The Economy of Social Data

Exploring Research Ethics as Device

Bibliographic Data

ID3499191
AuthorsAna Gro, Ana Gross (University of London, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume59
Issue2_suppl
Pages113-129
Publication date2011-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Sociological Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/j.1467-954x.2012.02055.x
OpenAlexW1843943233
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited33

The following article argues that research ethics and data regulatory frameworks can be understood as devices that articulate a particular kind of social data economy. Following Waldby and Mitchell's (2006) work on biological material economies it explores how social research ethics and data regulatory frameworks in the United Kingdom, organized around the notions of informed consent and anonymization, have favoured a model in which privacy is disentangled from the human agency to which it makes reference in order to be converted and objectified as data. Informed consent and anonymization are hence here analysed as devices which enable the circulation, exchange and valuation of data, or in other words, as devices which enable the conversion of privacy into property. In particular, the paper argues that informed consent enacts a legitimate transaction between data subject and data controller and can be therefore understood as a surrogate property contract. On the other hand, anonymization, which works by suppressing the author function, renders singular data units commensurable and aggregatable in the form of databases, a procedure which supports the emergence of a specific set of property rights. Finally, the conclusion critically addresses the work of ethics as a device as new datascapes organized by the principle of traceability produce 'the human' as disaggregated and distributed

Agency (philosophy) · Business · Data exchange · Database · Database transaction · Engineering ethics · Epistemology · Function (biology) · Informed consent · Law and economics · Political science · Property (philosophy) · Property rights · Research ethics · Social science · Sociology · Traceability · Valuation (finance) · Accounting · Computer Science · Data Analysis and Archiving · Engineering · Ethics in Clinical Research · Law · Medicine · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics

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