Session 4 — What does local mean?
Day 1 · 60 minutes
- Reading: Loukissas, Chapter 1, Local Origins, pp. 13–26
- Output: Data Setting checklist
Close reading
Chapter 1, Local Origins (Loukissas 2019, 13–26). Session 3 reads the same chapter from a different angle.
We read this text together in the session.
Reading summary
For Loukissas, local does not mean small or only geographic. Local conditions can be social, institutional, technical, cultural, or historical. They work at different scales. Data can travel, but they are always made and used in particular settings. The local is also not always good; local categories and practices can reproduce exclusion or bias.
In class
Students build a Data Setting Checklist. The checklist asks eight things about a dataset:
- who made it;
- where it was made;
- when it was made;
- why it was made;
- how it was made;
- for whom it was made;
- under which categories it was recorded;
- what is absent from it.
Output
The Data Setting Checklist. You use it again in Session 11 on your own dataset.
Next
Session 5 — A place for plant data applies the checklist to a real archive.