Technocolonialism: When Technology for Good Is Harmful - Couverture souple

Madianou, Mirca

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1509559035 ISBN 13 : 9781509559039

Editeur : Polity Press, 2024

Synopsis

With over 300 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, and with emergencies and climate disasters becoming more common, AI and big data are being championed as forces for good and as solutions to the complex challenges of the aid sector.

This book argues, however, that digital innovation engenders new forms of violence and entrenches power asymmetries between the global South and North. Madianou develops a new concept, technocolonialism, to capture how the convergence of digital developments with humanitarian structures, state power and market forces reinvigorates and reshapes colonial legacies. The concept of technocolonialism shifts the attention to the constitutive role that digital infrastructures, data and AI play in accentuating inequities between aid providers and people in need.

Drawing on ten years of research on the uses of digital technologies in humanitarian operations, the book examines a range of practices: from the normalization of biometric technologies and the datafication of humanitarian operations to experimentation in refugee camps, which are treated as laboratories for technological pilots. In so doing, the book opens new ground in the fields of humanitarianism and critical AI studies, and in the debates in postcolonial studies, by highlighting the fundamental role of digital technologies in reworking colonial genealogies.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Mirca Madianou is Professor of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Polity Press
• Date d'édition: 2024
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1509559035
• ISBN 13: 9781509559039
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 256
• Coordonnées du fabricant: Easy Access System Europe Oü, 16879218; gpsr.requests@easproject.com; ; Mustamäe tee 50, 10621, Tallinn, Estonia; Tallinn; 10621; Estonie