Globalisation, Transnationalism & Development Colloquium organised in association with Maastricht Centre for Citizenship, Migration and Development (MACIMIDE)
Speaker: Linnet Taylor, University of Amsterdam
Date: Wednesday 21 October 2015
Time and place: 15.30-17.30, Spiegelzaal Soiron building, Grote Gracht 80-82
The topic of this lecture is:
In the Name of Development: power, profit and the datafication of the global South
By Linnet Taylor, University of Amsterdam
Abstract
This presentation will examine the current ‘datafication’ process underway in low- and middle-income countries and the power shifts it is creating in the field of international development. The use of new communications and database technologies in LMICs is generating ‘big data’ (for example from the use of mobile phones, mobile-based financial services and the internet) which is collected and processed by corporations and sometimes shared for development research and policy. With these new sources of data, new power structures are emerging within the field of development. We focus on two particular trends: first, the growing intersections between development policy and informational capitalism, and second, the rises of country-level ‘data doubles’ that are created in parallel with, and sometimes in lieu of, national data and statistics.
Bio
Linnet Taylor is a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow in the Governance and Inclusive Development group at the University of Amsterdam’s International Development Studies department. Previously she was a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute. She holds a DPhil in Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies, UK
Upcoming GTD colloquia:
– Wednesday 18, November 2015: Ali R. Chaudhary (University of Oxford)
-Wednesday 16, December 2015: Heidi Østbø Haugen (University of Oslo)
