https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8430-6223
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ABSTRACT
This article elaborates the concepts of techno-colonialism and sub-netizenship to explore the renewal of colonial processes through the digitalization of “democracy.” Techno-colonialism is conceived as a frame – adopted consciously and unconsciously – that shapes capitalist social relations and people's political participation. Today, this frame appeals to the idealized netizen, a global, free, equal and networked subject that gains full membership to a political community. Meanwhile, sub-netizenship is the novel political subordination because of race, ethnicity, class, gender, language, temporality, and geography within a global matrix that crosses the analogue-digital dimensions of life. This techno-colonialism/sub-netizenship dynamic manifested in the experience of Marichuy as an indigenous independent precandidate for the Mexican presidential elections of 2018. In a highly unequal and diverse country, aspirants required a tablet or smartphone to collect citizen support via a monolinguistic app only accessible to Google or Facebook users. Our analysis reveals how some individuals are excluded and disenfranchised by digital innovation but still resist a legal system that seeks to homogenize them and render them into legible and marketable data.
Acknowledgements
We thank John Holloway for his insightful comments to this article. We are also grateful to the members of the Tequila Seminar for their valuable feedback on a previous version. Finally, we wish to express our gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
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Additional information
Notes on contributors
Inés Durán Matute
Inés Durán Matute is a postdoctoral research fellow at the International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-strategies of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (Germany), and the Graduate School of Sociology, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (Mexico). She is also a member of the National System of Researchers (Mexico). Her research interests lie at the intersection of race/ethnicity, colonialism, development, political economy, and social change. She is the author of the book Indigenous Peoples and the Geographies of Power. Mezcala's Narratives of Neoliberal Governance (Routledge, 2018), and articles such as “Indigeneity as a Transnational Battlefield: Disputes over Meanings, Spaces, and Peoples” (Globalizations, 2020).
Rodrigo Camarena González
Rodrigo Camarena González is an assistant professor at the Department of Law in the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México and member of the National System of Researchers. He has published articles in international journals such as Estudios Constitucionales, Boletin Mexicano de Derecho Comparado, Transnational Legal Theory, and World Trade Review. His research focuses on the rights of indigenous peoples, the theory of judicial precedent, and the glocalization of the law.