Data Wars

• In Event: The Politics of Science and Technology in International Development 2

Abstract

This paper discusses a new data ecology emerging in the field of international development and how it is becoming the context for novel kinds of knowledge production and interventions about poverty. Specifically, the paper focuses on how this new data ecology is displacing an older world of statistics in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals. Statistics has long been the language of the modern state and of development enterprises, a crucial tool for representation, governance, and accountability. Historically, it has been through statistics that national populations and their economies and societies have been represented, be it through demographics, epidemiology, or economics. This world of statistics, dominated by state governments and inter-governmental agencies, is increasingly being reconfigured with the entry of an array of new data actors including for-profit corporations and philanthropies. These new actors bring with them a cacophony of novel data technologies and practices that are distinct from older statistical tools. The emerging data actors herald epistemological and political shifts in the field of development: they generate new kinds of knowledge about how to conceptualize and measure poverty; they also represent a changing role for states vis-à-vis private actors, and new understandings of intervention and accountability.

Author

• Manjari Mahajan, New School University