One of the things that I’ve thought over and questioned through my own research process is the discipline’s tendency towards not sharing any research data (speaking in the context of situations with the research participants have given permissions to the researcher to share data more widely and publically than academic publications). I’m curious in how that as a default practice developed in anthropology. In my own research, I’ve been challenged and compelled by my research participants to share and withhold certain information in ways that I sometimes did not expect (for example, certain topics to be much more contentious than others), and also in the way that photographs, videos, etc have served as helpful and at times, exciting, joy-inspiring, elicitation tools. In thinking of the future of anthropology, I am interested in how more broadly data sharing can have a similar effect on our research and data sharing practices as well as the role anthropologists can play beyond the avenues of academic publishing for a primarily academic, anthropology/social sciences audience.
