The decolonial turn is on the road to contingency

ABSTRACT

In this short commentary, I reflect on the situated perspective that grounds data colonialism as a critique of the nature of control embedded in contemporary data-driven practices. I argue that data-driven practices represent particular configurations of control and contingency. While the data colonialism thesis is a consequential orienting principle to analyze control, the pursuit of the decolonial turn in critical data and technology studies also requires contending with the contingencies of designing, implementing, and appropriating data-driven practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Data colonialism
• Decoloniality
• Big Data
• Contingency

View addendum:

Data colonialism: compelling and useful, but whither epistemes?

The decolonial turn in data and technology research: what is at stake and where is it heading?

Response

Acknowledgments

I thank Rigoberto Lara Guzmán, Malte Ziewitz, and Rajesh Veeraraghavan for conversations and feedback on this piece. Field research mentioned in this commentary was supported by the NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant #1655753.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Division of Social and Economic Sciences: [Grant Number 1655753].

Notes on contributors

Ranjit Singh

Ranjit Singh is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the AI on the Ground Initiative of Data & Society Research Institute and has a doctorate in Science and Technology Studies from Cornell University. He studies the intersection of data infrastructures, global development, and public policy. He is currently leading a research project on and collaborating on building a research community around mapping the concepts, keywords, and everyday stories centered on data-driven interventions and AI in/from the Global South.