[Air-L] [Book Announcement] Lives of Data: Essays on Computational Cultures from India

[Alette Schoon]

Dear Sandeep

Thanks so much for sharing this. Indian and South Asian digital media
scholarship has been so useful for us to make sense of digital media
practices in South Africa - we actually had Ravi Sundaram here in Makhanda
for a short lecture series. I have also been following the work of Payal
Arora, Nimmi Rangaswamy, Neha Kumar and Syed Ahmed - so great to be
introduced to your work and numerous other Indian colleagues and to have it
available to share with students. Thank you for publishing with an open
access publisher - as our library budgets have been slashed I can attest
that this decision really helps to make scholarship accessible to
institutions in the Global South.

Much appreciation

Alette

On Thu, 17 Dec 2020 at 09:37, Sandeep Mertia <sandeepmertia at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hello,
>
>
> (Hope you are safe and well. Apologies for cross posting)
>
>
> I’m happy to announce the publication of my edited volume, "*Lives of Data:
> Essays on Computational Cultures from India*", with the Institute of
> Network Cultures, Amsterdam <
>
> https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/lives-of-data-essays-on-computational-cultures-from-india/
> >.
> It is available for download in ePub and PDF formats and for
> print-on-demand orders (Creative Commons
> Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International).
>
>
> Foreword by Ravi Sundaram. Authors: Sandeep Mertia, Karl Mendonca,
> Sivakumar Arumugam, Ranjit Singh, Puthiya Purayil Sneha, Lilly Irani,
> Anumeha Yadav, Preeti Mudliar, Prerna Mukharya and Mahima Taneja, Guneet
> Narula, Gaurav Godhwani, Noopur Raval, Aakash Solanki, and Anirudh
> Raghavan.
>
>
> Blurb:
> *Lives of Data* maps the historical and emergent dynamics of big data,
> computing, and society in India. Data infrastructures are now more global
> than ever before. In much of the world, new sociotechnical possibilities of
> big data and artificial intelligence are unfolding under the long shadows
> cast by infra/structural inequalities, colonialism, modernization, and
> national sovereignty. This book offers critical vantage points for looking
> at big data and its shadows, as they play out in uneven encounters of
> machinic and cultural relationalities of data in India’s socio-politically
> disparate and diverse contexts.
>
> *Lives of Data* emerged from research projects and workshops at the Sarai
> programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. It brings together
> fifteen interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners to set up a
> collaborative research agenda on computational cultures. The essays offer
> wide-ranging analyses of media and techno-scientific trajectories of data
> analytics, disruptive formations of digital economy, and the grounded
> practices of data-driven governance in India.Encompassing history,
> anthropology, science and technology studies (STS), media studies, civic
> technology, data science, digital humanities, and journalism, the essays
> open up possibilities for a truly situated global and sociotechnically
> specific understanding of the many lives of data.
>
> Reviews:
> "This remarkable collection is the first major portrait and assessment of
> the social and technical relationalities that constitute the ecology of big
> data in India today. Equally remarkably, the authors represent the first
> generation of scholars of digital media who speak through an Indian lens
> while being totally conversant with the cutting edge of global scholarship
> on big data."
> — Arjun Appadurai, Goddard Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication,
> New York University
>
> "Wide-ranging and incisive, *Lives of Data* is essential reading for those
> who wish to understand the seductions and contingencies of being or
> becoming data-driven."
> — Lisa Gitelman, author, *Paper Knowledge* and editor, *‘Raw Data’ Is an
> Oxymoron*
>
> ...
>
> Regards,
>
> Sandeep Mertia
>
> PhD Candidate, Dept. of Media, Culture, and Communication
>
> New York University
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-- 
<https://www.ru.ac.za>

Dr Alette Schoon
Senior Lecturer
School of Journalism and Media Studies
t: +27 (0) 46 603 7115
Africa Media Matrix, Prince Alfred Street, Makhanda, 6139
PO Box 94, Makhanda, 6140, South Africa
www.ru.ac.za