Tactics of Earthy Data

Decolonising for the Anthropocene

Authors

  • diane U+16DE Lecturer at a university in south-west England

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26116/techreg.2024.006

Keywords:

decolonisation, decolonization, data governance, Anthropocene, Land Back, race, racial form, analytics of race, Digital earth, data production, Place-Thought Framework, Indigenous theories of knowledge

Abstract

This article presents that decolonizing cannot happen without acknowledging the role of land relations in constituting data and radically reconstituting what we are governing when we claim to govern ‘data.’ To this end, it reflects upon how the juxtaposition of the ‘data colonialism’ and the ‘Anthropocene’ discourses can be productive by highlighting their common settler colonial impulses in understanding the categories of the ‘material’ and the ‘epistemological’ as distinctive. Next, the article draws upon the Place-Thought framework proposed by Anishinaabe-Haudenosaunee scholar Vanessa Watts and others to argue that in addition to being a demand for giving land titles to Indigenous peoples, #LandBack movements should be understood as a decolonizing call for realizing the seamless coherence of the material-epistemological, both outside and within Europe. The last section proposes earthy data as decolonizing tactics against the settler understandings of data.

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TechReg special issue on Data, Law and Decolonisation front cover: Tactics of Erthy Data

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Published

18-03-2024 — Updated on 22-03-2024

Versions

Issue

Section

Special Issue: Data, Law and Decolonisation

How to Cite

U+16DE, diane. (2024). Tactics of Earthy Data: Decolonising for the Anthropocene. Technology and Regulation, 2024, 47-62. https://doi.org/10.26116/techreg.2024.006 (Original work published 2024)