Stanford University Press Blog

The Nuances of Data Colonialism

A Q&A with Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias

NICK COULDRY and ULISES A. MEJIAS

Free for commercial use. Via Pixabay

 

Earlier this month, Stanford University Press hosted an online discussion between Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias, authors of the recently released The Costs of Connection », and Safiya Umoja Noble, author of the bestselling Algorithms of Oppression. The Costs of Connection uncovers "data colonialism," and its designs for controlling our lives—our ways of knowing; our means of production; our political participation. Because attendees of the talk posed far more questions than could be answered in a short amount of time, we invited Nick and Ulises to continue the conversation here.

 

What do you think are the key/most concerning issues in the age of data colonisation and why?

At the core there are two issues. First, the capture of what in our book we call ‘the space of the subject,’ the basic protection from interference and monitoring that is essential to our integrity as individual selves. This affects all possible selves, even if detailed effects are, as we just said, deeply unequal. But then, second, there is data colonialism’s way of deepening and obscuring how inequality gets reproduced through automated algorithmic processing — the implications of this for social life in every country in the next decades will also be severe, all the more so, because much of that will be easy to hide from view.

 

Data colonialism might be free of violence, but only of the once applied in the former colonial times. I believe it is just a different time of physical violence, which is even more profitable. Digital platforms are clearly damaging brains, propelling sedentarism as well as social isolation. It is also pulling people into debt by promoting consumption in each website which in an more extreme way is pulling people into poverty, which in the long run shortens life expectation. Do you agree?

Absolutely. As we said in the webinar, the question of violence is complex. It would be wrong to even hint that the situation with data colonialism involves anything like the brutal and sustained physical violence that was at the core of historic colonialism. But for sure data colonialism is introducing a social order that relies on a lot of force and pressure. So if you are in a low-paid job, you won’t have the chance to negotiate whether or not you put on your phone the app that tells you where your next assignment is, even if it takes your data. When these sorts of pressures are overlaid with others (about debt, housing etc), then the net effect may well be physically violent. And then there’s the effect on people’s brains of their continued exposure to digital devices and the intense pressures this can bring, as noted in our last answer. Finally, there is the symbolic violence that lies at the core of how data colonialism categorises and orders everyday life. All of this is important to our reading of data colonialism, and justifies the statement, as you say, this is a time of a different type of violence, even if the apparent difference from the immediate brutality of historic colonialism must always be recognized.

Is He a Sociopath?

Why the principal question we ask about Bernie Madoff is wrong.

COLLEEN EREN

Bernard Madoff, painted portrait by Thierry Ehrmann. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

In light of Bernie Madoff's recent request for compassionate release we are republishing this entry from 2017.

In May, HBO’s The Wizard of Lies brought in the largest premiere audience that the network has seen in four years. The film, an adaptation of Diana Henriques’ journalistic account of Bernie Madoff’s multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme, saw, 2.4 million viewers, the weekend of its release—a sizable audience, especially considering that actors Richard Dreyfuss and Blythe Danner headlined Madoff, a four-hour ABC miniseries on the same subject, only a year prior. Perhaps as a way to seize upon the renewed interest generated by the film, which cast Robert De Niro in the lead role as Bernie and Michelle Pfeiffer as Ruth Madoff, the New York Post ran a lengthy article, “The sad new life of exiled Ruth Madoff,” with paparazzi-style photos of Ruth, her preferred bagel shop, dry cleaners, local clothing shop, and other quotidian details about a no-longer-privileged existence. The UK’s Daily Mail published a similar story with photos of the “recluse” Ruth emerging from a local CVS. With a distinct note of schadenfreude, the piece indicated just how far down the social ladder she had fallen. With the ten-year anniversary of Bernie’s arrest approaching, public appetite for this story and curiosity about its principal characters remains robust.

Whether or not Madoff fits the criteria of a sociopath (or a psychopath) has produced numerous conjectures.

The Changing Face of IRBS

Understanding the world of institutional review boards.

SARAH BABB

Free for commercial use. Via Pixabay.

 

Stanford University Press is proud to present a Q&A with Regulating Human Research» author Sarah Babb

What made you want to write about the history and the evolving role of IRBs?

I was the Graduate Director in the Boston College sociology department.  Sometime around 2006, I began hearing from many students encountering problems “getting through IRB.” In an attempt to tackle this problem, I volunteered to serve on our IRB at Boston College.  There I discovered that federal regulations were a great deal more flexible than our local Boston College IRB policies--for example, federal rules could allow most social research to be carried out without informed consent forms.  As a faculty board member, I tried to get the BC IRB to adopt more flexible policies, but was unsuccessful.

I suppose you could say that this project was born out of my frustration with that experience.  But once I started learning more about the IRB world, I began to see that there was something much bigger going on, and that this bigger thing was also happening in other areas of American regulation.  So my book attempts to capture this.

What was the research process like?

As a qualitative researcher, I tried as much as I could to immerse myself in the IRB world.  I became an avid reader of a trade journal for IRB administrators.  This helped me understand the issues (which are surprisingly complex), and also gave me the names of contacts to start interviewing.  It also allowed me to ask better, more targeted questions, and to connect more effectively with my informants (I ended up talking to about 50 of them).  I also started attending the annual meeting of the IRB professionals’ association.  This immersion made me sympathize with the dilemmas of these professionals, and I have tried to bring this out in the book. 

As I carried out my research, I added my trade journal articles, interview transcripts, and other sources into a file in the qualitative data analysis program Atlas.ti, and coded them for themes.  This process allowed me to be guided by what my data were telling me, and brought me to my final research question and arguments.

For scholars of regulation, I think the book speaks to the weirdness of the way we regulate in the United States. Instead of having strong federal bureaucracy, our system spins off thousands of locally financed compliance bureaucracies.

What Killed the ‘Civic Culture’?

How Americans shifted from civic optimism to political polarization.

DAVID H. KAMENS

Ballot Box circa 1870. Photography by the National Museum of American History - From the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution in the Vote: The Machinery of Democracy exhibit. Public Domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

 

In 1963 the seminal political scientists Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba coined the term “civic culture” to describe the exceptional nature of American democracy. Compared to Western Europe, American democracy had features that were unusual. The following were essential features of this political culture: citizen optimism, confidence in government, generalized trust of other citizens, consensus between the parties on the policies of post war reconstruction of Europe, and civil discourse between political combatants. American citizens also exhibited different behavior: they were more engaged in their communities via volunteer activities, they exhibited less suspicion of others’ motives, and they were more involved in political discourse within their families and in the community. Women were also more engaged in familial political discussions. Voting rates were higher and “we’re all in it together” was a common sentiment.

In today’s U.S. political system polarization, distrust, lack of confidence in major institutions, and contentiousness have taken hold. Robert Putnam¹ described this phenomenon as “Bowling Alone,” a narrative in which citizens withdraw from communities into the private life of family and work. Earlier Morris Janowitz (1978; 1983) had pointed to declining civic consciousness, symbolized by the rejection of the ‘citizen-soldier’ model of citizenship, as a major social change. The decision to end the draft in 1973 and turn to an all-volunteer army signaled the death of this concept. In this view citizen rights then became a more compelling issue than citizen responsibilities. In both explanations the result is declining civic consciousness and patriotism.

Seymour Lipset² in 1996 offered an alternative to these perspectives. He focused on the return to normalcy that post- war policies and the reconstruction of Europe produced in the U.S. The result was a resurgence of classic American cultural narratives. American individualism revived from its slumbers in the ‘50s when elites emphasized collective action and social mobilization to combat Russian aggression; to reconstruct Europe; and to avoid nuclear annihilation. A more activist model of citizenship emerged. A revival of populism energized Americans, particularly younger generations, which gave rise to the turbulent ‘60s.

The Cycle of American Policy Reform

For Americans with disabilities home care is a right.

DAVID PETTINICCHIO

September 1997–  President Clinton, Vice President Gore, Chris Jennings and others participate in a Disability Community Outreach group meeting. Public Domain. Via the National Archives Catalog.

 

Democratic presidential candidate, Pete Buttigieg, recently unveiled a plan about how Americans with disabilities will fit into his “Medicare for all who want it.” This is a big deal. While healthcare reform is on everyone’s mind, candidates have been silent about how their plans will specifically address long-term community-based care for non-elderly people with disabilities. Millions of Americans currently depend on Medicaid funds in order to realize their civil right to live free from confining and isolating residential facilities.

Medicaid (not Medicare) is the largest payer of in-home care in the US but that doesn’t mean people with disabilities are entitled to it. As a result, cuts to Medicaid almost always lead to cuts to optional community-based care, not nursing home care which states are legally required to provide. 

Millions of Americans currently depend on Medicaid funds in order to realize their civil right to live free from confining and isolating residential facilities.

For years following the early 1980’s implementation of a waiver system meant to channel money from nursing homes to home care, both Democrats and Republicans recognized this institutional problem.  Despite numerous (often bipartisan) attempts to reform the bias favoring nursing home care, little real change has come about.  

The 1990s began with a great deal of promise as the ADA was supposed to clarify and extend disability rights, although it wasn’t immediately clear how the ADA alone could limit needless institutionalization without actual reforms to Social Security and Medicaid. Bill Clinton’s focus on healthcare reform signalled new political opportunities to legislators and activists. By then, growing inpatient and disillusioned with the political process, activists took to the streets demanding that long-term community-based care be part of the healthcare reform conversation – an eerily familiar cry as the disability community today is left wondering where they fit into proposed Democratic plans.

Feminist Revival and the Year of the Woman

Lynn Chancer, author of After the Rise and Stall of American Feminism, on American feminism and moving the gender revolution forward

LYNN S. CHANCER

March 9, 2017-  Congresswomen Nancy Pelosi  and House Democratic Women Representative colleagues  wear white in honor of women's suffrage. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Feminist consciousness has grown so rapidly in the last decade that it is hard to keep up with the fast pace of unfolding developments in popular culture, academic writing, law and feminist-influenced blogging. More and more people are willing to embrace the term ‘feminism’ as representative of a multi-faceted and multi-dimensional movement. Feminism is experiencing a cultural renaissance even amidst concurrent backlash. In terms of progress, perhaps no example is clearer than what happened in American politics before and immediately following the mid-term elections of November 2018, when a record number of women were elected to the now Democratically- controlled US House of Representatives. Media coverage of their January 2019 swearing in referred to the ‘year of the woman¹,’ and projected a new era of greater participation and gender-related political consciousness as dawning.

            In some ways, new energies have indeed been activated. Perhaps never before has the desire for an American President who is a woman been stronger: hopes for this historical ‘first’ were raised but not fulfilled by Hillary Clinton, who won the popular vote though not the Electoral College.   Eagerness for women to enter politics has also been catalyzed by a sense of threat that hovers, somewhat ominously, over the security of feminist gains made over the last half century since the second wave. There is good reason to fear that reproductive options encompassing abortion rights could be turned back if President Donald Trump is able to appoint more conservative justices to the Supreme Court who are committed to overturning 1973’s iconic Roe v. Wade.  

Raising Global Families across the Pacific

Parenting anxieties abound for Asian immigrants at the intersection of cultural transformation and persistent inequality.

by PEI-CHIA LAN

Photo by Jerry Lin.

Immigrant parents embrace the American dream that their children can achieve a brighter future in the promised land. Asian immigrants, however, feel increasingly anxious about the fierce competition of college admission shadowed by the dubious existence of “Asian quota.” Recently, a dozen rejected Asian American applicants sued Harvard for discrimination against Asian Americans by penalizing their higher achievement as a group. According to court documents, Harvard consistently rated Asian applicants lower than other races on traits like likability and kindness. The debates around the lawsuit reveal widely shared stereotypes that associate Asian families with tiger parenting and exam-obsessed culture.

My new book, Raising Global Families: Parenting, Immigration, and Class in Taiwan and the US, dispels the myth of tiger mom by revealing divergent childrearing practices among ethnic Chinese families across the social class spectrum and geographic locations. I interviewed over a hundred parents in Taiwan and the US, including middle-class and working-class Taiwanese, and middle-class and working-class Chinese immigrants in the Boston Area. This unique research illuminates that ethnic culture is neither static nor uniform but rather is constantly shifting across borders. Each group of parents faced context-specific predicaments and employed class-specific strategies to cope with uncertainties and insecurities in the changing society and globalized world.

Immigrants Make America Great

Immigrants and native-born citizens equally benefit or suffer from a nation's policies.

By ERNESTO CASTAÑEDA

Photo by Ernesto Castañeda

In another instance of anti-immigrant rhetoric, John Kelly, President Trump’s chief of staff, stated that while not all immigrants are criminals, many immigrants have a hard time assimilating into American society:

[T]he vast majority of the people that move illegally into the United States are not bad people. They're not criminals. They're not MS-13. ... But they're also not people that would easily assimilate into the United States, into our modern society. They're overwhelmingly rural people. In the countries they come from, fourth-, fifth-, sixth-grade educations are kind of the norm. They don't speak English; obviously that's a big thing. ... They don't integrate well; they don't have skills. They're not bad people. They're coming here for a reason. And I sympathize with the reason. But the laws are the laws. ... The big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States, and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long (NPR, May 10, 2018).

These types of statements have been commonplace since the 1990’s anti-immigrant ideological campaigns and policies such as California’s Proposition 187, barring undocumented immigrants from receiving social services and rights. There are also historical precedents for these types of arguments being directed to German, Swedish, Jewish, Irish, and Italian immigrants. Today as well as in the past, these arguments are less about facts and more about xenophobia and racial superiority complexes.

Caught in the Political Churn

DACA beneficiaries stand on unstable ground as March 5th deadline passes without action.

by ALEXIS M. SILVER

Demonstrators protest the recission of DACA in Los Angeles, September 5th, 2017. Photo by Molly Adams. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

On September 5th, 2017, the Trump administration announced the rescission of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and set a date of March 5th, 2018 to begin phasing out the program. DACA, implemented under President Obama as an action of prosecutorial discretion in 2012, offers protection from deportation and work permits to approximately 700,000 young immigrants, often referred to as the DREAMers, who were brought to the United States as children. No new applicants were accepted after the September 5th announcement, and beneficiaries began to lose their protections as Congress failed to reach a bipartisan agreement offering a legislative replacement for DACA. However, in January and February of 2018, two separate federal courts in San Francisco and Brooklyn blocked the termination of the program, allowing beneficiaries to renew their protected status under DACA.

Despite widespread public support for DACA beneficiaries across the political spectrum, a legislative fix seems unlikely in the immediate future.

The protections provided by the court decisions offer beneficiaries some breathing room, but they are hardly a long-term solution. When the Supreme Court declined the Trump administration's request to take up the case directly from the lower courts, it ensured that the March 5th expiration date would not mark the definitive end of the policy, but it also foreshadowed a continuing battle over the ultimate fate of DACA. In the meantime, beneficiaries remain in a state of uncertainty as to what their futures may hold: a career and a sense of membership or civic disenfranchisement and the threat of deportation. Depending on where they reside, moreover, beneficiaries already have access to dramatically different opportunities.

The Genome Under the Microscope

Social genomics holds great promise but may run the risk of naturalizing human difference.

by CATHERINE BLISS

Photo from the University of Michigan's DNA lab. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

Since the mapping of the genome in 2000, scientists have sought to uncover what makes us tick by putting our genes under the microscope. Trait after trait has been subjected to genomic testing, and the fruits of that research have been splashed across headlines: “‘Gangsta Gene’ Identified in US Teens,” trumpeted one article in the New Scientist; “Happiness is in your DNA,” heralded The Economist. This avalanche of research has emerged from a new form of science, what I call “sociogenomics,” which melds genetic and social science approaches to understand the gene-environment interactions that make up various phenomena in our lives. Sociogenomics is practiced by lots of different scientists, geneticists, sociologists, economists, and behaviorists, but a new field that is driving its innovation is that of social genomics.

An avalanche of research has emerged from a new form of science, what I call “sociogenomics,” which melds genetic and social science approaches.

Social genomics focuses on social behavior and outcomes, things like making it through school and going to the polls to vote. Social genomics is not just interdisciplinary. It is transdisciplinary. It goes beyond adding natural and social science methods to blending them and coming up with new ones. It holds great potential for transforming science in important ways, because it has the power to pull together the best practices of all its disciplinary home bases. As the old adage goes, it is greater than the sum of its parts.

Taxing the Artist

What implications does the new GOP tax bill have for working artists?

by ALISON GERBER 

Photo by Mark Burnett. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. 

Today an opaque and as yet mostly unread GOP tax bill is hurtling towards the President’s desk. The media have mostly avoided a close look at the collective effects of the tax bill—the near-inevitable cuts to public services and national infrastructure that will affect all of us—and instead my feeds have been dripping for days with straightforward “ways to make the new tax bill work for you,” including a cynical guide to “hacking the tax plan” that promises to help you learn “ways to profit off the Republican tax bill.” A number of these pieces give the reader helpful hints on ways to turn themselves into business entities, as though setting up an LLC is something like getting a new set of business cards printed—do I go with a friendly diminutive like “Allie”, or the more formal “Alison”?—rather than a meaningful legal commitment with significant costs and responsibilities.

At the moment, it looks like artists’ abilities to end next year in the black will be tied up with one provision in particular: standardized deductions will double, but those who don’t file a Schedule C or set up a pass-through entity will lose the ability to deduct work-related expenses, a change that could hit performing artists especially hard. Musicians, dancers, and actors with steady gigs are often categorized as employees and receive W-2s; now it seems they’ll no longer be able to itemize and deduct expenses related to getting and doing those jobs, though most artists spend a significant proportion of their incomes on the costs of doing business (think: transportation costs; headshots; agents’ commissions; a dancer’s weekly supply of pointe shoes; that $19,000 tuba at the back of the orchestra and the extra $1,000 for the wheeled case its player needs to get it to work). Well, you might ask, why not just file a Schedule C? It’s not that easy, though.

It looks like artists’ abilities to end next year in the black will be tied up with one provision in particular: some artists may lose the ability to deduct work-related expenses.

 

The Stories We Tell

Depictions of Latinx experiences in the US grapple with upward mobility and linked fate.

by ELDA MARÍA ROMÁN

CC0 via Pixabay.

As morality tales, stories about upward mobility disseminate values and offer critiques of our socioeconomic hierarchies. Films about organized crime and the finance industry like The Godfather II and Wall Street convey that you might rise financially, but you can descend ethically. In contrast, a film like The Pursuit of Happyness, with its honest protagonist who leaves behind homelessness through perseverance and education, emphasizes that moral strength leads to success. Meanwhile, Cinderella, Pretty Woman, and Maid in Manhattan suggest that love can transcend class divisions and anyone can rise up through a generous partner or marriage.

Yet stock stories about upward mobility vary depending on genre and method of distribution, as well as on race and ethnicity. Even when they’re about individuals, narratives involving Latinx and African Americans often engage with the economic barriers that particularly affect these groups—barriers like not having the level of intergenerational wealth and resources that white families have (which determine schooling, residential, and employment options) and also criminalizing discourses that impact rates of incarceration and deportation. Despite differences in class and ideology within ethnic groups, ethnic upward mobility narratives try to impart a sense of collective identity for social action. How do they do so?

Stock stories about upward mobility vary depending on genre and method of distribution, as well as on race and ethnicity.

The Patriotism of the Poor

Americans who have the least nevertheless tend to love their country the most.

by FRANCESCO DUINA

CC0 via Pixabay.

America’s poor have plenty of reasons not to love their country. By most measures, they face bleak prospects and their government offers them the least support of any other advanced country on earth. Their chances of upward mobility are slim, the gap between their earnings and those of richer Americans continues to grow, and they work exceedingly long hours for very little. They have access to very limited social services and support.

It would be very reasonable for Americans to not love their country—to be resentful, rise up, and demand changes to the social contract of the country. Instead, America’s poor embrace and idealize their country.

Their patriotism runs deep and exceeds in many cases that of the poor in other advanced countries and that of richer Americans. It not only entails a love of country but a belief in its superiority and greatness. America, they feel, is a better nation than most.

The patriotism of poor Americans runs deep and exceeds in many cases that of the poor in other advanced countries and that of richer Americans.

This is a deeply felt and resilient sort of appreciation: while the patriotism of many richer Americans has waned since the 2008-2009 financial crisis, for instance, that of poorer Americans has remained steady and, by some measures, even increased.

Where Are You From?

How place determines race for racially in-between immigrants.

by NEDA MAGHBOULEH

Immigrants to the United States waiting for medical examination, circa 1912. Public domain via Wikipedia.

July 4, 2002, was a particularly humid Independence Day in Boston. It was the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college. I had stayed on campus to work, and for the first time my family had come to visit me in New England. That year, we found ourselves among the thousands of revelers who descended in undulating waves down to the banks of the Charles River to see the fireworks. My mom and little sister scrambled onto the first available patch of grass while I unrolled a blanket I had snatched off my twin-size dorm room bed hours earlier. My aunt unpacked almonds, cantaloupe, and soda from a plastic shopping bag; my dad, ambling slowly, as he does, brought up the rear.

As we fanned ourselves on the blanket, my parents discussed how twenty years earlier to the day they had boarded a Fourth of July flight to Portland, Oregon, with me, at nine months old, in tow. We were striking out on our own, away from New York City, where I was born and where, as new immigrants from Iran, my parents worked in a Persian rug store owned by my dad’s extended family.

For a long time, where an immigrant was “from” defined his or her ability to become an American.

That morning in Boston I was the last to notice the white woman on the next blanket over who was staring at us in disgust. She stared at my dad in particular, who in a bit of confusion politely smiled back at her between his bites of cantaloupe. She whispered something in her companion’s ear; they rolled up their blanket and left, flip-flop sandals smacking up and down against the ground. We didn’t see or think about the women for a few minutes until two men in sunglasses and cargo shorts began to walk in wide circles around our blanket. “Oh my God,” my mom whispered to me in Persian. “The cops are watching us.” The July humidity was already intense, but it began to feel suffocating. Within seconds, a uniformed police officer and his K-9 approached us.

The Legal Limbo of DACA

Only Congress can provide relief for undocumented immigrants—it is time for them to act.

by LEO R. CHAVEZ

Protest near Trump Tower after the announcement of the administration's palns to repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. September 5, 2017. Photo by Harrie van Veen. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

Attorney General Jeff Session’s announcement that the Trump administration is ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program came as no real surprise. This is what Donald Trump promised to do if elected president. But let’s be honest. The DACA program was always a stopgap measure instituted by President Obama because of Congress’s failure to fix our broken immigration system. For years, Congress batted around the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which would have provided immigrants who came as children a path to citizenship.

The Latino Threat » investigates the stories about recent immigrants to show how prejudices are used to malign an entire population.

When President Obama introduced the idea of DACA, I welcomed the action but noted that it was not a panacea, just another form of legal limbo. As I wrote in my book The Latino Threat: “As a temporary stopgap measure, this new policy does not provide permanent relief from deportation (and those who come forward will be giving the government information on their whereabouts).” I also noted that a new president, one hostile to immigration, could end DACA. This has now happened. Despite assurances that the information collected from DACA applicants will not be shared with ICE for deportation purposes, there is still the risk that such easily available information will be used against DACA recipients. Supposedly confidential data has been used in the past, such as when Japanese Americans were rounded up after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

The real problem is Congress’s failure of leadership and the destructive partisanship that pervades our nation’s politics. Polls consistently show that a majority of Americans are in favor of providing undocumented childhood arrivals a means to legalize their status. This is the only real way these young people can use their education to contribute to society, which benefits not only them but all of us.