Cardiff University | Prifysgol Caerdydd ORCA
Online Research @ Cardiff 
WelshClear Cookie - decide language by browser settings

Against decolonial reductionism: The impact of Latin American thinking on the data decolonization project

Milan, Stefania and Treré, Emiliano ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2496-4571 2024. Against decolonial reductionism: The impact of Latin American thinking on the data decolonization project. Big Data and Society 11 (4) 10.1177/20539517241270694

[thumbnail of milan-trere-2024-against-decolonial-reductionism-the-impact-of-latin-american-thinking-on-the-data-decolonization.pdf]
Preview
PDF - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

Download (343kB) | Preview

Abstract

This essay argues that Latin American scholarship and movement practice are key to understanding the dynamics of the datafied society and countering its inequities. Examining the sources of inspiration of a frontrunner seeking to decolonize the datafied society – the Big Data from the South Initiative (BigDataSur) – we review Martín-Barbero’s ontological shift from media to mediations, Freire’s methodology centring individual agency and empowerment as a structural task of society, Mignolo’s invite to take decoloniality as a praxis rather than merely an idea, Rodríguez’s first-hand engagement with tech�nology at the margins, Escobar’s autonomous design for the pluriverse, and the critical ecology of eco-social movements. We engage with a new generation of Latin American thinkers who turn their gaze to core problems of today’s systems of knowledge production, be they media or academia. Learning from these scholars, we warn against decolonial reduction�ism, namely the trend to evoke decolonial ideas and theories without fully committing to putting them into practice. We maintain that to decolonize datafication, we ought to also change how we generate knowledge about the datafied society. We outline three practical strategies that foster an open-ended dialogue on alternative approaches to datafication and scientific practice: multilingualism, public scholarship, and mentorship

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Published Online
Status: In Press
Schools: Journalism, Media and Culture
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISSN: 2053-9517
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 2 July 2024
Date of Acceptance: 22 June 2024
Last Modified: 18 Dec 2024 14:27
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/170102

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item Edit Item

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics