ABSTRACT

How does data visibility affect vulnerable communities that face uncertainty over land tenure? Can data justice be realised in settings of acute resource injustice? These are the overarching questions that our case study interrogates by opening up the black box of the community in the volatile and fast-transforming peri-urban fringe of Hyderabad, India. We examine the unfolding of data and information processes through the lens of enumeration and community mapping exercises conducted in a low-income neighbourhood. We argue that the realisation of data justice is mediated by ‘information politics’, i.e., the ways in which informational resources, as well as the risks and rewards associated with them, are distributed across individual actors and identity groups within the community. The democratising potential of emerging digital technologies is severely constrained by structural inequities across gender, caste, class, and even linguistic lines. Our case study underlines the importance of such a structural understanding of data justice and also suggests directions for embedding justice in data processes. Our findings reveal an arena of stark informational disparities between vulnerable, indigent populations and the increasingly sophisticated digital data apparatuses used to encode them. Efforts to promote data justice must take explicit cognisance of these disparities and fragmentation and recognise the internal structural differentiation of vulnerable communities. We argue for an explicit mapping of the information flows and associated information politics that characterise such settings.

摘要

数据可见性如何影响面临土地权属不确定性的脆弱社区？数据正义能否在资源严重不公的背景下实现？这些是我们的案例研究通过打开印度海得拉巴动荡和快速转变的城市周边边缘社区的黑匣子来询问的首要问题。我们通过在低收入社区进行的枚举和社区绘图练习来检查数据和信息过程的展开。我们认为，数据正义的实现是由“信息政治”来调节的，即信息资源以及与之相关的风险和回报在社区内的个体参与者和身份群体之间分配的方式。新兴数字技术的民主化潜力受到跨性别、种姓、阶级甚至语言界限的结构性不平等的严重限制。我们的案例研究强调了对数据正义的这种结构性理解的重要性，并提出了将正义嵌入数据流程的方向。我们的研究结果揭示了脆弱、贫困人口与用于对其进行编码的日益复杂的数字数据设备之间存在明显信息差异的领域。促进数据正义的努力必须明确认识到这些差异和碎片化，并认识到脆弱社区的内部结构差异。我们主张对表征此类设置的信息流和相关信息政治进行明确映射。