Table Of ContentDATA POLITICS
Data has become a social and political issue because of its capacity to reconfigure
relationships between states, subjects, and citizens. This book explores how data
has acquired such an important capacity and examines how critical interventions in
its uses in both theory and practice are possible.
Data and politics are now inseparable: data is not only shaping our social
relations, preferences, and life chances but our very democracies. Expert inter-
national contributors consider political questions about data and the ways it
provokes subjects to govern themselves by making rights claims. Concerned with
the things (infrastructures of servers, devices, and cables) and language (code,
programming, and algorithms) that make up cyberspace, this book demonstrates
that without understanding these conditions of possibility it is impossible to
intervene in or to shape data politics.
Aimed at academics and postgraduate students interested in political aspects of
data, this volume will also be of interest to experts in the fields of internet studies,
international studies, Big Data, digital social sciences, and humanities.
Didier Bigo is Professor of War Studies at King’s College London and Research
Professor at Sciences-Po, CERI Paris.
Engin Isin is Professor in International Politics at Queen Mary University of
London, UK and University of London Institute in Paris (ULIP).
Evelyn Ruppert is Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Routledge Studies in International Political Sociology
Series Editors:
Tugba Basaran, University of Kent, UK, Didier Bigo, King’s College
London, UK, Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet, University of Manchester, UK,
Jef Huysmans, Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Routledge Studies in International Political Sociology aims to provide a forum for out-
standing empirical and theoretical research engaging with the interplays between
the international, the political and the social. This timely book series draws
upon significant theoretical and empirical challenges within the growing critical
approach of international political sociology. It seeks to address, to encourage and
to conceptualise the knowledge and understanding of transversal issues at stake
when exploring the different components of the heterogeneous worlds hidden
behind International Relations.
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Studies-in-International-Political-Sociology/book-series/IPS
Perspectives From International Political Sociology
Transversal Lines in International Relations
Edited by Tugba Basaran, Didier Bigo, Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet & RBJ Walker
Data Politics
Worlds, Subjects, Rights
Edited by Didier Bigo, Engin Isin and Evelyn Ruppert
DATA POLITICS
Worlds, Subjects, Rights
Edited by Didier Bigo, Engin Isin, and
Evelyn Ruppert
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2019 selection and editorial matter, Didier Bigo, Engin Isin, and Evelyn
Ruppert; individual chapters, the contributors.
The right of Didier Bigo, Engin Isin, and Evelyn Ruppert to be identified
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com,
has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non
Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bigo, Didier, editor. | Isin, Engin F. (Engin Fahri), 1959- editor. |
Ruppert, Evelyn Sharon, 1959- editor.
Title: Data politics : worlds, subjects, rights / edited by Didier Bigo, Engin
Isin and Evelyn Ruppert.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. |
Series: Routledge studies in international political sociology |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018054225| ISBN 9781138053250 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781138053267 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781315167305 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Big data—Political aspects. | Big data—Social aspects.
Classification: LCC QA76.9.B45 D385 2019 | DDC 005.7—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018054225
ISBN: 9781138053250 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781138053267 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781315167305 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
CONTENTS
List of illustrations vii
List of contributors viii
Acknowledgements x
1 Data politics 1
Didier Bigo, Engin Isin, and Evelyn Ruppert
PART I
Conditions of possibility of data politics 19
2 Knowledge infrastructures under siege: climate data as
memory, truce, and target 21
Paul N. Edwards
3 Against infrasomatization: towards a critical theory
of algorithms 43
David M. Berry
4 Surveillance capitalism, surveillance culture and data politics 64
David Lyon
PART II
Worlds 79
5 Mutual entanglement and complex sovereignty in cyberspace 81
Ronald J. Deibert and Louis W. Pauly
vi Contents
6 Digital data and the transnational intelligence space 100
Didier Bigo and Laurent Bonelli
7 From fake to junk news: the data politics of online virality 123
Tommaso Venturini
8 Seeing like Big Tech: security assemblages, technology,
and the future of state bureaucracy 145
Félix Tréguer
PART III
Subjects 165
9 Towards data justice: bridging anti-surveillance and
social justice activism 167
Lina Dencik, Arne Hintz and Jonathan Cable
10 Theses on automation and labour 187
Brett Neilson and Ned Rossiter
11 Data’s empire: postcolonial data politics 207
Engin Isin and Evelyn Ruppert
PART IV
Rights 229
12 The right to data oblivion 231
Giovanni Ziccardi
13 Data citizens: how to reinvent rights 248
Jennifer Gabrys
14 Data rights: claiming privacy rights through international
institutions 267
Elspeth Guild
Index 285
ILLUSTRATIONS
Figures
2.1 Northern Hemisphere Average Temperatures 29
2.2 BEST Annual Land-Surface Temperature Analysis 33
3.1 Soylent: a word processor with a crowd inside
(Bernstein et al 2015) 53
3.2 “Find-Fix-Verify” (Bernstein et al 2010, 58) 55
3.3 Shortn algorithm: even though it claims use of a “wizard”
it nonetheless informs the user of the current cost
and number of workers currently working 56
6.1 Most Contributing Variables on Axes 1 and 2 of the MCA 113
6.2 The Space of Institutional Positions 114
Table
9.1 List of Interviews 174
Textbox
6.1 Methodological Details 111
CONTRIBUTORS
The editors
Didier Bigo is Professor of War Studies at King’s College London and Research
Professor at Sciences-Po, CERI Paris. He is editor of the quarterly journal, Cultures
& Conflicts, and was the founder and co-editor of the journal, International Political
Sociology, published by the International Studies Association. His work concerns
sociology of surveillance, policing, and borders. He co-edited Transversal Lines
(with Tugba Basaran, Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet and R. B. J. Walker, 2016) as part
of the Routledge Studies in International Political Sociology.
Engin Isin is Professor in International Politics at Queen Mary University of
London and University of London Institute in Paris (ULIP). Isin’s work concerns
politics of the changing figure of the citizen as a political subject. He has authored
Cities Without Citizens (1992), Citizenship and Identity (with Patricia Wood, 1999),
Being Political (2002), Citizens Without Frontiers (2012), and Being Digital Citizens
(with Evelyn Ruppert, 2015). He has edited Acts of Citizenship (2008) with Greg
Nielsen, Enacting European Citizenship (2013) with Michael Saward and Routledge
Handbook of Global Citizenship Studies (2014) with Peter Nyers. His latest book is
Citizenship after Orientalism: Transforming Political Theory (2015).
Evelyn Ruppert is Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London.
She studies how digital technologies and the data they generate can powerfully
shape and have consequences for how people are known and governed and how
they understand themselves as political subjects, that is, citizens with rights to data.
Evelyn is PI of an ERC funded project, Peopling Europe: How data make a people
(ARITHMUS; 2014–19). She is Founding and Editor-in-Chief of the SAGE open
access journal, Big Data & Society. Recent books are Being Digital Citizens (with
Engin Isin, 2015) and Modes of Knowing (with John Law, 2016).
Contributors ix
The contributors
David M. Berry, Professor of Digital Humanities, University of Sussex; Visiting
Fellow, School of Advanced Studies, University of London; and Associate Member,
Faculty of History, University of Oxford.
Laurent Bonelli, Associate Professor, Political Science, University of Paris-
Nanterre.
Jonathan Cable, Lecturer, School of Media, University of Gloucestershire.
Ronald J. Deibert, Professor, Political Science and Director, Citizen Lab, Munk
School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto.
Lina Dencik, Reader, School of Journalism, Media and Culture, Cardiff
University.
Paul N. Edwards, William J. Perry Fellow in International Security, Center for
International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, and Professor of
Information and History (Emeritus), University of Michigan.
Jennifer Gabrys, Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge.
Elspeth Guild, Jean Monnet Professor ad personam Queen Mary University of
London and Radboud University Nijmegen.
Arne Hintz, Senior Lecturer, School of Journalism, Media and Culture, Cardiff
University.
David Lyon, Director, Surveillance Studies Centre, Professor of Sociology and
Professor of Law, Queen’s University.
Brett Neilson, Professor, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney
University.
Louis W. Pauly, J. Stefan Dupré Distinguished Professor of Political Economy,
Department of Political Science and Munk School of Global Affairs and Public
Policy, University of Toronto.
Ned Rossiter, Professor of Communication, Institute for Culture and Society and
the School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University.
Félix Tréguer, Postdoctoral Researcher, Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique (CNRS).
Tommaso Venturini, Advanced Research Fellow, French Institute for Research
in Computer Science and Automation (INRIA).
Giovanni Ziccardi, Legal Informatics Chair and Director of the Information
Society Law Centre (ISLC), Faculty of Law, University of Milan.
