Data Science’s Beginnings: an Epistemological Hole, the Digital Age, and Some Reflexive Creativity

FacSem by Philipp Brandt, Assistant Professor, Centre for the Sociology of Organisations at Sciences Po. 

“Data science,” hardly known a decade ago, is now everywhere, in firms, politics, universities, and public administration. Where has it come from?

In this talk, Philipp Brandt draws on historical, quantitative, and qualitative material to address this puzzling rise of obscure expertise to broad salience. He first recovers an epistemological hole around data work that started opening two centuries ago. He then explores its insides through early data science skills in a large number of job descriptions.

While both longstanding oversights and recent technologies and datasets provide opportunities for new data work, they don’t explain the emergence of a novel group. This emergence, Philipp Brandt argues, requires understanding the practices of defining new work, which he analyzes in extensive observations of New York City’s early data scene. The talk offers the first comprehensive account of data science’s beginnings and a new idea, reflexive creativity, for understanding emergent social identities.

His talk will be discussed by Jen Schradie, Assistant Professor, Observatoire sociologique du changement de Sciences Po.

Registration required: marina.abelskaiagraziani@sciencespo