[Air-L] CFP: 4S Open Panel on Becoming “Data-Driven”: Burgeoning Data Cultures and Liminality in Civil Service

[Leah Elaine Horgan]

*4S (Society for Social Studies of Science) 2019 Open Panel: #**14.
Becoming “Data-Driven”: Burgeoning Data Cultures and Liminality in Civil
Service*

*September 4-7, 2019  |   **New Orleans, USA  |   Deadline is February 1st,
2019*

Premised on the promises of being “data-driven,” nation-states across the
globe are building web-based, data-driven systems to manage populations,
resources, and risk. Scholarship in postcolonial STS and critical data
studies critiques the widespread use of data-driven systems, pointing to
the racialized, gendered, and socioeconomic consequences embedded in their
production and use, and the troubled histories from which such apparatuses
arise (Borocas and Selbst 2016; Browne 2017; Crawford and boyd 2012; Noble
2017; Suchman 2007). This research has productively demonstrated that data
technologies are not neutral, but instead are socially, culturally, and
politically situated ways of knowing and seeing (Browne 2017; Gitelman
2014; Jasanoff 2017; Thakor 2017). While scholars have studied the recent
and often algorithmic proliferation of these data-driven practices (Eubanks
2018; Brayne 2017; Lyon 2014), less attention has been paid to the complex
interplay between data-driven domination and the changing norms of everyday
administration—the day-to-day work of forging of what Oscar Gandy calls
‘‘actionable intelligence’’ (2012: 125). And, how these systems work
outside of the West is largely unattended to. Using these conditions as a
starting point, we illuminate the range of practices and perceptions of
being “data-driven,” from policy makers in capital cities to mid-management
urban police to rural officials. How do government workers develop a sense
of “data literacy” in divergent contexts across regions? How do they derive
value in data and data-driven techniques? Through empirical analysis, this
panel digs beneath macro trends and rhetoric to query the lived experiences
of working through these burgeoning data systems.

Single paper submissions should be in the form of abstracts of up to 250
words (*submission guidelines below*). We welcome traditional papers as
well as experimental responses to the panel’s theme (mixed-media,
performance, experimental writing, etc.).


*Organizers: *

Leah Horgan, University of California, Irvine *horganl at uci.edu
<horganl at uci.edu> *

Margaret Jack, Cornell University *mcj46 at cornell.edu <mcj46 at cornell.edu>*

Cindy Lin, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor *cindylky at umich.edu
<cindylky at umich.edu>*


Guideline for Submission: https://www.4s2019.org/call-for-submissions/

List of Accepted Panels: https://www.4s2019.org/accepted-open-panels/



*Leah Horgan*
dept of informatics
donald bren school of information + computer sciences
university of california, irvine