Interview with me about my new book Data Selves

 

I did an interview recently with Rafael Grohmann about my new book Data Selves: More-than-Human Perspectives (out from Polity in October). He has now translated it into Portuguese and published it on his blog DigiLabour: available here.

Below are the original English questions and my written responses.

RG: What does data selves mean in a more-than-human perspective?

DL: A more-than-human perspective acknowledges that humans are always already part of nonhuman relations. Humans and nonhumans come together in assemblages that are constantly changing as humans move through their worlds. From this perspective, digital devices and software assemble with humans, and personal data are generated in and with these enactments. These data assemblages are more-than-human things. People live with and co-evolve with their personal data – they learn from data and data learn from them in a continually changing relationship.

RG: How can feminist materialism theory and the anthropology of material culture help us understand datafication?

DL: In previous work, I have suggested the digital devices can be considered to lively, as can digital data. Building on this approach, I use feminist new materialism and the anthropology of material culture to investigate these dimensions of datafication and dataveillance further. The feminist new materialism scholars I draw on in the Data Selves book are Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Jane Bennett and Karen Barad. These scholars share an interest in the affective forces, vitality and distributed nature of agencies as they are generated with and through more-than-human assemblages. Scholars in the anthropology of material culture such as Tim Ingold and Elizabeth Hallam have also called attention to the lively agencies of humans and nonhumans when they gather together. They focus on how humans respond to, learn about and make sense of their worlds when engaging in embodied and sensory encounters with nonhumans. Ingold describes this as ‘being alive to the world’.

In developing my theoretical approach in Data Selves, I found these perspectives helpful in thinking through what Barad calls the ‘onto-ethico-epistemological’ dimensions of datafication and dataveillance. These perspectives have not yet been taken up to any great extent in thinking about datafication and dataveillance. This is the project I am pursuing. It allows for a non-normative ethical approach to datafication and dataveillance that acknowledges the constantly emergent and dynamic nature of lively data selves and the embodied, multisensory and affective dimensions of how humans live with and learn from their data.

RG: In your forthcoming book, do you talk about data selves and quantified self in world of work?

DL: I don’t discuss the workplace to any great extent in Data Selves. In in my previous book The Quantified Self there was quite a bit of discussion of self-tracking in the workplace. Data Selves differs from The Quantified Self in including a lot of discussion of my empirical research projects that I have conducted over the past few years – indeed, since writing The Quantified Self – which involves people discussing their self-tracking practices and their understandings and use of personal data. My research participants didn’t talk much about their data practices in the context of the workplace, apart from some references on the part of some people to using productivity tools. Those who were active self-trackers were predominantly tracking their body weight, fitness, food or calorie intake, sleep and finances.

RG: In the last year, many books on the same subject have been published, such as David Beer, Shoshana Zuboff, Taina Bucher, Tarleton Gillespie, José van Dijck and Thomas Poell. What is the difference of your book, in theoretical and conceptual terms?

DL: My book differs in several ways: 1) in using more-than-human theory to analyse datafication and dataveillance; 2) in discussing findings from my own empirical research into self-tracking and people’s understandings and practices related to their personal data; and 3) including a greater focus on the multisensory dimensions of data materialisations and sense-making, including how artists and critical designers have sought represent personal data or critique datafication and dataveillance in novel ways.

RG: After a few years since your book Digital Sociology, for you, what is the future research agenda of digital sociology?

DL: I have become increasingly interested in more-than-human theory since writing Digital Sociology and also in postqualitative research as well as innovative methods for social inquiry, including experimenting with design- and arts-based methods. Taking these perspectives and methods into new directions for me constitutes the future agenda of digital sociology.

Working with image cards in social research

As part of my experiments with innovative methods for social research and developing design sociology, I have been using a set of image cards developed by Dan Lockton and his team at the Imaginaries Lab for their New Metaphors workshops. Dan has kindly made these resources open access (see here). The cards consists of two types: 1) a range of diverse images of things, activities and experiences that exist in people’s everyday lives (natural phenomena like clouds, rain, trees or animals and things from built environments such as cracks in pavements, graffiti and the hum of a fridge); and 2) a range of topics, concepts or ideas (for example, safety, love, fame, half-remembered dreams and personal security). I printed out a set of the New Metaphors cards, and over the past two weeks have run two pop-up methods workshops at my Vitalities Lab to experiment with them.

The two groups who came along to the workshops (there were about 15 people at the first one and ten at the second workshop) participated in activities that I devised, and then provided feedback on how they found the activities and how they thought they could use the cards in their own research or teaching. The feedback from both workshop groups was very positive: members enjoyed working with these cards and thinking about how they could use them.

At the first workshop, I used a worksheet I downloaded from the Imaginaries Lab and a research activity worksheet that I had crafted myself. After the first workshop, I developed a new worksheet, and renamed the activity ‘Vital Images Method’ to better describe what I was wanting to do with it. The two worksheets I developed are provided  below. They can be downloaded at the links here as well: VITAL IMAGES METHOD – worksheet 1 VITAL IMAGES METHOD – worksheet 2

VITAL IMAGES METHOD: WORKSHEET 1

Image [title]:   _______________________________

Choose an image card. Describe what you think of, see, feel when you look at this image.

Topic [title]: ___________________________________________

Choose a topic card. Describe what you think of, see, feel when you consider this topic.

Circle words that are shared. What are the similarities and differences? What new or surprising connections do you see?

Worksheet 1

 

VITAL IMAGES METHOD: WORKSHEET 2

 People can work as individuals, in pairs or in small groups.

Identify a topic (e.g. big data, apps, data privacy, smartphones, fitness, exercise, good health, a specific health condition, a risk or threat) that you would like your research participants to focus on.

Ask your participants to sort through the image cards and pull out some (say three or four cards) that they associate with the topic (in present day or a specified period into the future [10 years, 20 years etc]). Ask them to reflect on these questions (they can write these reflects down or record them using a voice recording device):

1. What do these images mean to you in relation to the topic?
2. Why do you think you chose them?
3. What feelings/emotions do they inspire in relation to this topic?
4. Did these images provoke new connections or ideas for you?
5. Did you make any connections or ideas that surprised you?

Alternative approach: rather than ask participants to choose image cards, provide them with cards randomly, and ask them to undertake the same reflections.

Extensions

1. Make a drawing or map of the connections you see between the image and the topic.
2. Write a short story or make a story board based on the ideas generated by the images.

Worksheet 2

 

Analysis

The participants’ reflections can be used as research data – as a way of inquiring into the often unrecognised or unacknowledged memories, feelings and associations that people draw on to give meaning to their worlds.

Schedule for trip to Copenhagen and London, June 2019

I am giving some talks in Copenhagen and London next month. Here is the schedule for those who might want to come along.

• 11-12 June: Keynote at the Digitally Engaged Patient conference, University of Copenhagen
• 13 June: Presentations at King’s College London (in-conversation on smart technologies and global health) and LSE Department of Media and Communications (in-house seminar about my new book Data Selves)
• 14 June: Keynote at the Surveillance in the 21st Century event, Royal Holloway, University of London