From the Edge: A Conversation on the Political Ecologies of Digitalization
Type: Virtual Panel
Day: 2/26/2022
Start Time: 2:00 PM
End Time: 3:20 PM
Theme: Geographies of Access: Inclusion and Pathways
Sponsor Group(s):
Digital Geographies Specialty Group
, Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group
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Organizer(s):
Beatriz Rodriguez-Labajos
, Hilary Faxon
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Chairs(s):
Beatriz Rodriguez-Labajos, Autonomous University of Barcelona
; Hilary Faxon, University of California, Berkeley
Description:
Elite designers and growth-driven companies are redefining worldwide work, education, health, and futures through digital technologies. But digitization is not playing out only among the urban, the elite, and the immaterial. Through our research, we have observed the process occurring in areas of the world assumed peripheral, backward, and digitally illiterate. Against notions such as the ‘digital divide,’ grassroots actors creatively adapt digitalization to support emancipatory and decolonial projects through the creation of databases, development of new tools for specific needs, or articulation of innovative digital processes to serve urgent priorities. At the same time, access to resources and technology configure an unequal digital space and call into question ways of knowing and mobilizing. How, then, is digitalization culturally and materially shaping the ‘edges’ of modernity, including places rich in indigenous knowledge, radical grassroots alternatives or the more-than-human world? When digitalization occurs, does it enable or disable grassroots projects that seek environmental justice, preserving biocultural diversity while promoting diversity and inclusion? Building on recent work on the political ecology of data (Nost and Goldstein 2021) and a growing literature on feminist and decolonial approaches to digital geography (Elwood and Leszczynski 2018; Datta 2018), we aim to bring together scholars working on critical political ecologies of digitization from the edge to address questions such as:
- How is digitalization unfolding in varied geographies, particularly places often perceived as ‘at the edge’?
- What are the material consequences of digitalization for environmental health and (re)distribution?
- How are social movements harnessing digital tools? What types of digital leadership models emerge from these experiences? To what extent are they challenging existing forms of domination and exclusion?
- How has the pandemic affected these processes in the immediate and longer terms?
Presentation(s), if applicable
Non-Presenting Participants Agenda
Role | Participant |
Panelist | Cadey Korson |
Panelist | Sam Kellogg New York University |
Panelist | Julia Zscherneck Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg |
Panelist | Julia Binder Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg |
Panelist | Yvonne Franz University of Vienna |
Panelist | Fiammetta Brandajs Rovira i Virgili University |
Discussant | Leah Govia University of Guelph |
Discussant | Jeremy Crampton Newcastle University |
Discussant | Jenny Goldstein Cornell University |
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From the Edge: A Conversation on the Political Ecologies of Digitalization
Description
Virtual Panel
Contact the Primary Organizer
Beatriz Rodriguez-Labajos - beatriz.rodriguez@uab.cat