Material Conditions
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Below are a list of questions and suggestions to consider when developing digital humanities projects. These questions address issues of material conditions, with the understanding that the provisional categories articulated here are imperfect and overlapping.
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 What are the material conditions (resources, environmental impact, institutions, land, etc.) that enable the project? Are these conditions addressed or acknowledged within the project?
- ¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0
- Check out information about the metals used in most computers.
- Here are some statistics about Internet power consumption.
¶ 4
Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0
Whose labor enabled this project and how were they compensated for it?
- ¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 1
- What is the relationship between project collaborators?
- Learn more about low-wage, anonymous digital labor through services like Amazon Mechanical Turk and consider the ethics and implications of using them.
- For guidelines on collaboration, check out “The Collaborators’ Bill of Rights.”
- Working with student collaborators? Read “A Student Collaborators’ Bill of Rights.”
- Concerned about FERPA? Check with your institution and read Bryce Peake’s post on FERPA and digital education.
¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 Who benefits or profits from this work and whose histories made it possible?
- ¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0
- Read Christine Borgman’s essay, “The Digital Future is Now”.
- Check out Katina Rogers’ article, “Humanities Unbound”.
- Consider essays in the differences special issue, “In the Shadows of the Digital Humanities”.
¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 Which native peoples are stewards of the land on which the project has been produced or the geographical area represented within the project?
- ¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0
- Read this NPR story on maps of Native American nations.
- Check out efforts at one university to acknowledge lands of Indigenous communities. How might that translate to digital humanities practice?
¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 Does the project declare conflicts of interest, funders, and the implications of working with those funding bodies?
- ¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0
- The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has documents on conflicts of interest.
- Matthew Kirschenbaum has raised the important issue of whether digital humanities practitioners should accept funding from military agencies or defense contractors.
¶ 12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 0 Is the project appropriately scaled for your institutional context and resources?
- ¶ 13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 0
- See Simon Appleford and Jennifer Guiliano’s site DevDH.org for excellent advice on project design and development.
- Consider William A. Kretzschmar‘s essay, “Large-Scale Humanities Computing Projects.”
Hey Roopika! I was just referred here by my own website. This page is an amazing resource.
Sadly, though, my essay is overwhelmingly colonized. The digital natives metaphor needs so badly to be disassembled that “running with the metaphor,” articulating natives with spears as though they’re stuck in a time machine, fills me with a deep sense of shame. But it also makes me overwhelmingly grateful for the fantastic feminists and anti-colonial activists and academics that have helped me grow as a person over the past years.
Consider this comment a bit of self-reflexivity sorely missing from the original post.