DATACTIVE is proud to announce a talk by Nick Couldry (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Ulises A. Mejias (State University of New York at Oswego) in the framework of the DATACTIVE Speaker Series and in occasion of the Big Data from the South workshop. The talk, entitled “Can Data be Decolonized? Data Relations and the Emerging Social Order of Capitalism”, will take place on December the 4th at 3pm, at the University Library (Potgieterzaal). Below you find the blurb.

Can Data be Decolonized? Data Relations and the Emerging Social Order of Capitalism
A talk by Nick Couldry (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Ulises A. Mejias (State University of New York at Oswego)

This talk (which draws on the author’s forthcoming book from Stanford University Press, The Costs of Connection: How Data is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating it for Capitalism) examines how contemporary practices of data extraction and processing replicate colonial modes of exploitation. Couldry and Mejias present the concept of “data colonialism” as a tool to analyze emerging forms of political control and economic dispossession. To that effect, their analysis engages the disciplines of critical political economy, sociology of media, and postcolonial science and technology studies to trace continuities from colonialism’s historic appropriation of territories and material resources to the datafication of everyday life today. While the modes, intensities, scales and contexts of dispossession have changed, the underlying function remains the same: to acquire resources from which economic value can be extracted. Just as historic colonialism paved the way for industrial capitalism, this phase of colonialism prepares the way for a new economic order. In this context, the authors analyze the ideologies and rationalities through which “data relations” (social relations conducted and organized via data processes) contribute to the capitalization of human life. Their findings hold important implications for how we study the internet, and how we may advocate for the decolonization of data in the future.