Abstract
The article aims to theorize about critical data studies with Latin America beyond the framework of data colonialism, arguing that the long history of social thought in the region can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the datafication. It discusses views around dependence, oppressions, and liberation, debating how Latin American authors can be useful for current critical data studies, in a more nuanced and complex vision. It presents the theoretical contributions of Lelia Gonzalez, dependency theorists and Enrique Dussel. Dependency theorists criticize evolutionary frameworks of development and can contribute to discussions around data sovereignty and overexploitation of labor. Gonzalez contributes to a complex vision of Amefrica Ladina, articulating multiple forms of oppression. Enrique Dussel presents a theory of technology considering totality and proposes an ethics of liberation that can be related to alternatives toward data justice and data commons. All theoretical frameworks contribute to thinking about datafication with Latin America not as an isolated phenomenon, but in relation to other countries in the world, and as an analytical key for the construction of alternatives. All perspectives are related to current debates on critical data studies and can make an important contribution to the construction of critical theories about data that consider Latin America also as a site of knowledge production.
This article is a part of special theme on Critical Data Studies in Latin America. To see a full list of all articles in this special theme, please click here:https://journals.sagepub.com/page/bds/collections/critical_data_studies__in_latin_america
Introduction
In recent years, critical debates on Big Data and artificial intelligence (AI) have provided relative visibility of authors and contributions in/from the Global South, mainly from the so-called “decolonial turn,” considering discussions around data colonialism (Couldry and Mejias, 2019; Ricaurte, 2019; Singh, 2021) and AI and colonialism (Birhane, 2020; Adams, 2021; Amrute et al., 2022). Even with discussions and controversies about the different nomenclatures and theoretical-methodological projects (e.g. debates on post/anti/de-colonial studies), the relevance of the knowledge of nations in the Global South—or majority world—has been increasingly recognized in different research fields.
Such perspectives challenge the political-theoretical construction centered on the Global North and, in particular, on the Western Europe and Anglo-Saxon North America. Authors from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, formerly relegated to academic invisibility or peripheries, have taken steps toward greater visibility, even though the obstacles posed to such perspectives are still present (Albuquerque, 2021). From Latin America, the decolonial theoretical frameworks by authors such as Aníbal Quijano, Walter Mignolo, Catherine Walsh, and Rita Laura Segatto gained more visibility in the recent decades, including in the debates on technologies. These are exponents of decolonial approaches, who have served as some theoretical inspirations for possibilities of decolonizing data in the region. This has especially meant a critique of a supposed data universalism (Milan and Trere, 2019), a critique of the coloniality of power in relation to datafication (Ricaurte, 2019) and the possibilities of everyday tactics in relation to data and algorithm practices and infrastructure (Siles et al., 2022; Milan and Trere, 2022).
However, debates on Big Data and AI in Latin America are not limited to the decolonial framework, and the scholarship in the region can not be reduced to that. The region is fruitful in formulations not only about itself, but also contributions that can enrich the theoretical-methodological perspectives in several fields across the world, such as the abolitionist Luiz Gama, the revolutionaries Manuela Sáenz, Simón Boívar, José Carlos Mariátegui and Toussaint ĹOverture, the economists Raul Prebisch and Maria da Conceição Tavares, the feminist thinkers Maria Lugones and Beatriz Nascimento, educator Paulo Freire and the geographer Milton Santos, among hundreds of others. Unlike regions colonized until the middle of the 20th century or in later years, Latin America has as its specificity the conquest of its independence still in the 19th century. This means theoretical and methodological challenges to understand how the colonial legacies and reverberations are in line with the development of capitalism in peripheral regions of the world. Scholarship on critical data studies has been built heavily on the colonialism framework to understand phenomena involving algorithms, data, platforms, and other technologies. However, there is not just one way to frame critical data studies.
This article aims to theorize the articulation between Latin American social thought and critical data studies—considering the context of datafication—in the region, arguing that the research agenda from the region should go beyond the colonialism perspective, despite its relevance. Otherwise, it would mean reifying the rich and long history of Latin American social thought. Therefore, we argue that understanding critical data studies with Latin America necessarily involves the circulation of other theories and concepts, since the region cannot be addressed only as “empirical examples” of theories that are postulated to be universal.
We argue the need of theorizing critical data studies with Latin America—and not only “in” or “from” Latin America (Cruz et al., 2023). This means taking the theorization seriously as a research labor, especially theories from regions like Latin America, in an effort to not “exoticize” them, but thinking with them about issues that can go beyond the region itself. Taking theory seriously also means challenging an instrumental view of science, often incorporated into a Westernized perspective (Albuquerque, 2021; Suzina, 2021), in which theory is seen only as something instrumental, to be cited quickly. In the context of this journal, this means taking social theory seriously in understanding data and technologies. Thus, following what authors such as Barros and Silva (2023) have done, this means valuing the production of ancestral knowledge in academia outside the hegemonic authors.
In this article, we present two authors and a theoretical framework from Latin America: the group of authors known as dependency theory, the Brazilian philosopher and anthropologist Lélia González, and the Argentine philosopher Enrique Dussel. We introduce the main concepts of these intellectuals and underline theoretical-methodological approaches, concepts, and analytical tools that can shed light and present new perspectives to the analysis of datafication context. We argue that critical data studies need to address the problems of English as a lingua franca (Suzina, 2021) in terms of valuing knowledge in other lines that were theorized even before these themes were analyzed in the Global North. The authors were chosen because they are a different possibility to understand Big Data from the margins (Milan and Trere 2022), in addition to aiming at building alternatives and overcoming the capitalist mode of production. The aim is, far from exhausting the richness of Latin American social thought on the subject, to analyze other theoretical possibilities to understand critical data studies considering the dialogue with Latin American authors.
Thus, in each section, the article presents an overview of each of the authors, focusing on theoretical aspects and concepts of their works toward an approach to critical data studies, in terms of commonalities, differences, and complementation of viewpoints. After the first three sections, the article discusses future research agendas for the field of critical data studies that can be developed incorporating the formulations of these authors. The main results reveal the richness of the history of Latin American thought toward critical data studies that are truly more inclusive and diverse, in which authors from the region can circulate more intensely in the context of Anglo-Saxon publishing.
Thus, instead of presenting an “innovative” or “original” approach—which could also be colonial characteristics—this article, on the contrary, values the past of a region whose social thought was erased and made invisible. We argue that, by presenting these theories, this enables new geographies and politics of theory—in this case, new geographies and politics of critical data studies.
Dependency theory: Capitalism, development, and peripheral nations
With datafication spreading around the world, the Latin American dependency theory can add new analytical layers to critical data studies by shedding light to international inequalities among nations and how they impact the peripheral countries and its populations. In addition to decolonial critiques to the West, dependency theory questions mainstream theories around development studies, bringing alternative views on datafication and digital technologies and how they reproduce and amplify disparities among center and periphery in the capitalist system.
Dependency theory, although its expansion was not restricted to Latin America, had a driving force in the region. These ideas depart from assessment of imperialism to criticize hegemonic frameworks on development that pointed to the condition of underdevelopment as a result of the decisions of nations that were classified in this situation. This means questioning the legacies and continuities of America's colonization with new inequalities constituted from the post-independence of these nations.
According to Blomstron and Hettne (1990), dependency theory is structured on some commonalities in most of its key authors: (1) underdevelopment is directly related to the dynamics of developed countries, (2) development and underdevelopment are directly related as part of the same process, (3) underdevelopment is not a previous stage of a continuum of evolution of development, and (4) dependence is not just a relationship between countries, but is also built internally by dependent nations in the economic, political, and ideological spheres.
Dialectics of dependency
Marini (1973: 9) defines dependency as “a relationship of subordination between formally independent nations, within which the relations of production of subordinated nations are modified or recreated to ensure the expanded reproduction of dependency.” This means unequal exchanges between dependent nations and the center of capitalism and the related to development possibilities, both in the economic and political-institutional dimensions.
According to Marini (2022), the international division of labor never assumes the same standards of development as the core capitalist economies, as these constituted models can only be understood in relation to these core economies, and not individually. Latin American industrialization did not create its own demand, but moved forward to meet the pre-existing demands of core economies. The losses resulting from these unequal exchanges were compensated in the dependent nations with the increase in the workers’ exploitation in their internal markets. The author named it as “overexploitation of labor.” This key concept can be articulated with González intersectional critique, as we will explain in the next section, once overexploitation in Latin America has especially more intense effects on women and Black and Indigenous people.
However, these nations took advantage of moments of disorganization in the core economies, such as during wars, to promote their own peripheral industrial bases, which enabled profitability through the use of “overexploitation of labor.” In this new international division of labor, even though there is industrialization and movements around productive complexification, the dependent nations reach lower stages of industrial production, while the most advanced stages are reserved for the most advanced nations of the capitalist center. These reflections relate to those made by Dussel, as shown below, especially regarding the role of technology in the international division of labor and core-periphery inequalities.
Dos Santos (2020) distinguishes three forms of dependence. Colonial dependence is dominated by the export of in-natura products and the predominance of capital from colonizing nations. The financial-industrial era, from the 19th century onwards, is characterized by the hegemony of the central nations and the incentives for peripheral countries to produce primary products and export raw materials, which resulted in a restricted internal market—this is the second form of dependency. The third mode, technological-industrial, is operated by multinational conglomerates that set up production units in dependent nations to exploit their workforce and consumer market. In this type, dependent nations face obstacles to the acquisition and development of technologies, such as transactions in foreign currency, monopolies, and patents.
These classic studies were developed between the 1970s and 1990s, and dependency theory was not restricted to historical analysis of Latin America in this period. Several authors adopted the theoretical-methodological framework for the most recent decades. Osório (2016) considers that despite the economic growth of Latin American nations in 2000s, the most technically productive specialization remains in central nations. Anchored in Marini's work, Valencia (2017) explains the context of the 21st century as the emergence of a neo-imperialism with a neo-dependence. In this scenario, the predominance of fictitious capital of financial speculation, the US military power, the transfer of monetary and financial resources from peripheral to central nations, the acceleration of capital circulation—something that is potentiated by information and communication technologies, in a platformization context (Grohmann, 2023a). The dependency theory framework also, when looking at the particularity of Latin America, offers meaningful statements about capitalism as a whole, approaching and adding to the world-system perspective of authors such as Wallerstein (2005). They questioned the very concept of development in its evolutionary interpretation, deconstructing the foundations of a relevant part of the economic and social literature constructed in the Global North.
Dependency, datafication, and international inequalities
Dependency theory starts from a historical-structural analysis that emphasizes the role of the colonization of countries in the region to understand new forms of dependency, now no longer as territories directly controlled politically administratively, but subordinated within the scope of the world-system based on the dynamics of unequal exchanges and the overexploitation of the workforce—including in terms of data work (Posada, 2022; Lehdonvirta, 2022), which is reproduced by the internal strategies of the dominant groups in the economic, political, and cultural spheres.
These asymmetries are built by hegemonic nations, not only those located in Europe, but the United States and, recently, China. Dependent nations are a source of raw materials for the central countries, but also consumer markets for their capital goods, machinery and various products, contributing to the gains of their monopoly multinational corporations (as in Bambirra's term). Therefore, dependency theory also questions which are the meanings of development—in relation to countries and technology.
When discussing the international division of labor related to the use of digital technologies and data, the dependency theory framework confronts linear evolutionary approaches anchored in Western mainstream theories, such as Dussel and González. At the theoretical-methodological level, therefore, it is not a question of a reproduction in nations dependent on business strategies and public policies (such as innovation systems) aimed at fostering the development of digital technologies used in the Global North, as is still current in several elaborations associated with the relationship between big data and development (Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier, 2013). The criticism of this evolutionary notion of development is echoed in research on development and the gig economy in Africa (e.g. Anwar, 2018; Anwar and Graham, 2021).
Likewise, criticisms of theoretical-methodological approaches and sociopolitical ventures anchored in datafication and digital technologies—or in critical data studies—cannot be limited to those of the Global North itself, but consider the multiple and nuanced realities of the regions and countries of the Global South. Furthermore, this means not considering technologies built in the South as less developed, but in what ways digital technologies relate to those specific contexts.
In addition to questioning oppression in specific situations, although such studies are relevant, critical data studies according to this perspective should also aim at understanding the reproduction of inequalities within the world-system and how disparities between nations intensify the oppression of non-Whites, women and workers within these countries and also in the Global North, where, in its own way, racism manifests itself in different ways against non-White populations, sexism historically subjugates women to inferior conditions and ruling classes continue to exploit workers.
In an internationalist perspective, the control of technological development through monopolized and patent-protected solutions, with robust financial and public policy contributions from central nations, expresses the extremely unequal dispute between agents in central nations and dependent nations in the race to the development of digital technologies (from chips to the most sophisticated AI systems) (Smuha, 2021). However, this development in many cases depends on the exploitation of dependent nations. These countries play a fundamental role in the supply of raw materials such as lithium (exported by countries such as Bolivia and Argentina), in the manufacture of equipment (as in Samsung's factories in India), in the platform work necessary to develop and train digital systems (Rani et al., 2021; Graham and Ferrari, 2022). Marini's notion of unequal exchanges is pertinent to the explanation of these phenomena. In the same way, the proposition of the overexploitation of work also by the author can shed light on the use of precarious workforce in the Global South through digital platforms.
Dependent nations are also fundamental with their populations object of data collection as central inputs also for the implementation and improvement of such systems. Such data, as already discussed in several critical works (e.g. Couldry and Mejías, 2019), are fundamentally obtained through the massive extraction of information from people in the Global South by corporations in the Global North, in particular digital platforms and data brokers located in the United States, with a powerful data infrastructure, both in terms of data centers and submarine cables owned by platforms connected to the United States (Plantin et al., 2018). The concentration of growing parts of the digital ecosystem and activities in large oligopolistic groups that control digital platforms leads to new forms of dependence on these agents in the most diverse fields.
Thus, the promotion of data technologies in dependent nations, especially from antagonistic perspectives to oppressive relations, will always be limited without a debate about the removal of these barriers, not only as an internal effort, but as a change in power imbalances at the international level. The constitution of digital technologies and data systems that do not reproduce oppression implies looking at how multiple barriers are interposed to prevent or hinder sovereign or counter-hegemonic initiatives aimed at recognizing and valuing oppressed subjects. Thus, platform cooperativism and data commons initiatives (Scholz and Calzada, 2021) can be trapped in local, experimental dynamics, without gaining scale, or international articulation due to these barriers.
This can also be exemplified from the discussion around the idea of digital or data sovereignty (e.g. Schiavi and Silveira, 2022), which does not mean the same thing for all countries or subregions. Following Lehuede (2022), there is a discursive dispute around the notion of data sovereignty. More than that, this discursive dispute means a (geo)political dispute around data protection in certain territories, intensifying dependency dynamics. Certainly, what data sovereignty means in Germany and Chile is something very different from each other, symbolizing these unequal geopolitical dynamics in relation to data protection, storage, infrastructures, and practices. This means that the dependency theory goes beyond the observation of dependence, but opens up room to analyze ways to overcome this dependence, through the construction of technologies that favor autonomy and sovereignty of dependent countries. Thus, dependency theory is one of the possible paths to frame critical data studies with Latin America beyond the colonialism framework, as well as the perspective of Lelia Gonzalez.
Lelia Gonzalez: Oppressions and Black Latin American feminism
Lelia González (1935–1994) critical intersectional approach and her critique of racism and ethnic oppressions can enrich critical data studies in many ways. This framework can articulate with the current literature on race and technology, questioning racist reproduction, and intensification by datafied technologies, such as algorithms and AI. This conceptual framework highlights the connections between the Black Americas and Africa and can help in widening the antiracist repertoire mobilized by critical data studies, as well as qualifying the intersectional perspective beyond race, intertwining gender, class, and different dimensions of oppressions under capitalism in recent decades.
González was a Brazilian sociologist who became notable both in the field of intellectual production and in political action in the Black movement in the country in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The author is a reference in Black feminism in Brazil and in the region, having developed insightful analyzes of the oppressive relationships experienced by Black women in Brazil and expanding her formulation to an understanding of the phenomenon in Latin America, or, as she called it, Améfrica Ladina (term mixing the words Africa and Latin America).
Gonzalez elaborated her own critique of colonialism as a historical process and as Eurocentric knowledge through the Aryan model (Bernal, 1987), which reproduced ideas of superiority over colonized peoples. Still in the 1970s and 1980s (before post and decolonial frameworks), the author deconstructed the positivist evolutionism that gained notoriety in European humanities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and underlined how supposedly scientific justifications legitimized practices of violence and ethnocidal domination. According to her (Gonzalez et al., 2021), racism plays a role in internalizing the superiority of the colonizer.
The author discussed how racism manifested itself in different ways in different countries. “Open” racism was a phenomenon in countries colonized by Anglo-Saxon nations, while “veiled” racism, or racism by denial (dialoguing with the Freudian concept), occurred in countries colonized by the Iberian Peninsula. In her work, Gonzalez unveiled the myth of racial democracy and the whiteness ideology in Brazil. Racism in the country would be a “cultural neurosis,” taking the concept of neurosis as the concealment of symptoms for the preservation of benefits generated by these oppressive relationships.
The author became one of the main thinkers to emphasize the need for a Black feminism in the sense of deconstructing Black women as the object of gender, race, and class exploitations and in the affirmation of these as subjects of their experiences and discourses (Gonzalez, 2020b). She criticized the workers’ movement and left-wing parties for the absence of this understanding, but also directed her criticism at feminism hegemonized by White women and the Black movement when it reproduced sexist relations (Gonzalez, 2020a). Class oppression was also an appellant topic of reflection, noting the effects of dependent capitalism on Black women (Gonzalez, 2021). Thus, these ideas are coherent with the dependency theory approach, but deepening the understanding of the working class toward an intersectional framework.
Connecting Africa and the Americas
Gonzalez developed the “African America” (Gonzalez, 1983) concept from Bety Milan and M.D. Magno—in Spanish this is Améfrica Ladina. This conceptual framework, initially constituted aimed at explaining the Brazilian reality, was expanded from the perception of traits of the phenomenon to other areas of Améfrica Ladina, especially the Caribbean and northern South America (Gonzalez et al., 2021). 1
In articulation with this concept, she developed another notion, amefricanity (Gonzalez et al., 2021). This category expands the scope in relation to the notion of African-American, which reproduces an imperialist expression when trying to equate the United States with America (set of three continents). According to the author, the term allows overcoming territorial and ideological limits and conceives America as a whole. “The amefricanity category incorporates a whole historical process of intense cultural dynamics (adaptation, resistance, reinterpretation, and creation of new forms) that is Afrocentric” (Gonzalez et al., 2021: 140). Thus, this concept is directly related to those of Pan-Africanism and Afrocentricity. As highlighted by Henson (2021), this theory re-centers African diaspora populations’ experiences in the Americas. Thus, this framework analyzes how colonialism, racism, imperialism shape those people's lives, being also helpful to think how Black communication, and cultural practices in those regions configure themselves against hegemonic Western social ideologies.
Lelia Gonzalez highlights the specificity of this phenomenon, maintaining bridges with other segments of non-White women in the region, especially indigenous women. Despite the diverse societies of the continent, the socioeconomic oppression and exploitation systems are unified. According to the author, racism is a system of reproduction of social hierarchies and imperialism is a system that massacres the peoples of Améfrica Ladina and other continents, maintaining a neocolonial dependency (Gonzalez, 2021).
González's formulations range from the analysis of her context of Brazilian society to the examination of capitalism, reserving special attention to Latin America and its relationship with the African diaspora, placing her as a critical theorist (Rios and Klein, 2022). The author analyzed the intersection of race, gender, and class oppressions before other canons of Black feminism in the North. Nowadays, Gonzalez remains a relevant reference for articulating these to the capitalist dynamics of labor exploitation.
Intersectional critical data approaches
González's perspective opens room for a more nuanced and radical framework around critical data studies and race. This means, on the one hand, recognizing the intersectional internet (Noble and Tynes, 2016) in a global perspective from a strong articulation between class, race, and gender. Also, it means acknowledging its specificities in Latin America and its commonalities with the other margins of the Atlantic Ocean and placing the expanded regions to portrait global phenomenons. The role of datafication for the reproduction of race and gender oppressions can (and should) also consider its functionality for the reproduction of the system as a whole in the articulation of these two oppressions with class inequalities. This intersectional perspective (although the author has not used this term) can shed light on discussions about the deepening of surveillance practices and increased data extraction, functional to the control of bodies for the reproduction of these oppressions in different dimensions (in the economic, political, and social spheres). Thus, Gonzalez's work can present dialogues with the rich recent literature on the subject, such as Browne (2015), Benjamin (2019), and Steele (2021).
Data processing and mining through automated systems such as algorithms and AI reframes and amplifies such oppressions in new ways. In addition to concepts such as algorithmic racism (Ali, 2014; Silva, 2022) and gendered bias of AI (Mandal, 2021), it is important to understand in which ways the intrinsic articulation of these oppressive relationships is manifested in datafication ventures in terms of intersectionality rooted in Latin American territory. This means that the author does not deny colonialism, but reframes it based on the articulations between capitalism, racism, and sexism.
Racism and surveillance
Data extraction and monitoring of Black and nonmale bodies is also interrelated to their condition as workers, which can be related to critical data studies in several topics, from public policies to data-driven labor relations or platform labor, which complicates notions related to the so-called racial platform capitalism (Cottom, 2020; Gebrial, 2022). This intrinsic and related notion can contribute to several segments of critical data studies, from surveillance practices and expansion of data collection to the questioning of automated discrimination, passing through the impacts of these social markers of inequalities in relation to platform workers.
The sociologist's differentiation between open and veiled racism based on her dialogue with psychoanalysis is also fruitful for critical data studies. If surveillance promotes open oppression practices, such as arrests based on facial recognition, inequalities based on data and algorithms also reproduce forms of veiled racism, more subtle but equally problematic (Silva, 2022). Less explicit data and AI injustices in these systems make their identification more challenging.
The author's idea of Améfrica Ladina highlights an ethno-geographical group in the consideration of multiple particularities for the examination of phenomena in the region (more than just a unified understanding of Latin America). More than just a debate located in the region, González's Amefricanity is key to reinterpreting the Global South in its identity-difference dynamics in connections with the African diaspora. This is a providential factor for critical data studies with focus in Latin America, and the majority world broadly. This means understanding South-South dialogues and learning in relation to datafication dynamics, for understanding artificial intelligence from the majority world (Amrute et al., 2022). Thus, this framework adds and redefines the reading of society at an international level. Critical analysis cannot only take into account racialized relations in the Global North, in just a few places in the Global South, or treat Latin America (an essential part of this globalized reading) as a social and geographic unit.
Both in the case of Améfrica Ladina and in that of Black women in general, González underlines the need to recognize the condition of social beings, but not just autonomous social beings. Their character as an organic intellectual and activist reflects in his work the space given to the pertinence of the organization of oppressed groups, such as leftist parties and especially the Black movement and Black women's associations. This means recognizing the complex and nuanced dynamics of organizing, in addition to a Eurocentric literature on platform organizing and unionization (Vandaele, 2018; Woodcock, 2021). For critical data studies, such alerts can greatly add to a recognition that is already advancing in the literature on Big Data at the margins (Milan and Trere, 2022; Couldry and Mejias, 2019), but which still there is a lack of openness to the assumption of the collective dimension and organized by these subjects at different times. This occurs from resistance to datafied oppressive practices, and the construction of alternative arrangements for the construction and maintenance of systems based on or using digital technologies, as in the so-called platform cooperativism (Scholz, 2016), for instance. The political insubordination of Black feminists was well highlighted by González, as Quizumba attitudes of denouncing oppressions, and add to the reflections on the political organization of collective oppressed subjects and their appropriation of digital technologies, as pointed out by Barros (2023).
Instead of a mere “adaptation” or “tropicalization” of technologies and forms of organizing in Amefrica Ladina, there are forms of organization and construction of technologies “from below,” with their own characteristics, including re-signifying what they are, as shown by a rich history of community technologies in the region (Medina, 2011; Ochigame, 2021; Estrada and Lehuede, 2022), or community-driven technologies. In addition, Gonzalez's work also focuses on the dependent condition of Latin America, subject to the effects of imperialism strategies for reproducing inequalities at the international level based on the movements of the nations of the Global North. This is a commonality also with the dependency theory. This implies understanding how datafication dynamics go through processes of imperialism and dependence, not only in institutional dynamics (Nieborg et al., 2020), but in the very power relations and inequalities between countries in terms of data infrastructure control (Plantin et al., 2018).
Thus, we can summarize Lelia Gonzalez's contributions to critical data studies as looking at different forms of oppression and inequalities through data and digital technologies, including the role of both race, gender, and class—including workers’ organizing—and colonialism, in a perspective of overcoming the current context from the Amefrica Ladina.
Enrique Dussel: Ethics of human life and the philosophy of liberation
Enrique Dussel, as another example of critical data studies with Latin America, articulates the critique of coloniality and of imperialism and dependency toward a re-evaluation of Western pivotal social thought into a new framework focused on the people subject to systems of oppression. His reflections can qualify the decolonial questioning in critical data studies as well as enrich the radicality in the field re-centering the pivotal role of the oppressed in its multiple dimensions, which need to be more intensely considered in critical data scholarship. Moreover, the author offers its own alternative project focused on the philosophy, politics, and ethics of liberation, which can open new paths to structural transformation projects associated with datafied practices and experiences.
An Argentinean philosopher, Dussel elaborates his particular critique of Eurocentrism and its concomitant component, the developmentalist fallacy and the idea of “civilization.” These conceptions enshrine “the imperial power of the North and the Center over the South, the Periphery, the former colonial and dependent world” (Dussel, 1994: 27). The “discovery” expeditions of the world led by European nations from the end of the 15th century produced a “coverup” of the invaded and dominated continents: the Americas, but also Africa and Asia. Modernity as a theoretical framework would be a myth of justification of relations of domination over others, instead of a process of recognition of these (Dussel, 1994).
Drawing from his theoretical-methodological framework, Dussel (1988) proceeded with a specific examination of technology. Dialoguing with Marx, the author (Dussel, 1988) proposes a theory of technology structured in two movements. The first one, from the abstract moment to the concrete totality. The second one, from this to an explained concrete, after a critical abstraction and analysis of the material processes. The first moment of technology is what it is “in itself” (that of the engineer and the technologist, in which technology presents itself as an “abstract essence”). In a second moment, technology manifests itself as a work tool, as part of a whole. In the third moment, technology appears as capital, integrated into the whole, considering the historicity of the world-system and the relations of oppression and exploitation.
Technology plays a role of “material conditioning of the economy, of the totality of society” (Dussel, 1988: 50) and appears as a “material power of capital itself.” This means a theorization of technology as a concrete totality from a Latin American context. The analysis of technology as capital at the most concrete level implies a look at the world market, “the concrete frame of all consideration of the real totality in the last instance” (Dussel, 1988: 67), which encompasses the totality of competition and capitalist circuits. Dussel highlights the structuring inequality of dependence processes between center and periphery of capitalism. This perspective relates to the critiques of imperialism from González and the dependency theory key concepts.
Philosophy and ethics of liberation
The author also does this critique in the philosophy studies (Dussel, 2000). He locates philosophy and ethics of liberation, and an ethics of human life as an alternative. In this context, he adopts the perspective of the victims (recognized as ethical subjects) of the analyzed system, a “judgment that proceeds from the reality of the victims’ denied life, in reference to the ontological totality of a given system of ethics” (Dussel, 2000: 304).
The author's ethics of liberation, starts from empirical facts of the dimension of a material ethics and involves a movement of antihegemonic intersubjective relationship between the victims to acquire critical conscience and aims to foment it in the other victims and those who can sympathize with them, creating “co-llaboration” and “co-responsibility,” in a process of progressive ethical-critical awareness. The victims (slaves, indigenous people, workers, women, non-White people) must be recognized as social beings of this transforming praxis. But this does not imply a perspective analogous to postmodernity of denial of universality, but of affirmation of a universality of ethical-critical reason and life (Dussel, 2000).
This transformative force draws from the recognition of the culture and force of the excluded and occurs on the interruption by the victims seen as the “others” interruption of the center's system of power. The aimed liberation (and its politics, ethics and philosophy) is expressed in its praxis in a transmodern pluriverse, in opposition to Western claims of universality (Dussel, 2018). This framework affirms and values the culture and experience negated and puts in a condition of exteriority to the Western Modernity project. The “trans-modern utopia” “represents a strategy for the growth and creativity of a renovated culture, which is not merely decolonized, but is moreover entirely new” (Dussel, 2018: 59).
Philosophy of liberation and critical data studies
Dussel emphasizes the role of critical awareness, linking contributions from several authors. This is a philosophical basis for the examination of oppressions and exploitation under capitalism discussed above and which is related to datafication and digital technologies. The Argentinian philosopher puts in the foreground what he calls “victims of the system.” He highlights central oppressions, such as those of class, race, and gender, as in González, and spreads out the concern of priority subjects and actors toward a progressive ethical-critical awareness. Under this logic, critical data studies should broaden their inquiries about who are the victims and what impacts they suffer from the increasing datafication of life.
In his dialectic turn from the negative moment of criticism, the author proposes his ethics and philosophy of liberation in an original way. This means freeing the subjects, the victims, toward a new sociability of respect for dignity, of “co-llaboration” and “co-responsibility,” with an ethical-critical conscience. Thus, liberation takes on different dimensions and projects according to the dynamics of oppression present in each empirical unit. This can be of segments, countries, or regions (when talking about a liberation of Latin America) or in a collective movement on a larger scale.
In critical data studies, liberation can be thought of in the most varied topics where asymmetries of power, exploitation, and oppression are identified toward data justice and a buen vivir with data (Milan and Trere, 2022). Liberation assumes the imaginary condition of radical transformations in respect for human dignity in its ways of protecting and asserting rights (such as privacy and data protection, digital sovereignty, communication, freedom of expression). This theoretical framework poses new challenges for rethinking digital technologies as producers of so-called digital rights. Furthermore, it also connects these rights to the construction of alternatives in society. The perspective of liberation means overcoming the current social and technological model for building initiatives in the ethics of human life, which can incorporate perspectives such as indigenous data, community networks (Estrada and Lehuede, 2022), worker-owned technologies (Grohmann, 2023b), and informatics of the oppressed (Ochigame, 2021). Thus, this means imagining digital technologies and data toward a commons perspective based on Latin American territories and their practices. Therefore, ethics and politics are embedded in technologies, and this ethics of liberation is a value to be addressed toward data and design justice (Constanza Chock, 2020).
Thus, Dussel framework on liberation allows us a more nuanced view of the role of technology in relation to capitalism and the various inequalities and their victims, as well as ways of overcoming these inequalities toward liberation. The concept of liberation proposes a radical alternative, centered in the oppressed people and in ways of building just and rights-based social relations. It goes beyond decolonizing or deconstructing domination practices, or only incorporating past perspectives, but draws from the social praxis of the oppressed to reconfigure the social relations into new forms.
Discussion
The article presented, through three Latin American perspectives from the 20th century, how the region's long and rich history of social thought is strongly connected with ongoing debates regarding critical data studies from the North. This Latin American literature is not frequently cited in critical data studies, and also evidence that the datafication debate in Latin America goes beyond the framework of data colonialism. This means valuing the rich history of social thought in the region, in order to understand nuances of datafication in Latin America and beyond, recognizing both the role of dependence and oppression and researching paths toward autonomy and liberation. 2
The three perspectives presented are some examples of how to pursue critical data scholarship together with Latin America, valuing theories from the past in order to understand the current state of datafication. The following Table 1 summarizes the main concepts and relationships with critical data studies from each of the authors, highlighting their contribution to scholarship.
Latin american thought and critical data studies.
Source: Authors.
The authors address different aspects of society, from the characterization of the oppressions constituting capitalism to the ethical-social projects to overcome them, passing through a profound critique of the essential dynamics of reproduction of the system's inequalities at different levels, of the relations of exploitation and oppression common to their different backgrounds to the asymmetries at the international level. The approaches can be articulated in an insightful critical analytical toolbox valid not only to examine the reality of Latin America but to discuss society as a whole. These ideas start from questioning Western ideological, political, and economic domination in the capitalist world-system, through processes such as colonization, coloniality, and dependency, through systems of oppression and exploitation based on class, gender, and race, and reproducing and amplifying asymmetries on international, regional, and national levels.
These approaches improve complexity and nuance in the theoretical possibilities for understanding Big Data and AI not only in Latin America and in an international perspective. There are commonalities between the authors and perspectives, such as the recognition of Latin America as a continent that produces knowledge and technologies, and also the persistent internal and external inequalities, of the most varied orders, with class dynamics and capitalism playing a central role in their theories. Furthermore, there is recognition that dependency and colonialism dynamics are some of the keys, but not the only ones, to explain technologies in a Latin American context. Another common effort is not only to analyze Latin American society, but to seek ways to overcome inequalities and build alternatives. All perspectives present theoretical possibilities on how to build forms of technologies “from below,” considering forms of liberation and to overcome persistent dependency.
The approaches discussed contribute to shed light into datafication as processes immersed in the international division of labor—and is also driven by it—and on different levels, with the reproduction of different forms of dependency and inequalities. These technical devices are the result of dialectical relationships in which they are shaped by social vectors, by elements of technological development and, once constituted, impact society, in what Valente (2021) named as “technological regulation,” a process in which development technology must be seen dialectically from the influence of the interests of the capitalist system and its dominant groups (technology regulation by society), incorporated into the contents of technical artifacts that, once constituted, shape social relations, and deepen power relations (society regulation by technology). Digital systems developed in the Global North are designed and implemented based on the legitimizing ideology of their alleged conditions of superiority both in terms of the inheritances and continuities of the colonial project and the strategies for maintaining dependency relationships. Datafication, therefore, should also be problematized as a feedback loop for the evolutionary conception of development, or as the materialization of ideologies and infrastructures related to the world-system, in its dominant conceptions, such as Amrute and Murillo (2020) theorized in relation to computing.
The incorporation of these references collaborates to broaden the horizon of understanding the reasons and forms of datafication as an enterprise of the Global North, its nations and the ruling classes within it—which also dispute the leadership of these processes. The replacement of explanation and the multiplicity of human thought by the correlations offered by automated systems generates a homogenization that spreads explanatory models of the developers of these systems to increasingly more territories, making dependent nations, and oppressed groups invisible within them. As Marwick (2017) states, the Silicon Valley ideology is not a place, but a system of practices and beliefs normalized from a US-centric platform discourse. If the interpretation of the world from the point of view of Europe and the United States over the past few centuries is a central element of the criticism of post-anticolonial knowledge, in the 21st century these visions are materialized and crystallized in codes, formulas, and technologies. Thus, both the meanings of technologies and scholarship should be decentralized, close to Davis and Xiao's (2021) call for a de-westernization of data and platform studies—still very US-centric. Dependency theory, therefore, can add to the questioning effort of critical data studies, but it can also expand it by adding its explanatory keys, in relation to its political and epistemic horizons.
The authors address different aspects of society, from the characterization of the oppressions constituting capitalism to the ethical-social projects to overcome them, passing through a profound critique of the essential dynamics of reproduction of the system's inequalities at different levels, of the relations of exploitation and oppression common to their different backgrounds to the asymmetries at the international level. The approaches can be articulated in an insightful critical analytical toolbox valid not only to examine the reality of Latin America but to discuss society as a whole. These ideas start from questioning Western ideological, political, and economic domination in the capitalist world-system, through processes such as colonization, coloniality, and dependency, through systems of oppression and exploitation based on class, gender, and race, and reproducing and amplifying asymmetries on international, regional, and national levels. But, importantly, all of these approaches address alternatives regarding liberation, or how to build technologies from below, considering the victims points of view—following the Dussel approach, for instance. This means a dialectical and nonfatalistic view of technologies, which are located between dependencies, oppressions, and possibilities for liberation. Thus, instead of merely importing technological alternatives from the North, these theoretical frameworks encourage us to understand how we can understand technological reappropriations based on values such as liberation, autonomy, and sovereignty.
Lessons
Drawing from the ideas presented in this article, we can summarize some thesis toward how to theorize critical data studies with Latin America. First, it is highly necessary to better understand how datafication is shaped and influences systems of oppression and exploitation in a dialectic relation, as mentioned above in many examples. Inspired by these authors (and also by Paulo Freire), this can mean understanding how oppressed people can re-frame datafication in their own ways, which involves both datafication practices affecting the oppressed and exploited as well as datafied practices by those populations. This approach implies giving centrality to those social groups (as Dussel's “other” or “victims of the system”) and of the system on different levels: (1) as data social beings, (2) as victims of datafied oppression practices, (3) as susceptible to surveillance and data extraction, (4) as producers of knowledge and technologies, and (5) as political actors in the context of political disputes around technological regulation.
Second, the oppressed and exploited people are shaped by social inequalities under capitalism, especially class, gender and race, among others, as the authors highlight. The intersectionality (González) or the diversity of the “victims of the system” (Dussel) is key to deepening how datafied oppressions affect people based on those structural markers, both in “open” or “veiled” forms (González). While the critical data studies literature has been paying increasing attention to each aspect or even the combination of part of them, especially gender and race (such as in feminist data studies or through algorithmic racism concept), an intersectional approach to data studies is crucial to a comprehensive explanation of those systems (dialoguing with class perspective, more present in platform labor studies). Therefore, analyzing datafied systems of oppression and exploitation demands assessing the intertwining of these impacts on these inequalities.
Third, acknowledging the centrality of the oppressed and exploited people signifies treating them as the subject of knowledge, political, and ethical projects and technologies, as pointed out above. This assumption reinforces the decolonial critique of the Western universal narratives aimed at justifying the systems of oppression and exploitation. Therefore, as the authors discussed in this article, there are alternative views, narratives and practices related to datafication that need to gain more visibility in the critical data scholarship. This means considering the pluriversality (Dussel) of views and epistemologies in a “trans-modernity” (Dussel), emphasizing the periphery and the oppressed and exploited people, and not only de-westernizing the reflections.
Fourth, those systems of oppression and exploitation are neither abstract nor hyper-localized phenomena, but are shaped and influence the world-system, producing specific international asymmetries in which colonization is complemented and reconfigured by dependence relations in the periphery. As mentioned above, these assumptions bring out the need to comprehend how the international division of datafied labor and technologies was developed and how they reproduce dependent relations among nations and how this affects specifically the oppressed people in each part. As discussed in the article, the Latin American landscape has particular perverse forms of dependency, which limit the conditions of the region to develop its own digital technologies and to expand them in the world market (Dussel). Dependency not only creates obstacles in the competition field but fosters the overexploitation of workers, which usually impacts more intensely female non-White workers (again coming back to González's intersectionality).
Fifth, the oppressed people as subjects of knowledge and datafication practices also produce not only resistance and resilience by social movements (as Gonzalez emphasizes in union, women, and Black movements) but alternative projects from this “exteriority” (Dussel). As Dussel (2018) stated, it is a renovated culture not only decolonized, but entirely new one. This project is synthesized by the author's philosophical and political project of liberation, which relates directly to Gonzalez's and dependency theorists’ claims. A radical critical data framework can move from “data practices” to “data praxis,” or, incorporating Dussel's framework, a “data praxis of liberation.” This project can be understood as a reflexive collective critical awareness-based and liberation-oriented strategy toward the structural transformation of datafied systems of oppression and exploitation under capitalism. Basically, what these different perspectives presented have in common is a radical perspective for relationships between technologies and society that can be useful for critical data studies with Latin America.
The article has limitations because it has only three theoretical perspectives among several possible ones in Latin America, but with the objective of presenting an explanation of its theoretical foundations without falling into a lateral or peripheral explanation. The effort to de-Westernize critical data studies and present Latin American perspectives also means challenging the rigid Anglo-Saxon notions of what a journal article means, and go toward theories also from the South. Thus, critical data studies with Latin America are not just reflections of concepts coming from the North, with specific empirical examples, but they present a social and technological history that must be learned and apprehended by researchers from the South and the North, and no longer erased, silenced, or exoticized. This learning is essential for the construction of critical data studies that are truly less unequal and more diverse.
The perspectives presented here open paths for Latin American critical data studies beyond data colonialism framework. This does not mean that colonialism is not an important approach. On the contrary, we argue that it cannot be taken as the only theoretical perspective to understand datafication in the region. We highlight how the dependence, liberation, and oppression frameworks contribute to a more nuanced and diverse view of critical data studies in the region.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
