A political ecology of data

Bibliographic Data

ID4464465
AuthorsEric Nost (0000-0001-9320-072X, Cornell University), J E Goldstein (0000-0002-0272-0445, Cornell University, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume5
Issue1
Pages3-17
Publication date2022-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning E Nature and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2514-8486 • E-ISSN: 2514-8494
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/25148486211043503
OpenAlexW3201832427
LanguageEN
Citations received83
References cited74

Conservationists, governments, and corporations see promise in digital technologies to provide holistic, rapid, and objective information to inform policy, shape investments, and monitor ecosystems. But it is increasingly clear that environmental data does more than simply offer a better view of the planet. This special issue makes a single overarching argument: that we cannot fully understand the current conjuncture in global environmental governance without understanding the platforms, devices, and institutions that comprise environmental data infrastructures. The papers draw together scholarship from political ecology and science and technology studies to demonstrate how data has become a significant site in which contemporary environmental politics are waged and socionatures are materialized. We address: (1) the contested practices of utilizing and maintaining data infrastructures; (2) the ways they are governed and the territorial statecraft they enable; (3) the socionatural materiality they arise within but also produce. The papers in this special issue show that, against its dominant representation, data is material, governed, practiced, and requires praxis. Political ecologists could adopt such an approach to make sense of the emerging ways in which data technologies shape environments and their politics

Corporate governance · Data science · Economics · Environmental ethics · Environmental governance · Environmental politics · Environmental resource management · Management · Metadata · Political ecology · Political science · Politics · Praxis · Scholarship · Sociology · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI · Law · Mobile Crowdsensing and Crowdsourcing · Water Governance and Infrastructure

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