Tom Mcdonald
Biographic Data
| ID | 109182 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tom Mcdonald |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tom |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcdonald |
| SIGNATURE | MCDONALD T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Kansas |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9606-6420 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 133 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Data by design
Recent research into self-tracking devices challenges dominant understandings that such technologies provide wearers with “mechanical objectivity” over their monitoring of their bodies, instead highlighting how the so-called “objectivity” is situated within broader social contexts. In this article we explore the social phenomena arising from the introduction of multiple sensor technologies (activity trackers, productivity monitoring software, and…
Debt at a distance
This paper undertakes an analysis of publicly posted videos sharing debtors' strategies for responding to overzealous credit collection agencies during the earliest stages of the pandemic lockdown. It examines how Chinese debtors and credit collection callers responded to the uncertainties surrounding the handling of personal debts when the debtors' economic activities are heavily restricted. Both parties invoked different imagined collectivities…
What would happen if you can’t see your money?’
This article adopts an infrastructural perspective to analyse Chinese migrant factory workers’ conceptions of and approaches towards storing money on digital payment platforms. Scholars studying infrastructural systems have emphasised that such systems generally only become visible upon breakdown. However, this article finds that during the emergence of new infrastructures for monetary storage, existing infrastructures – along with the money stor…
Payments in the pandemic
Recent scholarship has sought to emphasise boundaries and borders as being complex social institutions that play a vital role in mediating national and global flows. This article examines transactions occurring along the boundary between Hong Kong and Mainland China, which experienced a sudden 'hardening' owing to travel restrictions imposed following the outbreak of COVID-19. When individuals found themselves unable to physically cross the bound…
Introduction
This Special Issue examines the relationship between imaginaries and infrastructures. Through a specific focus on the Asian region, the four articles contained herein demonstrate how these imaginaries span, transform and proliferate various boundaries. They also create new regimes of visibility and present a range of ethical dimensions for those who use them and the companies and governments that regulate the infrastructures. These include dating…
Alipay's 'Ant Credit Pay' meets China's factory workers
Scholarly accounts of the global rise of statistical credit scoring technologies have tended to portray these automated, digitised systems as supplanting human involvement in lending. This paper examines Chinese migrant factory workers’ encounters with Ant Credit Pay, Alipay’s novel consumer credit facility (which utilises the Zhima Credit scoring system). Drawing on ethnographic data, we document how workers come to understand Ant Credit Pay thr…
Pulling the sheep’s wool”
This paper draws on data collected during ethnographic fieldwork in a factory in south-east China to describe the significance of a group of activities colloquially known as “pulling the sheep’s wool” ( haoyangmao). This wide-ranging set of thrift-oriented practices involves gaining rewards and discounts by collecting various credits and points, most often through activities conducted on online shopping, news and payment platforms. Recent studies…
Strangership and Social Media
The stranger" has been a recurring figure in anthropology and sociology, often taken to represent the antithesis of kinship and friendship, or as personifying the anomie of contemporary social life. Drawing on participant observation documenting interactions with strangers occurring on social media in a rural Chinese town, I demonstrate how online stranger relations happening therein rework existing boundaries between friends and strangers while …
Contemporary Comparative Anthropology - The Why We Post Project
This paper confronts the disparity between a tradition that has defined anthropology as a comparative discipline and the practices which increasingly embrace cultural relativism and the uniqueness of each fieldsite. It suggests that it is possible to resolve this dilemma, through creating a vertical structure that complements the horizontal task of comparison across fieldsites. This vertical structure is composed of different methods of dissemina…
Making Money Visible
Making money visible: Digital money and financial precarity amongst Chinese migrant workers Tom McDonaldIn the summer of 2016, I and my students were in the industrial city of Shenzhen, South East China, conducting a small exploratory study aimed at gaining an overview of migrant factory workers' attitudes towards digital money platforms.Over two weeks, we had spoken to many migrant factory workers, uncovering a range of differing attitudes towar…
How the World Changed Social Media
How the World Changed Social Media is the first book in Why We Post, a book series that investigates the findings of nine anthropologists who each spent 15 months living in communities across the world. This book offers a comparative analysis summarising the results of the research and exploring the impact of social media on politics and gender, education and commerce. What is the result of the increased emphasis on visual communication? Are we b…
Social Media in Rural China
for inviting me to present and receive feedback on
Why We Post
Senses, Sociality and Salons
Recent calls for a revitalisation of the study of hospitality as central to anthropological theory have focussed on the material, affective, moral and cosmological aspects of hospitality. This paper argues that any such theory of hospitality should also afford consideration of how hosting practices can also be a form of medicinal experience, showing how in a Chinese hair salon these experiences ricochet into ideas of well-being by drawing on disc…
Affecting relations
Drawing on data gathered during ethnographic fieldwork in a south-western Chinese town, this paper examines a detailed case study of a single family, and how their internet use transformed over an 18-month period following the introduction of home broadband to their house. Despite initial intentions that the connection would resolve the problem of errant offspring accessing the internet outside the home, the subsequent effects that home internet …
Selecting an EBP to Reduce Long-Term Foster Care
A growing implementation literature outlines broad evidence-based practice implementation principles and pitfalls. Less robust is knowledge about the real-world process by which a state or agency chooses an evidence-based practice to implement and evaluate. Using a major U.S. initiative to reduce long-term foster care as the case, this article describes three major aspects of the evidence-based practice selection process: defining a target popula…
Elevating stakeholder voice
Cowboy Cloth” and Kinship
This article examines the effect of the fabric denim in objectifying kinship in the city of Kunming, China. It is argued that denim has been particularly efficacious due to its ability to insert itself into traditional Chinese kinship notions of nurturance. Parents were seen to gift denim to their children with the object of instigating a change in the lives of the younger generation, coupled with the knowledge that a change in material circumsta…
Typologies of Children in Foster Care for Reasons Other than Abuse or Neglect
In Kansas, 45% of foster care placements occur for reasons besides child abuse or neglect. Yet little is known about their critical characteristics. By learning more about these cases, policies and practices can be tailored accordingly. This research utilized a statewide random sample (n = 254) of target children entering care in 2005. Two-step cluster analysis was used to generate typologies. Comparisons were made relative to child, parent/caret…
The impact of parental substance abuse on the stability of family reunifications from foster care
The Nature and Development of the General Insurance Industry in Australia to 1973
The development of the insurance industry in Australia in the twentieth century was fundamentally shaped by a collusive code of conduct called the tariff. This arrangement, established to overcome problems of uncertainty, initially benefited both tariff and non‐tariff firms by enhancing market stability. It also reduced competition. The collusive agreements gradually broke down, however, as new entrants and products entered the market in the 1950…
Balancing reunification and reentry goals
Life by the River
This paper describes the development of a prehistoric landscape by the river Nene at Grendon Lakes, partly revealed in the 1970s and partly during excavations in 1998 and 2001, which are reported in full. Two major phases of archaeological activity are evident, one interpreted as Neolithic–Early Bronze Age, the other as Iron Age. The gap between these is bridged by an environmental sequence reconstructed with the aid of a pollen core from an adja…
A Late Bronze Age Landscape at South Hornchurch, Essex
A 2.5 ha open area excavation at South Hornchurch, Essex (London Borough of Havering) has revealed an extensive Late Bronze Age settlement on the Thames terrace gravels. The site is particularly significant because of the association of a circular ditched enclosure or ringwork with a contemporary field system, as well as clusters of enclosed and unenclosed circular structures. Two enclosures were formed by rings of pits or large post-holes. Place…
Intimate Union
How the World Changed Social Media
How the World Changed Social Media is the first book in Why We Post, a book series that investigates the findings of nine anthropologists who each spent 15 months living in communities across the world. This book offers a comparative analysis summarising the results of the research and exploring the impact of social media on politics and gender, education and commerce. What is the result of the increased emphasis on visual communication? Are we b…
The impact of parental substance abuse on the stability of family reunifications from foster care
Contemporary Comparative Anthropology - The Why We Post Project
This paper confronts the disparity between a tradition that has defined anthropology as a comparative discipline and the practices which increasingly embrace cultural relativism and the uniqueness of each fieldsite. It suggests that it is possible to resolve this dilemma, through creating a vertical structure that complements the horizontal task of comparison across fieldsites. This vertical structure is composed of different methods of dissemina…
Balancing reunification and reentry goals
Strangership and Social Media
The stranger" has been a recurring figure in anthropology and sociology, often taken to represent the antithesis of kinship and friendship, or as personifying the anomie of contemporary social life. Drawing on participant observation documenting interactions with strangers occurring on social media in a rural Chinese town, I demonstrate how online stranger relations happening therein rework existing boundaries between friends and strangers while …
A Late Bronze Age Landscape at South Hornchurch, Essex
A 2.5 ha open area excavation at South Hornchurch, Essex (London Borough of Havering) has revealed an extensive Late Bronze Age settlement on the Thames terrace gravels. The site is particularly significant because of the association of a circular ditched enclosure or ringwork with a contemporary field system, as well as clusters of enclosed and unenclosed circular structures. Two enclosures were formed by rings of pits or large post-holes. Place…
Alipay's 'Ant Credit Pay' meets China's factory workers
Scholarly accounts of the global rise of statistical credit scoring technologies have tended to portray these automated, digitised systems as supplanting human involvement in lending. This paper examines Chinese migrant factory workers’ encounters with Ant Credit Pay, Alipay’s novel consumer credit facility (which utilises the Zhima Credit scoring system). Drawing on ethnographic data, we document how workers come to understand Ant Credit Pay thr…
Selecting an EBP to Reduce Long-Term Foster Care
A growing implementation literature outlines broad evidence-based practice implementation principles and pitfalls. Less robust is knowledge about the real-world process by which a state or agency chooses an evidence-based practice to implement and evaluate. Using a major U.S. initiative to reduce long-term foster care as the case, this article describes three major aspects of the evidence-based practice selection process: defining a target popula…
Social Media in Rural China
for inviting me to present and receive feedback on
Pulling the sheep’s wool”
This paper draws on data collected during ethnographic fieldwork in a factory in south-east China to describe the significance of a group of activities colloquially known as “pulling the sheep’s wool” ( haoyangmao). This wide-ranging set of thrift-oriented practices involves gaining rewards and discounts by collecting various credits and points, most often through activities conducted on online shopping, news and payment platforms. Recent studies…
Life by the River
This paper describes the development of a prehistoric landscape by the river Nene at Grendon Lakes, partly revealed in the 1970s and partly during excavations in 1998 and 2001, which are reported in full. Two major phases of archaeological activity are evident, one interpreted as Neolithic–Early Bronze Age, the other as Iron Age. The gap between these is bridged by an environmental sequence reconstructed with the aid of a pollen core from an adja…
Early Citizen Review
Case review, designed to promote adequate and appropriate planning and service delivery for children in foster care, is expected to reduce time in foster care and to lead to permanent placement outcomes. This article reports the results of a study on the impact of external citizen review initiated 14 to 45 days after a child entered the court system. Comparisons were made between two study groups to determine the impact of early citizen review on…
Senses, Sociality and Salons
Recent calls for a revitalisation of the study of hospitality as central to anthropological theory have focussed on the material, affective, moral and cosmological aspects of hospitality. This paper argues that any such theory of hospitality should also afford consideration of how hosting practices can also be a form of medicinal experience, showing how in a Chinese hair salon these experiences ricochet into ideas of well-being by drawing on disc…
Debt at a distance
This paper undertakes an analysis of publicly posted videos sharing debtors' strategies for responding to overzealous credit collection agencies during the earliest stages of the pandemic lockdown. It examines how Chinese debtors and credit collection callers responded to the uncertainties surrounding the handling of personal debts when the debtors' economic activities are heavily restricted. Both parties invoked different imagined collectivities…
What would happen if you can’t see your money?’
This article adopts an infrastructural perspective to analyse Chinese migrant factory workers’ conceptions of and approaches towards storing money on digital payment platforms. Scholars studying infrastructural systems have emphasised that such systems generally only become visible upon breakdown. However, this article finds that during the emergence of new infrastructures for monetary storage, existing infrastructures – along with the money stor…
Why We Post
Early Citizen Review
Case review, designed to promote adequate and appropriate planning and service delivery for children in foster care, is expected to reduce time in foster care and to lead to permanent placement outcomes. This article reports the results of a study on the impact of external citizen review initiated 14 to 45 days after a child entered the court system. Comparisons were made between two study groups to determine the impact of early citizen review on…
Intimate Union
A Late Bronze Age Landscape at South Hornchurch, Essex
A 2.5 ha open area excavation at South Hornchurch, Essex (London Borough of Havering) has revealed an extensive Late Bronze Age settlement on the Thames terrace gravels. The site is particularly significant because of the association of a circular ditched enclosure or ringwork with a contemporary field system, as well as clusters of enclosed and unenclosed circular structures. Two enclosures were formed by rings of pits or large post-holes. Place…
Life by the River
This paper describes the development of a prehistoric landscape by the river Nene at Grendon Lakes, partly revealed in the 1970s and partly during excavations in 1998 and 2001, which are reported in full. Two major phases of archaeological activity are evident, one interpreted as Neolithic–Early Bronze Age, the other as Iron Age. The gap between these is bridged by an environmental sequence reconstructed with the aid of a pollen core from an adja…
Balancing reunification and reentry goals
The Nature and Development of the General Insurance Industry in Australia to 1973
The development of the insurance industry in Australia in the twentieth century was fundamentally shaped by a collusive code of conduct called the tariff. This arrangement, established to overcome problems of uncertainty, initially benefited both tariff and non‐tariff firms by enhancing market stability. It also reduced competition. The collusive agreements gradually broke down, however, as new entrants and products entered the market in the 1950…
Typologies of Children in Foster Care for Reasons Other than Abuse or Neglect
In Kansas, 45% of foster care placements occur for reasons besides child abuse or neglect. Yet little is known about their critical characteristics. By learning more about these cases, policies and practices can be tailored accordingly. This research utilized a statewide random sample (n = 254) of target children entering care in 2005. Two-step cluster analysis was used to generate typologies. Comparisons were made relative to child, parent/caret…
The impact of parental substance abuse on the stability of family reunifications from foster care
Cowboy Cloth” and Kinship
This article examines the effect of the fabric denim in objectifying kinship in the city of Kunming, China. It is argued that denim has been particularly efficacious due to its ability to insert itself into traditional Chinese kinship notions of nurturance. Parents were seen to gift denim to their children with the object of instigating a change in the lives of the younger generation, coupled with the knowledge that a change in material circumsta…
Selecting an EBP to Reduce Long-Term Foster Care
A growing implementation literature outlines broad evidence-based practice implementation principles and pitfalls. Less robust is knowledge about the real-world process by which a state or agency chooses an evidence-based practice to implement and evaluate. Using a major U.S. initiative to reduce long-term foster care as the case, this article describes three major aspects of the evidence-based practice selection process: defining a target popula…
Elevating stakeholder voice
Affecting relations
Drawing on data gathered during ethnographic fieldwork in a south-western Chinese town, this paper examines a detailed case study of a single family, and how their internet use transformed over an 18-month period following the introduction of home broadband to their house. Despite initial intentions that the connection would resolve the problem of errant offspring accessing the internet outside the home, the subsequent effects that home internet …
How the World Changed Social Media
How the World Changed Social Media is the first book in Why We Post, a book series that investigates the findings of nine anthropologists who each spent 15 months living in communities across the world. This book offers a comparative analysis summarising the results of the research and exploring the impact of social media on politics and gender, education and commerce. What is the result of the increased emphasis on visual communication? Are we b…
Social Media in Rural China
for inviting me to present and receive feedback on
Why We Post
Senses, Sociality and Salons
Recent calls for a revitalisation of the study of hospitality as central to anthropological theory have focussed on the material, affective, moral and cosmological aspects of hospitality. This paper argues that any such theory of hospitality should also afford consideration of how hosting practices can also be a form of medicinal experience, showing how in a Chinese hair salon these experiences ricochet into ideas of well-being by drawing on disc…
Making Money Visible
Making money visible: Digital money and financial precarity amongst Chinese migrant workers Tom McDonaldIn the summer of 2016, I and my students were in the industrial city of Shenzhen, South East China, conducting a small exploratory study aimed at gaining an overview of migrant factory workers' attitudes towards digital money platforms.Over two weeks, we had spoken to many migrant factory workers, uncovering a range of differing attitudes towar…
Strangership and Social Media
The stranger" has been a recurring figure in anthropology and sociology, often taken to represent the antithesis of kinship and friendship, or as personifying the anomie of contemporary social life. Drawing on participant observation documenting interactions with strangers occurring on social media in a rural Chinese town, I demonstrate how online stranger relations happening therein rework existing boundaries between friends and strangers while …
Contemporary Comparative Anthropology - The Why We Post Project
This paper confronts the disparity between a tradition that has defined anthropology as a comparative discipline and the practices which increasingly embrace cultural relativism and the uniqueness of each fieldsite. It suggests that it is possible to resolve this dilemma, through creating a vertical structure that complements the horizontal task of comparison across fieldsites. This vertical structure is composed of different methods of dissemina…
Pulling the sheep’s wool”
This paper draws on data collected during ethnographic fieldwork in a factory in south-east China to describe the significance of a group of activities colloquially known as “pulling the sheep’s wool” ( haoyangmao). This wide-ranging set of thrift-oriented practices involves gaining rewards and discounts by collecting various credits and points, most often through activities conducted on online shopping, news and payment platforms. Recent studies…
What would happen if you can’t see your money?’
This article adopts an infrastructural perspective to analyse Chinese migrant factory workers’ conceptions of and approaches towards storing money on digital payment platforms. Scholars studying infrastructural systems have emphasised that such systems generally only become visible upon breakdown. However, this article finds that during the emergence of new infrastructures for monetary storage, existing infrastructures – along with the money stor…
Payments in the pandemic
Recent scholarship has sought to emphasise boundaries and borders as being complex social institutions that play a vital role in mediating national and global flows. This article examines transactions occurring along the boundary between Hong Kong and Mainland China, which experienced a sudden 'hardening' owing to travel restrictions imposed following the outbreak of COVID-19. When individuals found themselves unable to physically cross the bound…
Introduction
This Special Issue examines the relationship between imaginaries and infrastructures. Through a specific focus on the Asian region, the four articles contained herein demonstrate how these imaginaries span, transform and proliferate various boundaries. They also create new regimes of visibility and present a range of ethical dimensions for those who use them and the companies and governments that regulate the infrastructures. These include dating…
Alipay's 'Ant Credit Pay' meets China's factory workers
Scholarly accounts of the global rise of statistical credit scoring technologies have tended to portray these automated, digitised systems as supplanting human involvement in lending. This paper examines Chinese migrant factory workers’ encounters with Ant Credit Pay, Alipay’s novel consumer credit facility (which utilises the Zhima Credit scoring system). Drawing on ethnographic data, we document how workers come to understand Ant Credit Pay thr…
Data by design
Recent research into self-tracking devices challenges dominant understandings that such technologies provide wearers with “mechanical objectivity” over their monitoring of their bodies, instead highlighting how the so-called “objectivity” is situated within broader social contexts. In this article we explore the social phenomena arising from the introduction of multiple sensor technologies (activity trackers, productivity monitoring software, and…
Political science (18 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Law (11 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Business (8 works) · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Anthropology (5 works) · China (5 works)