Data colonialism: compelling and useful, but whither epistemes?

ABSTRACT

This commentary reviews the strengths of the concept of data colonialism, arguing that it makes a strong and useful contribution to the debates on how to make sense of the myriad effects of datafication. It points out, however, that the key decolonial insight about supposed European objectivity are weakly integrated into the concept: while it gestures to decoloniality, it is primarily about explaining datafication as resource extraction. As a result, the concept has non-decolonial implications as well.

KEYWORDS:

• Data colonialism
• decoloniality
• modernity/coloniality
• postcolonialism
• datafication

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?

This article refers to:

Data colonialism: compelling and useful, but whither epistemes?

Response

The decolonial turn is on the road to contingency

The increasing uptake of postcolonial and decolonial insights across various fields is a positive development because these perspectives significantly enrich our understandings of the profound effects of new technologies. It is in the spirit of encouraging further attempts to take decoloniality seriously that I offer this commentary on Nick Couldry’s and Ulises Mejias’ work on data colonialism. Based on their citations, the authors appear to be primarily drawing on the distinctly South American modernity/coloniality school, which includes Anibal Quijano (cited regularly), Maria Lugones, Walter Mignolo, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, amongst many others. I say this because epistemic decolonisation as a basic notion has multiple geographical origins and centres (see Ngugi wa Thiong’o, S.H. Alatas, Achille Mbembe, Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Gurminder Bhambra, etc.) (Mendoza, 2015; Moosavi, 2020). However, the most systematised set of concepts thus far originate with the modernity/coloniality school – though it is important to keep in mind some of its particularities, especially the explicit rejection of modernity and its solidarity with projects aimed at non-modern ways of knowing and being. In the following, I firstly review the strengths of the concept of data colonialism, arguing that it makes a strong and useful contribution to the debates on how to make sense of the myriad effects of datafication. I secondly argue, however, that the key decolonial insight about supposed European objectivity are weakly integrated into the concept: while it gestures to decoloniality, it is primarily about explaining datafication as resource extraction. As a result, the concept has non-decolonial implications as well.

Compelling revival of colonialism

The key analyses of data colonialism are meaningful, useful, and worthy of critical discussion as we collaboratively make sense of how new technologies shape global developments. Before elaborating the concept, the paper provides a very useful literature review of implicitly or explicitly decolonial studies of datafication that overlap with or neighbour data colonialism. The authors illuminate some important critiques and gaps in existing conceptualisations along the way, and convincingly show the uniqueness of their approach. Evidently, data colonialism enters a rather crowded conceptual field, and so it is a testament to the authors that they are able to carve out a niche at all.

I am convinced of the strengths of data colonialism elaborated by the authors, especially as an explanation for what the frenzied hunt for evermore data by public and private actors actually means (p. 9–10). The concept aims to expose colonialism as a reality, not a metaphor, in the twenty-first century. The authors state that ‘the extraction of value through data represents a new form of resource appropriation on a par with the landgrab (the seizure of land, resources and labour) that kicked off historical colonialism’ (p. 3). While I note that this is not radically different from the concept of neocolonialism, which always anticipates new forms and new stages, I do agree that the interpretation of datafication in this way is very useful and convincing. In a sense, this move is in keeping with postcolonialism because the argument builds on one of its insights, i.e., that capitalism is related to colonialism. The concept is also one of the more elaborate and nuanced combinations of colonialism and capitalism and therefore contributes to conceptual development in this field.

Data colonialism as a concept also allows the authors to issue very important reminders that postcolonialism and decoloniality represent important (re)sources for appreciating the ‘longue durée’ of exploitation and the continuation of particular dynamics (p. 11). They are able to show how the multiple dimensions of colonialism interrelate and convincingly reveal their continuation today, from material to immaterial, in statist and non-statist forms. The use of data colonialism as a lens to make sense of datafication, I believe, will foster very interesting future research on this topic.

Putting epistemic questions front and centre

Nevertheless, I wonder about whether data colonialism goes far enough to prompt a decolonial shift in thinking, assuming again that we are in the realm of Quijano and the modernity/coloniality school. Because the concept is more concerned with datafication as resource extraction, and seems less concerned with the key decolonial insight that Europe convinced itself and others that it has a privileged objective position from which it may make universal assertions and claims. Because the concept primarily resolves questions that are not necessarily decolonial, and combines insights from various modern perspectives such as Marxism, the diverse readers of this concept may learn a variety of lessons as opposed to specifically decolonial ones. I should add that this is not a statement about the value of the concept – it does not have to be decolonial in order to be powerful or meaningful. Decoloniality does not have a monopoly on insightful critique; it is simply ‘an option’ amongst many, as Mignolo puts it. Rather, I wonder whether the concept sufficiently foregrounds fundamental decolonial propositions. My points are elaborated in the following two critiques.

Critique 1. Decoloniality appears more like a motif than the main theme. The earliest definition in the paper informs the reader that ‘the data colonialism thesis foregrounds the continuous extraction of economic value from human life through data. But it is distinctive in repositioning those critiques explicitly within colonialism’s centuries-old relations to capitalism’ (p. 2). Their main guiding question is stated as ‘what if we interpret data and technology today in terms of not just historic, but contemporary, relations between colonialism and capitalism?’ (p. 2–3). The authors say that data colonialism ‘offers a general theory of extraction’ (p. 10). These are all legitimate and important concerns, but they are not core decolonial concerns. In other parts of the paper (p. 4, 7, 8, 9, 16) they sprinkle in ad hoc references to epistemic questions. The result is that, data colonialism shies away from addressing front and centre Quijano’s point about the origins of coloniality, that is, that Europe imagined itself at the objective centre and thereby legitimised conquest and destruction of other ways of knowing and being.

Please note, my point is not that the authors ignore the role of epistemes in decoloniality or fundamentally misunderstand decoloniality, but rather that they insufficiently account for the epistemic move by Europe in the concept even though it is arguably the constitutive feature of decoloniality. The closest they come is the following passage:

The data colonialism thesis foregrounds this continuity with the epistemic violence (Ricaurte, 2019) of earlier colonialism. Here, not just in physical violence, lies the core point exposed by data’s decolonial turn: the self-rationalizing appropriation of resources on a vast scale. (p. 9)

But surely Quijano’s main point was not that there were self-rationalising ideologies for the purpose of resource extraction, but rather that modernity/coloniality is underpinned by Europe’s self-delusion that it occupies an epistemic objectivity and thus may treat all other knowledges and ways of being as expendable peculiarities. And this is arguably the starting point of decoloniality, not resource extraction per se.

There are other symptoms of this problem, for example, the choice of ‘colonialism’ instead of ‘coloniality’ for the name of the concept. It is not clear here what the authors understand by coloniality, how it differs from colonialism, or how it fits into data colonialism: seemingly, colonialism and coloniality lurk somewhere between being interchangeable synonyms and related alternatives (p. 7). But the differences in meaning are crucial for, and in fact constitutive of, decolonial thought in line with Quijano and the modernity/coloniality school. Coloniality is a non-modern, Global South concept whose purpose is to encapsulate the struggles of the colonised against having their ways of knowing, being, and living eradicated. Coloniality is constitutive of modernity i.e., the two exist in a duality (Maldonado-Torres, 2007; Mendoza, 2015). Escaping coloniality (that is, constructing decoloniality) means questioning first and foremost the European zero-point epistemology upon which modernity is founded – a move that is not seemingly the core purpose of data colonialism (see pg. 11 where the authors imply that this is yet to be done) – in order to foster a pluriverse of alternative knowledges.

Colonialism is a modern concept describing an acutely destructive form of governance. Redressing colonialism can take a number of forms, none of which have to be decolonial. For example, historical colonialism came to an end through legal change, leaving intact the coloniality that underpins it, and allowing for coloniality to continue fostering new forms of colonial dynamics such as the one here being called data colonialism. Similarly, I see the possibility of data colonialism – which primarily elaborates dynamics of resource extraction, extractive rationalities, and combines capitalism with colonialism – equating decoloniality with modern concerns about abuse of personal data. Though a valid and important concern, this would still bring us back to standard, modern narratives about online privacy, surveillance, and exploitation, not to the fundamental question of Eurocentric thought. There is thus no reason why a liberal who reads about data colonialism could not resort to narrowly legal means to address it, just as historical colonialism was addressed. Alternatively, it is not clear from the concept itself why the answer to data colonialism could not be data sovereignty, a state-based data decolonisation, instead of the alternative knowledges that the authors call for in the conclusion.

Perhaps, for the authors, colonialism is the higher order term, and coloniality is merely one aspect of the multidimensional effects of colonialism. In the section ‘What’s at Stake in a Decolonial Approach to Data’ (p. 9–12), they wait until the end to characterise decoloniality as ‘lastly’ being concerned with justificatory frameworks of colonialism. This is a small but significant mischaracterisation – in fact, what defines decoloniality is primarily its focus on the original epistemic move by Europe to understand itself as the centre of the world, as possessing the objective, zero-point epistemology from which universal assertions can be made and thus other knowledges and ways of being eradicated. Particularly important for decolonial works is exposing the narrowly racialised, gendered, sexual, and classed position from which this objective neutrality, the ‘arrogant ignorance’ (Icaza & Vasquez, 2018), is asserted. It is this presumption of White, patriarchal, European objectivity, which underpins dynamics of modernity/coloniality, including datafication, that is the core target of decolonial works.

Data colonialism’s main focus, on the other hand, is data extraction and how this subsequently leads to ‘distortions of knowledge through power’ (p. 10) going forward. The heteronormative, patriarchal, White nature of the modern subject, in this case manifested as Big Tech, is side-lined, meaning the concept of data colonialism, even as it exposes self-declared saviours as villains, nevertheless allows them to retain their non-positioned, ‘objective’ facades. Consequently, data colonialism, a self-professed ‘explanatory model’ (p. 3) with which to make ‘causal claim[s]’ (pg. 10), remains partly in keeping with the Western rationality of the modern academy. The implication is that future students of this concept operating from well-meaning modernist stances may run with the theme of resource extraction and appropriate the name decoloniality while leaving untouched the core assertion about the Eurocentric position from which datafication occurs. Data colonialism may therefore open up the possibility of leaving intact the arrogant ignorance. I wonder why the concept is not called data coloniality, which would automatically foreground the epistemic critique of decolonial thought.

Critique 2. Despite offering a wide-ranging review of literature on decoloniality and data, the authors offer no robust, systematic discussion of the original decolonial and postcolonial works that constructed this perspective. The paper makes minimal effort to show its (dis)continuities with their insights, choosing instead to sprinkle in ad hoc references. In particular, the paper and the concept would have benefitted from a discussion of how decoloniality accounts for the role of capitalism, and used such a discussion to justify why data colonialism’s novel combination of capitalism and colonialism is needed. Marxist perspectives privilege economic relations as a separate sphere that drives all else. Decoloniality, on the other hand, sees capitalism as one enmeshed aspect of the colonial matrix of power, which includes race, gender, sexuality, class etc (Mignolo, 2007, 2009). Because the authors do not seemingly address the colonial matrix of power in their concept, these rich and important intersections are simply not inherent to the conceptualisation of data colonialism. They have to be added as an afterthought or response to critique once capitalism has been raised to a co-constitutive force alongside colonialism (p. 7). Relatedly, the treatment of postcolonialism is limited to the statement that ‘colonial and post-colonial studies have long emphasized the importance of interpreting the present in light of the past’ (p. 3). This anaemic characterisation of postcolonialism gives the impression that the argument that colonialism exists in a new form is a novel one and avoids serious discussion with arguments of neocolonialism long made by thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah. For postcolonialism, colonialism is not just a metaphor or interpretive lens, but a living, breathing dynamic today that continues to find new forms.

Conclusion

I celebrate the development of the concept data colonialism, which shows the potential of drawing on postcolonial and decolonial insights, among others, to generate compelling understandings of datafication. Nevertheless, I wonder about the extent to which core decolonial questions motivate the concept. The naming of the concept appears an indication of the ambivalent treatment of decoloniality’s main assertion, i.e., that the modern world is constituted by a belief in the objective stance from which White, patriarchal, heteronormative Europe may make universal assertions and devastate other ways of knowing and being. Or, to put it another way, it is not clear to me how data colonialism is primarily about this assumed epistemic objectivity and derives its analysis from that core insight. Here, I would like to point to the ironic use of the Non-Aligned Movement as a model for a decolonial coalition (p. 13), given the former’s reliance on and defence of modernity (e.g., the modern state) and their lack of attention to epistemic questions. Additionally, the concept is missing more systematic discussion of the rich body of decolonial and postcolonial works that launched this perspective. If the aim is to foster the decolonial turn, then I think putting front and centre the general question of objective and universal knowledge would strengthen data colonialism and make the conclusions about alternative knowledges seem more organic, such that it becomes difficult to read non-decolonial implications into it.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Vineet Thakur and James Shires for helpful comments.

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

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Notes on contributors

Densua Mumford

Densua Mumford is Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs, Leiden University. Her research interests include the international relations and foreign policies of African states, the discursive context of regionalism in the Global South, and decolonial perspectives on world politics [email: [email protected]].