Follow the Thing: Data

Abstract

This research starts its journey from a video that failed to be published during the 2009 uprising in Iran. By following data outside the common trajectories of data circulation in the global North, this paper offers new geographical and data imaginations neglected by the universalised understandings of data and its political economy. Consequently, data’s behaviour as a thing is thoroughly investigated in the “follow the thing tradition” by scrutinising data as a commodity, its meanings and its associations. Using actor‐network‐theory, the paper highlights data’s open and contested character as well as the breakdowns throughout its journey. Following an uncirculated video via its traces sheds light on data’s agency in evoking different assemblages and spatialities. It also reflects on the epistemological importance of not treating the Southern data as exceptional and calls for a theoretical landscape that does not leave many realities of data out in its homogenised universal narrative.

Digital technology mediated rural studies: Perspectives from social and cultural geography

“…塑造地方身份和体验的过程和机制是社会文 化地理的重要研究内容 [85][86][87] 。地方既是社会经济活 动的场所， 也是日常生活体验的基础 [88] ， 在此过程 中， 权力、 资本、 文化和政治等力量， 借助地方主体 的空间实践在推动着地方意义建构的变化 [89][90][91][92] ， 数 字技术通过介入地方政治、 经济和文化的社会过程 来塑造地方性 [93] ， 同时以数字技术为媒介的地方想 象持续影响着地方意义的再生产， 如搜索引擎对地 方表征的引导 [94] 。数字技术介入的乡村地方性营 建， 实际上可归结为是人、 地方与数字技术共同进 化的过程 [27] 。在这一过程中， 技术的流动体现着乡 村意义、 身份或关系的动态变化， 不同群体通过在 物理与虚拟空间建立社会联系， 使地方文化叙事能 够以跨时空传播或自下而上构建等方式进行生产 与再生产 [95] 。 数字技术正在重构地方的社会关系。长期以 来， 中国乡村社区的日常活动组织主要以当地所在 村庄为基础， 或分散在乡村地域空间范围内。在互 联网和数字设备的干预下， 新的社区性逐渐生成。 由于数字技术为沟通、 改善地方环境和加强社会联 系等提供了良好的途径， 因而重塑了村民的空间 感知以及对邻里的地方依恋 [68,96] 。如电子商务的 进驻通过配置相关基础设施， 重构了村庄的物质 形态； 农村移民的社会网络通过社交媒体得以建 立和加强 [97] 。 数字技术对乡村地方性的重构还体现在其对 物质景观与文化意义生产的扰动。首先， 近年来互 联网、 智能手机和在线平台的发展助推了电子商务 的快速发展， 在互联网经济热潮下， 涌现出大量的 "淘宝村" [98] 。尽管相关数字技术改善了乡村的经 济， 但不同的日常生产运作方式往往颠覆了乡村的 社会分工与社会关系结构 [99] 。其次， 以区块链技术 为代表的新兴数字技术， 其可溯源功能使得乡村农 产品生产与流通过程， 能以数据可视化的形式即时 传递给消费者， 一方面拓展了农产品的销售覆盖范 围， 另一方面给外来消费者提供了关注当地的自然 和人文环境的 "窗口" [100] ， 使得村域的地方性被以数 字化形式进行展演。再者， 共享经济在乡村的推广 也在引起村域的物质空间重构 [101] ， 数字技术的日 常化应用在改变乡村社区的个体流动实践， 通过 减少高成本的风险流动来推动农村社区的福祉改 善 [102] 。此外， "淘宝村" 的性别规范和社会分工 [103] 、 "网红经济" 背景下的乡村社会文化生产 [104] 、 乡村文 化遗产数字化对集体认同感与地方文化价值构建 的作用 [95] 等议题也逐渐受到关注。 在地方营造话题上， 现有研究更多关注数字技 术对于表征的乡村地方性， 在非表征维度上仍有较 大的研究空间。非表征理论与乡村研究在西方已 有丰富的研究， 主要讨论乡村的物质性、 情感性和 具身实践 [105] ， 在 "再物质化" 思潮下， 数字技术已经 成为个体表达自我、 凸显社会关系的物质载体， 数 字产品和以数字技术为媒介的商品生产背后隐喻 了广泛的政治、 经济和文化内涵， 并且与乡村其他 物质发生互动， 对乡村空间中的数字技术及其衍生 物质的追踪提供了新的地方性认识视角 [106] ； 在情感 地理研究上， 乡村被看作是情感性力量(affective power)重塑人们在乡村的具身体验 [107] ， 而数字技术 被认为能通过情感的生产协调人与技术的耦合 [108] ， 这就需要理解在乡村中技术是如何与身体相互交 织， 并激发了情感的关联 [109][110] 。…”

Blogging the Virtual: New Geographies of Domination and Resistance In and Beyond Russia

“…Two of the three were able to continue working despite repressive state attention, demonstrating the latitude for emancipatory potential within Russian informational autocracy, as well as the ability to participate in the RuNet even outside Russian territory. The gaps for this kind of opposition are shrinking, however: there has been a string of state attempts to dominate the RuNet (Novie Izvestiya 2017), working not only through governing institutions like RosKomNadzor and surveillance technologies like SORM, but also through more extreme isolationist strategies that mirror the shutdowns and firewalls of Iran or China (Akbari 2020;Qiang 2019). Thus, building on President Putin's longstanding criticism of the internet as a CIA project and a corrupting foreign influence (MacAskill 2014), lawmakers recently approved a so-called "sovereign internet" bill that attempts to make the RuNet correspond exactly to Russian territorial boundaries (Ilyushina et al 2019).…”

“…In time, it has grown clear that these technologies can also expand state surveillance and control, strengthening global illiberalism through what Diamond (2019) ultimately called postmodern totalitarianism. This has been explored across a variety of authoritarian states, including China (MacKinnon 2011; Qiang 2019), Turkey (Topak 2017(Topak , 2019, and Iran (Akbari 2020;Golkar 2011Golkar , 2016, demonstrating how autocracies employ these technologies in variegated strategies to police and circumvent or suppress dissent.…”

Using the flow regimes framework to de‐hierarchise the analysis of commercial movements: Case studies from the Central African Copperbelt

“…Studying the social biographies of goods being exchanged, and inspired by Marxist theory, thing‐following scholars have sought to defetishise commodities to make visible the developing power relations at every step, from the commodities’ production to their consumption and discarding or recycling. This agenda has been successfully applied, among others, to agricultural goods (Cook, 2004), garments (Cowen, 2014, p. 60), second‐hand clothing (Brooks, 2013), end‐of‐life ships (Gregson et al., 2010), and even data (Akbari, 2020). Focusing on things themselves paradoxically makes it possible to repopulate the usually deserted production and logistics activities and shed light on the importance of social and cultural characteristics in a formerly rather technical value chain.…”