Graham M Jones
Biographic Data
| ID | 3591275 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Graham M Jones |
| GIVEN NAMES | Graham M |
| FAMILY NAME | Jones |
| SIGNATURE | JONES G M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6435-7066 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 159 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1911 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Toward a phenomenology of mystification
By leveraging machine learning, computer scientists and engineers have developed generative AI models so opaque that experimenting on them is often the only means to study their inner workings. In our ethnographic engagements with such technologists, we have frequently witnessed them contemplate model outputs with rapt mystification. Although accusations that AI technologists deliberately mystify investors, regulators, and consumers are certainly…
Magic as Repair
By analyzing artist Rose Salane’s photographs of confessions written by tourists who pilfered items from the Pompeii archaeological site, this article explores the power of the material world to act on the human conscience despite the deadening effects of capitalism
Toward cultural interpretability
This article proposes a new integration of linguistic anthropology and machine learning (ML) around convergent interests in both the underpinnings of language and making language technologies more socially responsible. While linguistic anthropology focuses on interpreting the cultural basis for human language use, the ML field of interpretability is concerned with uncovering the patterns that Large Language Models (LLMs) learn from human verbal b…
“Let’s Go, Baby Forklift!”
This article describes how the Chinese state borrows from the culture of celebrity fandom to implement a novel strategy of governing that we term “fandom governance.” We illustrate how state-run social media employed fandom governance early in the COVID-19 pandemic when the country was convulsed with anxiety. As the state faced a crisis, state social media responded with a propagandistic display of state efficacy, broadcasting a round-the-clock l…
Language, The Internet, and Digital Communication
Following the global proliferation of technologies of digital communication, linguistic anthropologists have investigated the associated signifying practices. Such practices intimately intertwine with sociotechnical systems: devices and programming architecture are designed to support particular communicative practices, and communicative practices are shaped by devices and architecture. Prominent linguistic anthropological approaches to digital c…
New Magic as an Artification Movement
In recent years, a small but prolific network of French magicians and their allies have taken calculated, systematic, and very public steps to reposition magic as a form of high culture, produced and received according to a set of distinctively artistic criteria, and linked institutionally to the realm of fine arts. They call what they are doing 'new magic' ( la magie nouvelle). This article takes a conversation analytic approach to a verbal disa…
Indigenous illusionism and the global magic system
A spectacular commodification of pure illusion, the modern magic of conjuring’s golden age was also part of a loose assemblage of cultural industries – including colonial anthropology – involved in visualizing ethnic differences in ways that tended to naturalize imperialist models of globalization by denying coevalness to cultural others. Inspired by the work of scholars who emphasize multiple, alternative and indigenous forms of global modernity…
Magic's Reason
Magic, an appreciation
Response to comments on Jones, Graham M. 2017. Magic's reason: An anthropology of analogy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
There's no rules. It's hackathon.”
How do people negotiate commitments to engaging in joint activity while at the same time anticipating and managing the inherent risks of collaboration? We explore this question through the ethnographic example of a hackathon, a collaborative software‐design competition. We focus specifically on the earliest and, in many ways, most uncertain phase of collaboration, in which commitment and activity simultaneously emerge: team formation. We analyze …
Secrecy
Although expansions of state secrecy and the countervailing leaks of classified documents imbue the anthropology of secrecy with urgent relevance, secrecy has a long-standing status as a paradigmatically anthropological topic. In the ethnographic record, initiatory secrets often stand for the quiddity of culture, and the revelation of concealed realities is an organizing trope in much ethnographic writing. While situating research on secrecy as a…
Anthropology in and of Moocs
The suddenness with which Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, sprang upon us left many within the academy grasping for interpretations. Early proponents touted them as revolutionary tools that could enhance on-campus learning while also making high-quality education accessible to a vast global population, reforming a malfunctioning university system, and producing new kinds of data on how people learn. Critics countered that behind this latest…
De l’artification
Comment l’art vient-il aux personnes, aux objets, aux activités ? Comment passe-t-on d’une activité quelconque à un art, d’un simple artefact à une o uvre et d’un praticien à un artiste ? C’est cette opération qu’explore ce livre, sous le nom d’« artification » : un déplacement durable et collectivement assumé de la frontière entre art et non-art. Conditions pratiques, techniques, sémantiques, juridiques, institutionnelles, organisationnelles... …
Rites of the Republic
Specificity of place and the emplacement of politics are key themes running through Mark Ingram's ethnography of civic-minded theater in southern France. This multi-sited study juxtaposes the Theatre Rural d'Animation Culturelle (TRAC), an amateur troupe from the Vaucluse with a strong rural identity, and the Friche, professional theatrical artists who identify with the urban setting of cosmopolitan Marseille. Comparing these groups, Ingram devel…
In the Land of Invented Languages
While it is not a scholarly work, Arika Okrent’s In the Land of Invented Languages recommends itself to linguistic anthropologists on a variety of counts. An intellectual picaresque describing the author’s historical and ethnographic forays into the imaginative worlds of language inventors and their followers, it offers engaging examination of shifting motivations behind the production and promotion of constructed languages (conlangs). It could b…
Magic With a Message
Netzsprache
Modern Magic and the War on Miracles in French Colonial Culture
On 16 September 1856, gentleman illusionist Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin embarked from Marseille on the steamshipAlexandrebound for the embattled French colony of Algeria. Thirty-six hours later, a detachment of French soldiers met him in the port of Algiers. Recently retired as an entertainer to pursue research in optics and the emerging field of applied electricity, Robert-Houdin was about to return to the stage in a series of magic performances t…
Talking Text and Talking Back
Exploring the close relationship between poetic language and metalanguage, this article analyzes both a series of 2007-8 U.S. TV ads that humorously deploy the language of text messaging, and the subsequent debates about the linguistic status of texting that they occasioned. We explore the ambivalence of commercials that at once resonate with fears of messaging slang as a verbal contagion and luxuriate in the playful inversion of standard languag…
Enquoting voices, accomplishing talk
Annexation, Preferential Trade, and Reciprocity
Secrecy
Although expansions of state secrecy and the countervailing leaks of classified documents imbue the anthropology of secrecy with urgent relevance, secrecy has a long-standing status as a paradigmatically anthropological topic. In the ethnographic record, initiatory secrets often stand for the quiddity of culture, and the revelation of concealed realities is an organizing trope in much ethnographic writing. While situating research on secrecy as a…
Talking Text and Talking Back
Exploring the close relationship between poetic language and metalanguage, this article analyzes both a series of 2007-8 U.S. TV ads that humorously deploy the language of text messaging, and the subsequent debates about the linguistic status of texting that they occasioned. We explore the ambivalence of commercials that at once resonate with fears of messaging slang as a verbal contagion and luxuriate in the playful inversion of standard languag…
Enquoting voices, accomplishing talk
Magic With a Message
There's no rules. It's hackathon.”
How do people negotiate commitments to engaging in joint activity while at the same time anticipating and managing the inherent risks of collaboration? We explore this question through the ethnographic example of a hackathon, a collaborative software‐design competition. We focus specifically on the earliest and, in many ways, most uncertain phase of collaboration, in which commitment and activity simultaneously emerge: team formation. We analyze …
Modern Magic and the War on Miracles in French Colonial Culture
On 16 September 1856, gentleman illusionist Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin embarked from Marseille on the steamshipAlexandrebound for the embattled French colony of Algeria. Thirty-six hours later, a detachment of French soldiers met him in the port of Algiers. Recently retired as an entertainer to pursue research in optics and the emerging field of applied electricity, Robert-Houdin was about to return to the stage in a series of magic performances t…
Anthropology in and of Moocs
The suddenness with which Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, sprang upon us left many within the academy grasping for interpretations. Early proponents touted them as revolutionary tools that could enhance on-campus learning while also making high-quality education accessible to a vast global population, reforming a malfunctioning university system, and producing new kinds of data on how people learn. Critics countered that behind this latest…
Toward cultural interpretability
This article proposes a new integration of linguistic anthropology and machine learning (ML) around convergent interests in both the underpinnings of language and making language technologies more socially responsible. While linguistic anthropology focuses on interpreting the cultural basis for human language use, the ML field of interpretability is concerned with uncovering the patterns that Large Language Models (LLMs) learn from human verbal b…
New Magic as an Artification Movement
In recent years, a small but prolific network of French magicians and their allies have taken calculated, systematic, and very public steps to reposition magic as a form of high culture, produced and received according to a set of distinctively artistic criteria, and linked institutionally to the realm of fine arts. They call what they are doing 'new magic' ( la magie nouvelle). This article takes a conversation analytic approach to a verbal disa…
Annexation, Preferential Trade, and Reciprocity
Talking Text and Talking Back
Exploring the close relationship between poetic language and metalanguage, this article analyzes both a series of 2007-8 U.S. TV ads that humorously deploy the language of text messaging, and the subsequent debates about the linguistic status of texting that they occasioned. We explore the ambivalence of commercials that at once resonate with fears of messaging slang as a verbal contagion and luxuriate in the playful inversion of standard languag…
Enquoting voices, accomplishing talk
Modern Magic and the War on Miracles in French Colonial Culture
On 16 September 1856, gentleman illusionist Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin embarked from Marseille on the steamshipAlexandrebound for the embattled French colony of Algeria. Thirty-six hours later, a detachment of French soldiers met him in the port of Algiers. Recently retired as an entertainer to pursue research in optics and the emerging field of applied electricity, Robert-Houdin was about to return to the stage in a series of magic performances t…
Netzsprache
De l’artification
Comment l’art vient-il aux personnes, aux objets, aux activités ? Comment passe-t-on d’une activité quelconque à un art, d’un simple artefact à une o uvre et d’un praticien à un artiste ? C’est cette opération qu’explore ce livre, sous le nom d’« artification » : un déplacement durable et collectivement assumé de la frontière entre art et non-art. Conditions pratiques, techniques, sémantiques, juridiques, institutionnelles, organisationnelles... …
Rites of the Republic
Specificity of place and the emplacement of politics are key themes running through Mark Ingram's ethnography of civic-minded theater in southern France. This multi-sited study juxtaposes the Theatre Rural d'Animation Culturelle (TRAC), an amateur troupe from the Vaucluse with a strong rural identity, and the Friche, professional theatrical artists who identify with the urban setting of cosmopolitan Marseille. Comparing these groups, Ingram devel…
In the Land of Invented Languages
While it is not a scholarly work, Arika Okrent’s In the Land of Invented Languages recommends itself to linguistic anthropologists on a variety of counts. An intellectual picaresque describing the author’s historical and ethnographic forays into the imaginative worlds of language inventors and their followers, it offers engaging examination of shifting motivations behind the production and promotion of constructed languages (conlangs). It could b…
Magic With a Message
Secrecy
Although expansions of state secrecy and the countervailing leaks of classified documents imbue the anthropology of secrecy with urgent relevance, secrecy has a long-standing status as a paradigmatically anthropological topic. In the ethnographic record, initiatory secrets often stand for the quiddity of culture, and the revelation of concealed realities is an organizing trope in much ethnographic writing. While situating research on secrecy as a…
Anthropology in and of Moocs
The suddenness with which Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, sprang upon us left many within the academy grasping for interpretations. Early proponents touted them as revolutionary tools that could enhance on-campus learning while also making high-quality education accessible to a vast global population, reforming a malfunctioning university system, and producing new kinds of data on how people learn. Critics countered that behind this latest…
There's no rules. It's hackathon.”
How do people negotiate commitments to engaging in joint activity while at the same time anticipating and managing the inherent risks of collaboration? We explore this question through the ethnographic example of a hackathon, a collaborative software‐design competition. We focus specifically on the earliest and, in many ways, most uncertain phase of collaboration, in which commitment and activity simultaneously emerge: team formation. We analyze …
Magic's Reason
Magic, an appreciation
Response to comments on Jones, Graham M. 2017. Magic's reason: An anthropology of analogy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Indigenous illusionism and the global magic system
A spectacular commodification of pure illusion, the modern magic of conjuring’s golden age was also part of a loose assemblage of cultural industries – including colonial anthropology – involved in visualizing ethnic differences in ways that tended to naturalize imperialist models of globalization by denying coevalness to cultural others. Inspired by the work of scholars who emphasize multiple, alternative and indigenous forms of global modernity…
New Magic as an Artification Movement
In recent years, a small but prolific network of French magicians and their allies have taken calculated, systematic, and very public steps to reposition magic as a form of high culture, produced and received according to a set of distinctively artistic criteria, and linked institutionally to the realm of fine arts. They call what they are doing 'new magic' ( la magie nouvelle). This article takes a conversation analytic approach to a verbal disa…
Language, The Internet, and Digital Communication
Following the global proliferation of technologies of digital communication, linguistic anthropologists have investigated the associated signifying practices. Such practices intimately intertwine with sociotechnical systems: devices and programming architecture are designed to support particular communicative practices, and communicative practices are shaped by devices and architecture. Prominent linguistic anthropological approaches to digital c…
“Let’s Go, Baby Forklift!”
This article describes how the Chinese state borrows from the culture of celebrity fandom to implement a novel strategy of governing that we term “fandom governance.” We illustrate how state-run social media employed fandom governance early in the COVID-19 pandemic when the country was convulsed with anxiety. As the state faced a crisis, state social media responded with a propagandistic display of state efficacy, broadcasting a round-the-clock l…
Magic as Repair
By analyzing artist Rose Salane’s photographs of confessions written by tourists who pilfered items from the Pompeii archaeological site, this article explores the power of the material world to act on the human conscience despite the deadening effects of capitalism
Toward cultural interpretability
This article proposes a new integration of linguistic anthropology and machine learning (ML) around convergent interests in both the underpinnings of language and making language technologies more socially responsible. While linguistic anthropology focuses on interpreting the cultural basis for human language use, the ML field of interpretability is concerned with uncovering the patterns that Large Language Models (LLMs) learn from human verbal b…
Toward a phenomenology of mystification
By leveraging machine learning, computer scientists and engineers have developed generative AI models so opaque that experimenting on them is often the only means to study their inner workings. In our ethnographic engagements with such technologists, we have frequently witnessed them contemplate model outputs with rapt mystification. Although accusations that AI technologists deliberately mystify investors, regulators, and consumers are certainly…
Art (11 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Political science (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · History (7 works) · Aesthetics (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Linguistics (5 works) · Literature (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works)