Quantifying Vulnerability

Humanitarian Datafication and the Neophilia of Integrated Power

Bibliographic Data

ID2435791
AuthorsMalay Firoz (0000-0002-1323-1946, Arizona State University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume39
Issue3
Publication date2024-08-20
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCultural Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0886-7356 • E-ISSN: 1548-1360
PublisherAmerican Anthropological Association (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.14506/ca39.3.02
OpenAlexW4401887488
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited43

Humanitarianism has recently undergone a so-called innovation turn, utilizing cutting-edge technologies to enhance the reach and efficiency of humanitarian aid. This article focuses on novel advances in the way aid organizations record, measure, and classify household vulnerability among Syrian refugees. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Lebanon and Jordan, I explore how the datafication of refugees in humanitarian action not only reveals the constitutive limits of quantitative ontologies but also poses transformative implications for the institutional configurations of humanitarianism. In particular, I suggest that the aid sector's growing reliance on data systems entrenches an extractive relationship between humanitarian organizations and refugees that conscripts, entangles, and unsettles data practitioners themselves. I conclude by pointing to vulnerability assessments as one node within a larger apparatus of integrated data systems, one that centralizes power within the humanitarian industry and poses grave risks for refugee rights

Computer security · Political science · Sociology · Vulnerability (computing · Agricultural risk and resilience · Computer Science

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