The Nature of Data: Infrastructures, Environments, Politics (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781496217158)

When we look at some of the most pressing issues in environmental politics today, it is hard to avoid data technologies. Big data, artificial intelligence, and data dashboards all promise "revolutionary" advances in the speed and scale at which governments, corporations, conservationists, and even individuals can respond to environmental challenges.

By bringing together scholars from geography, anthropology, science and technology studies, and ecology, The Nature of Data explores how the digital realm is a significant site in which environmental politics are waged. This collection as a whole makes the argument that we cannot fully understand the current conjuncture in critical, global environmental politics without understanding the role of data platforms, devices, standards, and institutions. In particular, The Nature of Data addresses the contested practices of making and maintaining data infrastructure, the imaginaries produced by data infrastructures, the relations between state and civil society that data infrastructure reworks, and the conditions under which technology can further socio-ecological justice instead of re-entrenching state and capitalist power. This innovative volume presents some of the first research in this new but rapidly growing subfield that addresses the role of data infrastructures in critical environmental politics.


Author: Jenny Goldstein
ISBN-10: 1496217152
ISBN-13: 9781496217158
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Language: English
Published: 10/01/2022
Pages: 344
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.49lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.94d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 07/01/2023