograph, The Political Lives of Information published by MIT Press in 2022. Janaki’s ongoing work on the politics of informational and digital exclusion focuses on issues of privacy and the algorithmic control of labor. For the past several years, as co-investigator on the Fairwork India team, she has been involved in researching and advocating for change in the precarious working conditions of gig workers in India.