By Ulises Mejias

Would it be too far-fetched to call the variety of today’s data collection practices a new form of colonialism, given the violence and historical specificity of European colonialism? In our work, Nick Couldry and I try to make a careful argument that yes, we should call it colonialism. We focus not so much on the form or content of European colonialism, but on the historical function, which was to dispossess. Instead of natural resources or human labor, what this new form of colonialism expropriates is human life, through the medium of digital data. We therefore define “data colonialism” as an emerging order for the appropriation of human life so that data can be continuously extracted from it for profit. This form of extractivism comes with its own forms of rationalization and violence, although the modes, intensities, and scales are different from those we saw during European colonialism.

It should then be possible to decolonize data in the same way we have decolonized history, knowledge, and culture. I can think of at least three initial approaches.

First, by questioning the universalism behind this new form of appropriation. During European colonialism, the colonized were presented with a justification for dispossession that revolved around grand narratives such as Progress, Development, and the Supremacy of European culture and history—indeed about the supremacy of the White race. These narratives were universalizing in that they sought to obliterate any challenges to them (European values were the *only* standards to be recognized). Today, the narratives which justify data extraction are equally universalizing and totalizing. We are told the dispossession of human life through data represents progress, that it is done for the benefit of humanity; that it brings human connection, new knowledge, distributed wealth, etc. Furthermore we are told that even though it is *our* data, we don’t have the knowledge and means to make use of this resource, so we better get out of the way and let the corporations do it for us, as they did during colonialism. The first step to decolonize data is to realize that this is the same ruse the powerful have played on us for 500 years. There is nothing natural, normal, or universally valid about the way human life is becoming a mere factor in capitalist production, and we must reject the new narratives deployed to justify this form of dispossession.

The second way in which data can be decolonized is by reclaiming the very resources that have been stolen from us. In other words, we need to rescue colonized space and time: the space that has become populated by devices that monitor our every move; the time (usually in front of a screen) that we devote to the production of data that is used to generate profit for corporations. Our spaces and times are not empty, passively available for extraction. We need to re-invest them with value, as a way to protect them from appropriation by corporations. Yes, at a basic level this might mean simply opting-out of certain platforms. But I think it goes deeper than that. To decolonize our space and our time means to re-conceptualize our role within capitalism, which extends beyond data relations. It extends to the environment, to the workplace… I am inspired to see that the environmental movement, the labor movement, the social justice movement, the peace movement, and the critical science & technology movement are converging, and are being reconfigured in the process. Yes, huge challenges remain—especially in the face of populist movements like the ones we are seeing around Trump, Balsonaro and Modi—but at least we are developing the awareness that individual and disjointed action (like, say, quitting Facebook) is meaningless if it doesn’t happen in connection with other struggles.

Speaking of which, we have to remain vigilant and sceptical of “solutions” that legitimize the status quo. Recently, the New York Times published a glossy proposal for “saving” the internet by making sure we get paid for the data we generate. Is this a viable solution? Imagine one day you discover hidden cameras have been installed to track your every move, invading your privacy in order to generate profit for a company. Would you be satisfied if, instead of removing the cameras and addressing the injustice, the company promised to pay you to continue to record your life? If you are facing economic hardship, you might accept, but that still wouldn’t make it right. The only thing that would be accomplished would be the continuation—the normalization, in fact—of a massive system of dispossession. To redirect a small portion of the accumulated wealth generated through data extraction to the people who actually generate it while leaving the rest of the system intact is not a return to dignity but the equivalent of putting a seal of approval on a system that has inequality at its core.

The last suggestion for decolonizing data is to learn from other decolonization struggles of the past and the present. It might seem like capitalism and data colonialism are all-encompassing regimes which we are incapable of resisting. But people have always found ways of resisting—whether through physical action or, when that is not possible, through intellectual work. The colonized employ their culture, their history, and even the technologies and languages of the colonizer to resist, to reject. I’m not saying this is as simple as declaring that we are all now as oppressed as native peoples in this new system. If anything, the legacy of colonial oppression continues to exact a heavier cost on vulnerable populations, which continue to be disproportionately discriminated against and abused under the new data colonialism. But I am saying that even privileged subjects can learn some lessons from people who have been resisting colonialism for centuries. More importantly, we need to develop new forms of solidarity that incorporate the fight against the appropriation of human life through data as part of the struggle for a better world.

About Ulises Mejias

Ulises A. Mejias is an associate professor in the Communication Studies department and the director of the Institute for Global Engagement at the State University of New York at Oswego. His research interests include critical internet studies, philosophy and sociology of technology, and political economy of digital media. His most recent book, co-authored with Nick Couldry, is The Costs of Connection: How Data is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating it for Capitalism (2019, Stanford University Press). He is also the author of Off the Network: Disrupting the Online World (2013, University of Minnesota Press), as well as various journal articles. For more info, see ulisesmejias.com.

Silvia Masiero, Loughborough University, s.masiero@lboro.ac.uk

Soumyo Das, International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore, soumyo@iiitb.org

Silvia Masiero (Loughborough University) and Soumyo Das (International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore) examine the gaps between the design of India’s cashless transaction architectures and the reality lived by urban street sellers in Bangalore, problematising the orthodoxy of “inclusive cashlessness” underlying the push to diffusion of such architectures.

As the idea of “digital for development” becomes ingrained in global anti-poverty agendas, cashless economies are increasingly represented as a step towards economic prosperity in developing nations. The term “cashless” refers to financial transactions operated through transfers of digital information rather than physical currency, and extensively indicates economies shifting from cash-based systems to digitally-enabled ones. The point that cashlessness is capable of inducing transparency of currency movements, thereby combating illicit money flows through digitally-induced traceability, is acquiring weight in the making of development schemes at the national and international level. In a recent report, the World Bank links the establishment of cashless systems to financial inclusion, motivating their function as a means to the incorporation of marginalised actors in the formal economy.

Yet against this backdrop, limited empirical evidence so far links cashlessness to the pursuit of financially inclusive policies in developing nations. At a time when the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are openly associated to the adoption and use of digital technologies, it is important to examine perceptions of cashless transactions by actors operating in traditionally cash-based systems, such as the informal economies within which the large majority of the world’s transactions occur. As a result part of our ongoing research focuses on India, where a policy move referred to as demonetisationin November 2016 banned the majority of the nation’s banknotes, replacing these with new ones in an attempt to curb the proliferation of black money. This temporary move preceded the shift, advocated by the national government and multiple private providers, to a cashless system characterised by the diffusion of digital transactions, largely operated through an ecosystem of digital wallet applications.

In a study recently presented at the Development Studies Association (DSA) Conference (Milton Keynes, United Kingdom), we share preliminary findings from an investigation of cashless transactions among street sellers in Bangalore, a large Indian city with consistently high volumes of digital payments. Our research interest was triggered by how, in spite of the “inclusive cashlessness” operations promulgated by the national and state governments, street markets are still dominated by a cash-based system, with few digital transactions occurring in our on-the-ground observations. Bangalore street markets provide an urban setting where connectivity is generally good, and we focused our interviews on street sellers who are owners of smart mobile devices on which digital wallets are built to operate. Moving around three large markets in the city, we became interested in street sellers’ perception of the affordances of cashless transactions for their businesses.

In conversation with us, answering questions on their use (or lack thereof) of digital wallets, multiple sellers voiced primary concerns with the design of such applications. Street vendors – whose living is built through the day-to-day profits of microbusinesses – place high value on immediate notification of transactions, which does happen with cash – but much less with a text-message notification that “may or may not” reach them, generating uncertainty especially at times of the day (or indeed, of the week) when many small transactions occur. Furthermore, digital wallets mean regular visits to financial institutions to withdraw cash-in-hand, which sellers need for daily transactions and is subject to a fee of variable entity. Overarching is, in street sellers’ narratives, the theme of the uncertainty associated to digital transactions: limited awareness of back-end processes occurring from customers’ payments to the reception of money actively discourages the use of digital transaction apps. Cashless systems, well-devised for formal economic transactions, do not seem to be designed to manage the multiple uncertainties that historically characterise Bangalore’s street selling ecosystems.

A second issue lies in the rupture that apps cause in established street-market economic processes. The introduction of cashless architectures breaks a continuity that characterises street-vending ecosystems since the early days: from street sellers we learned that suppliers “will want to be paid cash” rather than accepting any other form of payment. It was, amongst other factors, the well-rootedness of cash-based systems that paralysed entire sectors of the Indian economy during demonetisation, as the sudden discontinuity of cash flows blocked the only way many actors knew to transact. The street sellers we spoke to are frequently visited by representatives of digital wallet companies providing information on their products: yet such systems, rather than building on the long-standing ecosystems of street vending, are designed in rupture with these, effectively dismantling their transactional architecture.

As part of our ongoing study, it is important to seek explanations for the observed gaps between cashless architectures and informal economies. The link between cashlessness and development is articulated by its proponents along two sub-links, one consisting of anti-diversion (combating black money through traceability) and one passing through financial inclusion (building systems that marginalised actors can access). Since the days of demonetisation, the Indian case reveals a focus on anti-diversion, proposing the cash ban (and, subsequently, cashless systems) as a means to securely trace transactions in the economy, easily detecting suspicious ones and preventing them from happening. These systems are characterised by the inbuilt functionality of tracing money flows: in doing so they act as monitoring devices, whose affordances point to sheer tracing of ongoing transactions in the economy.

We are currently seeking to trace the history of diffusion of cashless architectures in India, with particular attention to the balance between private actors (owners of a large majority of digital wallets) and the governmental agencies endorsing them. In mid-2017, the Reserve Bank of India’s report that 99.3% of the currency was back in the system post-demonetisation shed doubts on the effectiveness of this policy move. The functionality of e-wallets as a tracing measure, capable of enacting the inbuilt functionality of finding and preventing illegal transactions, seems to be accompanied by limited evidence of its effectiveness as a means to anti-diversion or, indeed, inclusive policies. In this context, the orthodoxy of “cashlessness for development” equates “development” with transaction tracing, dangerously neglecting the implications of the “tracing” function and its impact on users’ entitlements.

Silvia Masiero is a Lecturer in International Development at the School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University. Her research focuses on the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the field of socio-economic development.

Soumyo Das is affiliated to the Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy. His current research focusses on the social and economic implications of digitalization of retail banking practices for customers in developing states.