Data and Justice in Jakarta

• In Event: Activating Context: Data Ethics, Data Sovereignty, Data Justice

Abstract

Jakarta is the second-largest city in the world. Its vertiginous growth feeds massive real estate expansion and the construction of climate adaptation infrastructure of unprecedented size and cost. These developments result in the expulsion and impoverishment of local communities, and anti-poverty activists are reclaiming data, big and small, as a resource to fight against the evictions of informal settlements from the urban core. This paper follows the movement and mobilization of data throughout a decade of struggles of the Urban Poor Consortium to prevent the evictions of informal settlements from Jakarta’s core. I examine how data is used for self-defense and legitimization within changing data ecologies modulated by international development first, and climate adaptation later. The paper argues that the Urban Poor Consortium teaches us that in order to devise effective resistance, data justice should not be regarded as an end in itself but as an emerging means to fight long-established struggles. These need to be accounted for as constitutive part of the milieu where data can become a vector of resistance and where data can take on different meanings and functions.

Author

• Alessandra Renzi, Concordia University