Data-bodies and data activism: Presencing women in digital heritage research

Abstract

As heritage-as-the-already-occurred folds into heritage-in-the-making practices, temporal and spatial fluidity is made more complex by digital mediation and particularly by Big Data. Such liveliness evokes ontological, epistemological and methodological challenges. Drawing on more-than-human theorizing, this article reframes the notion of data-bodies to advance data activist-oriented research in heritage. Focused primarily on women, it examines how their distributed agency and voice with respect to data practices and the (re)makings of (digital) heritage could be amplified. I describe three methodological directions, influenced by feminist work in critical data studies, which could be employed by researchers: attuning to and becoming with data, making data physical and changing narratives. From data-bodies to haunted data, performative data curation and mapping data-bodies, and attuning to data streams and re-voicing narratives, this article contributes to discussions of how to engage critically and creatively with the datafication of digital heritage practices, knowings and ontologies.

Heritage transformations

“…Absence is relevant, as are presences and (mis)representations. Thompson's commentary develops a framework for analysing and visualising what should be mended (Thompson, 2020). Her contribution is centred on women from the Global South and how their data bodies are rendered, drawing on feminist and more-than-human theorisation.…”

“…The approach that she outlines can also, however, be applied more widely to investigate affordances and issues connected to 'manifesting' via the heritage data 'record'. Thompson's proposed methodology entails the three crucial stages of 'attuning to and becoming with data, making data physical and changing narratives' (Thompson, 2020). It is in step with an activist understanding of digital heritage research that is intent on fostering positive social change (Bonacchi and Krzyzanska, 2019).…”

Utopian and Dystopian Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Big Data

“…Leurs (2017) equates power differences grounded in gender and race with the imperialistic and sexist design of technological systems. Thompson (2020) in particular reflects on the kinds of power given to "factual" numerical data that is intended to represent all people, despite its underrepresentation of women, and how this affects governmental, educational, and legal systems. Foucault (1980) famously discussed the inextricable connection between knowledge and structures of power.…”

Pathways for Social Justice in the Datafied Society

“…Beyond the initial enthusiasm of technological solutionism linked to the access and use of an unprecedented amount of information in data (Lehtiniemi & Ruckenstein, 2019), recent social research has pointed out how new technological infrastructures continue to respond to capitalistic logics of domination, surveillance and exploitation where inequity prevails (Zuboff, 2019). Examples of this concept are the invisibilisation or overrepresentation of race and gender in certain forms of data visualisation (Ricaurte, 2019;Thompson, 2020), the restrictive effects on personal freedom by controlling behaviour and quantifying the self (Lupton, 2016) and algorithmic bias with racist, exclusionary and oppressive effects (Eubanks, 2018;Noble, 2018).…”

“…They also engender forms of symbolic violence by imposing recommendations and guiding behaviour through what is supposed to be an "objective" automated system. Behind the scenes, data scientists play the role of an elite capable of translating bodies and minds into actionable codes (Thompson, 2020), although they may simply be the instruments of decision-makers, and, therefore, be unaware of their role in their orientation to perform "the technical task".…”