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Abstract

In recent years, critical data studies from the Global South have gained traction, generating debates on power, knowledge production, and the politics of data. While these discussions challenge universalist frameworks, they also risk essentializing the ‘Global South’, requiring a more nuanced approach. This special issue centres Latin America as a site of theoretical, methodological, and empirical inquiry, highlighting its potential to generate new insights into datafication, power, and artificial intelligence. Rather than treating Latin America as a passive recipient of Global North theories, this issue foregrounds its epistemological and methodological contributions to global debates. Engaging with frameworks such as capitalism, coloniality, and dependency theory, the articles explore the region's heterogeneity and intellectual traditions in social sciences, humanities, and science and technology studies. This introduction proposes a research agenda for Latin American critical data studies – one that reflects historical legacies while envisioning possible data futures through interdisciplinary and critical engagement. It interrogates the politics of knowledge production, emphasizing the need for non-extractive, dialogical approaches to studying data in, from, and with Latin America. By centering Latin American scholarship and experiences, this special issue challenges dominant narratives in critical data studies and offers alternative theoretical perspectives that are globally informed yet locally grounded.

Keywords

Latin America critical data studies data work dependency sovereignty

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 data studies from the Global South/Majority World have gained significant traction, generating important debates on power, knowledge production, and the politics of data. These discussions have underscored the need to move beyond universalist frameworks that often obscure regional specificities. However, they also risk essentializing concepts of Global South and Majority World, necessitating a more nuanced and complex engagement with these regions. This special issue focuses on Latin America as a site of theoretical, methodological, and empirical inquiry in critical data studies, emphasizing the region's potential to generate new insights into datafication, power, and artificial intelligence (AI).

While numerous scholars have examined data-related issues in Latin America, there remains significant room for expanding our understanding of the intersections between capitalism, colonialism/coloniality, intersectionality, and other critical approaches in/from/with the region. Rather than treating Latin America as merely a site for the ‘local application’ of theories developed in the Global North, this special issue foregrounds the theoretical, epistemological, and methodological contributions that Latin American scholarship can offer to global debates. Through an interdisciplinary lens, we explore both the region's specificities and its commonalities with broader critical data studies discussions. What alternative frameworks and perspectives emerge when examining critical data studies from Latin America? How can bridges be built between Latin American scholarship and other critical traditions worldwide?

This special theme collection does not claim to encompass the full breadth of critical data studies scholarship in and from Latin America. Rather, it offers a selective glimpse into the field's richness and diversity. One key takeaway is the heterogeneity of Latin American critical data studies–not only in terms of field sites and subjects but also in its epistemological, theoretical, and methodological traditions. The region has a long and dynamic history of social thought, spanning the social sciences, humanities, and Latin American science and technology studies (STSs), alongside technological practices and policies shaped by collectivities and social movements. In this introduction, I propose a research agenda for Latin American critical data studies that addresses epistemological, theoretical, and methodological concerns. This agenda both reflects and critically rethinks historical legacies while envisioning the possibilities – and impossibilities – of future data landscapes.

What is critical in data studies?

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of terms such as ‘critical data studies’, ‘critical platform studies’, and ‘critical AI studies’. But what does the term critical truly signify? Some interpret it in the narrower tradition of the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer and Adorno, 2002), while others see it as an all-encompassing label – one that risks becoming an ‘empty signifier’ (Gandini, 2021). The meaning of critical is always context-dependent. Following Verdegem (2021), I advocate for an operational definition of critical data studies – one that clarifies both what critical entails and how data should be understood – and, in the next section, I will provide more context for the Latin American landscape. In academic spaces where researchers share similar perspectives, it is easy to lose sight of the broader landscape. The dominant conceptualizations of data, platforms, and AI are largely shaped by industry and research agendas that reinforce their values, sustaining intellectual monopolies (Rikap, 2024). These expressions are not confined to a single scholarly community; rather, they are sites of ongoing struggles over meaning. This contestation takes place in a broader context where even terms such as sovereignty are being co-opted by major technology corporations (Grohmann and Barbosa, 2024). A critical perspective must interrogate power relations, injustices, and inequalities, engaging with issues of governmentality, neoliberalism, gender, labour, regulation, and environmental concerns, while also critically examining concepts such as colonialism, sovereignty, and the social good – and, in the next section, I will provide more information on how Latin American scholarship have been dealing with some of these topics. Therefore, it is crucial for critical scholarship to actively interrogate the discourses surrounding key concepts such as AI and governance. Their epistemological and historical foundations may not align with the intentions of critical scholarship, necessitating a deeper engagement that challenges dominant narratives and uncovers underlying power structures.

This operational and relational definition of what it means to be critical also applies to our understanding of data within critical data studies. Data are not free-floating entities; rather, they exist in constant interaction with institutions, cultures, and broader socio-technical systems. In the context of datafication – broadly defined as ‘the implications of algorithmically driven digital transformations for both social processes and human experiences of subjectivity’ (Morales and Reilly, 2023: 2457) – data-related mechanisms are invariably entangled with platforms, algorithms, automation, and AI (Ricaurte, 2022). Thus, while the focus may be on data, they are embedded in complex networks of relationships with other phenomena and concepts. This perspective also demands a contextual and relational approach to data, both in spatial terms – territorial, local – and in temporal dimensions. It calls for a comprehensive understanding of the long history of datafication (Chan, 2025), avoiding a presentist analysis that frames data's impact as entirely novel. Instead, a comprehensive and critical perspective on data values the histories, labour, and communities behind data (d’Alva and Paraná, 2024; Hicks, 2019; Siles, Gómez-Cruz & Ricaurte, 2023), including their data imaginaries, practices, and communities.

What, then, is distinctive about Latin American critical data studies? Rather than adopting a scholastic definition based on disciplinary or departmental classifications rooted in the Global North – such as those found in area studies – understanding Latin American critical data studies requires recognizing the region not merely as a field site but as a diverse and dynamic space for knowledge production and circulation. In other words, this challenges the notion that universal theories and concepts – typically originating from the Global North – can simply be applied in Latin America through a process of ‘tropicalization’ (Gómez-Cruz et al., 2023; Grohmann, 2023). Instead, concepts must be critically engaged with, adapted, and grounded in local contexts, ensuring their explanatory power is shaped by the region's specific histories, structures, and social dynamics.

Latin America is neither monolithic nor an exception: Knowledge production in global dynamics

Latin America is not a monolithic entity; it is plural, shaped by diverse, unequal, and often contradictory realities. Any attempt to essentialize or crystallize the region into a single analytical framework would be insufficient. For instance, I am from a small town between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, in southeastern Brazil. The realities I experienced there differ significantly from those of communities in the Amazon region – where distances can be as vast as crossing the entirety of Europe. A critical perspective in data studies must resist essentializing Latin America, rejecting homogenizing narratives in favour of a more nuanced and contextually grounded understanding, including perspectives ‘from below’ (Gago, 2017). This also entails adopting a ‘fluid approach to the study of agency’ (Siles, Gómez-Cruz and Ricaurte, 2024: 1025), one that acknowledges tensions, transversalities, and resists binary frameworks. Moreover, local elites in the region often reproduce internal mechanisms of exploitation, domination, and oppression – both within individual countries and across the region through sub-imperialist dynamics (Seto, 2024). This reinforces existing power asymmetries and calls for a critical perspective that not only interrogates external influences but also examines internal structures of inequality and control. Thus, rather than imposing rigid and normative categorizations, this perspective embraces the complexities and intersections that shape data, technology, and power in the region.

Another key issue with an essentialist and homogenizing perspective on Latin America is exceptionalism. The region's phenomena and perspectives are neither exotic nor disconnected from broader global realities. Instead, understanding Latin America requires viewing the local and global as dialectical, interconnected, and complex dimensions. While Latin America has its own internal particularities, it is also embedded in global dynamics of the international division of labour, geopolitical relations, and specific frameworks of dependency and development (Valente and Grohmann, 2024). For instance, for many years, dominant accounts of Latin American dictatorships in the 1960s and 1970s failed to acknowledge their broader connections to the Cold War and U.S. interventionism within the context of imperialism (Grandin, 2011). Similarly, Latin America has often been used as a testing ground for capital and empire. A clear example is the implementation of neoliberal policies in Chile following Augusto Pinochet's coup, orchestrated by the Chicago Boys (Biglaiser, 2002), which later spread across the region (Gago, 2017). These patterns also extend to the rise of the far right in Latin America (Pinheiro-Machado and Vargas-Maia, 2023), showing how political, economic, and ideological shifts in the region often serve as precursors to broader global transformations. Paulo Arantes (2023), for instance, has examined Brazil as a laboratory of neoliberal globalization, describing a process he terms the ‘Brazilianization of the world’, where socio-political trends originating in Latin America progressively influence other parts of the globe.

This underscores the importance of rejecting exceptionalist narratives and recognizing the region's entanglement in transnational and historical processes. Furthermore, this can facilitate other forms of South-South collaboration and exchanges (Ong et al., 2024). Therefore, rejecting this exceptionalism means recognizing that Latin America is not isolated from the rest of the world but deeply embedded within it, with global power relations. The region is not an exception but an integral part of global dynamics, capable of engaging with and contributing to critical data studies worldwide. This is particularly relevant for approaches that embrace dialogical, comprehensive, and contextually grounded perspectives on data (e.g. Cowan and Rault, 2024).

This is closely tied to the politics of knowledge production and circulation (Albuquerque, 2024) and how these dynamics contribute to Latin America's structural inequalities – particularly in terms of language (Suzina, 2021) and epistemic sovereignty (Albuquerque, 2021; Oliveira and Pinto, 2024). For instance, Latin America has been a pioneer in open science policies that extend beyond the Western-centric open access model, which remains dominated by large commercial publishing conglomerates (Chan et al., 2020; Oliveira et al., 2021; Rikap and Naidrof, 2020). The region has also led efforts in developing data infrastructures and fostering regional circuits of scientific exchange (Oliveira et al., 2021). However, significant barriers persist in facilitating dialogue between Latin American research and Anglophone academic circuits. One key challenge is the underrepresentation of scholars from the region on editorial boards of major journals (Albuquerque et al., 2020).

As a result, many research contributions, concepts, and theoretical developments originating in Latin America since the 20th century remain largely unknown outside the region – either because they have never been translated into English or have only recently begun to receive international recognition. A striking example is the work of Brazilian philosopher Álvaro Vieira Pinto, who was a professor to Paulo Freire. In the 1970s, Vieira Pinto (2005) published a book on the concept of technology from a Brazilian perspective, critically challenging dominant cybernetic theories and the ideas of scholars such as Marshall McLuhan. Yet, his work has never been translated into English (Grohmann, 2016), illustrating how linguistic and epistemic barriers continue to limit the global reach of Latin American scholarship.

The co-optation and extractivism of concepts originating from Latin America – often without proper recognition – are symptomatic of how knowledge production and circulation systems within Western-centric scholarly environments tend to privilege ‘parachute relationships’ (Ong et al., 2024) with other parts of the world. These dynamics also manifest in so-called ‘global projects’ that fail to meaningfully land in the places where research is conducted. As a result, contributions from communities and scholars outside dominant academic centres are often erased or rendered invisible, reinforcing asymmetrical knowledge hierarchies. This lack of careful engagement with local contexts not only distorts the realities being studied but also perpetuates epistemic marginalization. For instance, as my colleagues and I argued in a critical review of a book that claims to offer a global perspective on platform cooperativism, such projects frequently overlook the knowledge and lived experiences of researchers and communities in the Majority World (Barbosa et al., 2024). Scholars such as Cowan and Rault (2024) and Hossein (2024) argue for the explicit recognition of research communities as a matter of citational justice and as part of broader practices and politics of knowledge circulation and production.

In alignment with Gómez-Cruz et al. (2023), critical data studies should not only take place ‘in’ Latin America, as a site of research, but also emerge ‘from’ and ‘with’ Latin America (Amrute and Murillo, 2020). This means engaging in meaningful dialogue – in the strong Freirean sense (Freire, 2000) – with scholars and communities from the region in ways that emphasize bilateral, non-extractive collaborations. In other words, this is an invitation for scholars from various parts of the world to actively engage with Latin America's rich and longstanding intellectual traditions on society, technology, and data. This approach calls for the co-production of knowledge with Latin American scholars and communities, fostering more equitable and dialogical exchanges (Valente and Grohmann, 2024).

Thinking epistemologically and methodologically with Latin America

Epistemological and methodological frameworks for critically analysing data in, from, and with Latin America are diverse, each offering distinct explanatory potentials and limitations. The most widely disseminated perspectives are grounded in theories of colonialism, coloniality, and decoloniality (e.g. Faustino and Lippold, 2023; Ricaurte, 2019). These studies collectively examine how data regimes sustain historical structures around the coloniality of power and knowledge, reinforcing global inequalities and limiting the agency of Latin American communities. Key concepts such as extractivism (Posada, 2022b) and body-territory (Tait, Peron and Suárez, 2022) are essential to this framework, highlighting the material and embodied dimensions of data colonialism, as well as its intersections with race. Moreover, in a context where decoloniality risks being co-opted as an academic fetish, these perspectives underscore that decolonization is not merely a metaphor (Tuck and Yang, 2012). As Milan and Treré (2024) argue, it is essential to resist the reduction of decoloniality to a superficial discursive trend and instead position it as a transformative praxis within data politics, aligned with epistemic justice.

Another perspective comes from the various strands of dependency theory, which have been deeply rooted in Latin American social thought since the 1970s (Ahumada and Torres, 2024). Critical data studies worldwide have increasingly emphasized how individuals and institutions experience growing dependence on digital infrastructures and platforms (e.g. Poell, Nieborg and Duffy, 2021). Additionally, a growing body of research (e.g. Crawford, 2021) highlights how AI relies on human labour, data, and infrastructure – particularly through the work of data labourers across the globe (Casilli, 2025; Muldoon, Graham and Cant, 2024; Posada, 2022a). However, existing scholarship still tends to overlook the deeper economic and political implications of these dependencies or fails to interrogate which underlying dependency theories inform critical data studies when addressing this issue. As Valente and Grohmann (2024) argue, Marxist dependency theory, with its specific focus on Latin America, can provide a valuable framework for understanding how dependent capitalism – within the datafication landscape – operates in the region. This includes analysing mechanisms of super-exploitation, unequal exchange, and developmental asymmetries between nations. Since Trotsky (1932), we have known that historical development is fundamentally unequal and combined. However, Marxist dependency theory allows for a more specific understanding of Latin America's role in these global dynamics. For Latin American critical data studies, this means examining the region's position within the global data economy and AI production networks, particularly in relation to AI supply and value chains. Latin America increasingly functions as a provider of cheap labour for data work (Miceli 2023), supplying human annotation and moderation for large language models (LLMs) and generative AI products developed in the Global North (Grohmann and Araújo, 2021; Posada, 2024; Tubaro et al., 2025). If global AI production networks reinforce imperialist dynamics, it is also essential to consider, as Seto (2024) highlights, the internal inequalities within Latin America itself – particularly the role of sub-imperialism in shaping regional data economies and the emergence of data sub-imperialism as a key mechanism of control and exploitation.

In the dimension of everyday life, Latin American critical data studies offer valuable insights into concepts such as informality. As Grohmann et al. (2022) demonstrate, data work in the region is deeply connected to the historical prevalence of informal labour, including the role of resellers – from beauty products (Abílio, 2011) to social media accounts. In Latin America, as in many Majority World countries such as China (Zhang, 2023), the term gig economy is somewhat inadequate, as gig work has historically been the norm rather than an exception (Grohmann and Qiu, 2020). In other words, these economies have been shaped by gig-like structures as a core feature of labour markets rather than as a recent disruption. Thus, Latin American studies can contribute to moving beyond binary distinctions between formal and informal labour by engaging with concepts such as viração, a vernacular term theorized in the 2000s, following the work of Brazilian sociologist Francisco de Oliveira (2003) and later developed by Rizek (2006) based on workers’ lived experiences. Viração refers to a constant mobility between contingent activities shaped by instability and precarity, as well as between legal and illegal work (Silva, 2011: 59). It reflects a permanent movement between formal and informal employment, family based enterprises, and activities that are poorly recognized as labour (Abílio, 2021: 22). These movements have been updated in the data economy (Posada, 2024). Engaging with concepts such as viração also helps Latin American critical data studies avoid exceptionalist framings and instead situate informal and precarious labour as part of broader global patterns of work, while recognizing their specific historical and structural dynamics in the region.

Still within the dynamics between data and everyday life, the foundational work of Jesús Martín-Barbero (1993) on mediations – a central concept in Latin American media and cultural studies – offers valuable insights for critical data studies, as demonstrated by Couldry (2023), Morales (2024), and Winques (2024). Martín-Barbero's framework shifts the focus from media effects to the active role of people in meaning-making, highlighting how audiences do not passively receive media but rather engage in complex processes of negotiation, adaptation, and resistance. Applied to critical data studies, this perspective allows for an understanding not only of what data do to people but, more importantly, of what people do with data – how they use, consume, and critically reappropriate data in their everyday lives (Siles, 2023). Data practices are not linear but are deeply intertwined with the cultural values of communities, shaping rituals, social interactions, and identity formation. Additionally, Martín-Barbero's concept of mediations can provide a useful lens for understanding data literacies in Latin America, emphasizing the localized ways in which people engage with, interpret, and navigate data infrastructures in ways that reflect their specific social and historical contexts.

Latin America has a long history of technological innovation (Beltrán, 2020; Medina, 2014; Medina, Marques and Holmes, 2014; Murillo, 2025; Ochigame, 2021; Palmarola, Medina and Alonso, 2023; Ricaurte, 2021; Rosa, 2022; Shokoo Valle, 2023), shaped by creative, community-driven approaches that differ from dominant global models. These innovations have been developed and circulated in ways deeply embedded in local needs, as seen in a number of cases such as Project Cybersyn in Chile, hacker communities in Brazil, Cuban information science, and community networks across the region. This trajectory aligns with what Dagnino (2019) conceptualizes as social technology and solidarity technoscience, which emphasize collective and cooperative approaches to technological development. Similar principles have historically shaped community-centred economic models, such as solidarity economies (Singer, 2006) and worker-recovered factories (Vieta and Heras, 2022), which are now being reinterpreted through digital solidarity economies (Grohmann, 2023; Rubim and Milanez, 2024). These experiences offer valuable insights for critical data studies with/from Latin America, particularly in data infrastructures, economies, and practices beyond dominant paradigms.

Some key concepts in this discussion are sovereignty and autonomy, particularly in relation to technologies and data. Lehuedé (2024) examines how a decolonial Latin American perspective on sovereignty, grounded in civil society, can provide a viable alternative to dominant debates on digital sovereignty and its multiple definitions (Couture and Toupin, 2019; Grohmann and Barbosa, 2024). This perspective, framed as digital sovereignty from below (Couture, Toupin and Mayoral Banos, 2025; Lehuedé, 2024), highlights the role of communities, social movements, and workers in constructing and theorizing digital/data sovereignty based on their own needs and experiences (Ricaurte and Grohmann, 2021).

Community-led initiatives and experiences have also contributed to this debate. For example, Brazil's Homeless Workers Movement (MTST, 2023) launched a primer on digital sovereignty, developed through its tech sector, advocating for popular digital sovereignty. This approach emphasizes collective organizing aimed at developing, subverting, democratizing, and controlling infrastructures and technologies to serve the working class (MTST, 2023; Salvagni, Grohmann and Silva, 2024). Other studies have explored the importance of statistical sovereignty (d’Alva and Paraná, 2024), epistemic sovereignty (Oliveira and Pinto, 2024), and the role of national sovereignty in shaping AI governance in Latin America (Figaro and Paulino, 2024; Seto, 2025). These discussions underscore the need for sovereignty frameworks that are rooted in the region's specific political and technological realities. Similarly, the concept of autonomy – especially collective autonomy – has been central to imagining alternatives in Latin American data contexts. Research has highlighted its relevance in Chile (Lehuedé, 2021) and in projects inspired by Zapatismo (Bosoer, 2022), where autonomy is linked to self-determination, technological self-governance, and resistance to digital enclosures. Together, the notions of sovereignty and autonomy offer crucial frameworks for rethinking how data infrastructures and technologies can be reclaimed, restructured, and controlled by the communities that generate and depend on them.

Finally, Latin American critical data studies offer valuable methodological insights, not only in terms of research techniques but, more importantly, in rethinking research processes in ways that prioritize non-extractive relationships with the communities involved. One key approach is the tradition of participatory action research (PAR) (Medrado and Verdegem, 2024), which is informed by critical pedagogies, everyday lifes of communities. This approach emphasizes sentipensante frameworks – a concept developed by Fals Borda (2003) and further explored by Medrado and Verdegem (2024) – which rejects the separation between rationality and emotions, integrating knowledge and lived experiences into research. This approach is closely tied to an engaged academic commitment to social justice. Other methodological innovations draw from the arts, such as data artivism (Suárez Val et al., 2023), which merges data activism and artistic practices as a way to critically engage with data. Similarly, artistic methodologies can be used to imagine alternative data futures, as explored by Moreschi and Pereira (2021). These approaches open up new ways to rethink policy-oriented and community-oriented research within critical data studies in and from Latin America, fostering more inclusive, participatory, and contextually grounded methodologies. These methodological and epistemological possibilities represent just a few among many emerging pathways for developing scholarship on critical data studies in the region.

This special theme collection

This special theme collection presents nine articles that further develop some of the perspectives outlined here in relation to Latin American critical data studies. As stated above, this special issue is neither the beginning nor the end of the diverse Latin American perspectives on critical data studies. However, these contributions can certainly help expand the circulation and recognition of the potential within this body of scholarship.

In ‘Algorithmic Governmentality in Latin America: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and Governance’, Ricaurte, Gómez-Cruz and Siles (2024) explored how algorithmic systems shape governance structures in the region. They explore three dimensions: sociotechnical imaginaries, neocolonial soft power, and automation of social control. It examines the ways in which sociotechnical imaginaries translate into political rationalities that influence decision-making and control mechanisms. They highlight how algorithms reinforce existing power structures in the region while also opening new spaces for negotiation and resistance.

Valente and Grohmann (2024), in ‘Critical Data Studies With Latin America: Theorizing Beyond Data Colonialism’ proposed alternative frameworks for critical data studies beyond the data colonialism debate, such as the Marxist theory of dependency, and the works of the Brazilian Lelia Gonzalez and the Argentine Enrique Dussel through dependency, approach and liberation frameworks. They argue for a nuanced understanding of data practices that transcends colonial paradigms, emphasizing the region's unique social thought and socio-political dynamics. Their work calls for the development of theories that are both globally informed and locally situated for critical data studies.

d’Alva and Paraná (2024), in ‘Official Statistics and Big Data in Latin America: Data Enclosures and Counter-Movements’ explored the tension between traditional official statistics and the rise of big data within Latin America, examining the challenges national statistical offices (NSOs) face amid the rise of a data-driven economy. They show how data enclosures – restrictive practices limiting data accessibility – emerge and the various counter-movements that resist these trends, especially communities advocating for the public value of the data and the possibilities of statistical sovereignty.

‘Deeply Embedded Wages: Navigating Digital Payments in Data Work’, by Posada (2024), investigates how Venezuelan data workers navigate digital payment systems amid economic instability. Relying on intermediaries and cryptocurrencies, workers gain access to more stable currencies but face high transaction fees and financial risks due to currency volatility. While these systems offer an alternative to the national financial infrastructure, they also impose new dependencies, as external platforms control transactions and pricing. These dynamic highlights both the opportunities and vulnerabilities of digital payment integration in data work.

In connection with dependencies and labour in the region, in ‘Platform Sub-Imperialism’ Kenzo Soares Seto (2024) examines Brazil's role in Latin American platform capitalism by integrating Ruy Mauro Marini's sub-imperialism theory with critical data studies. Seto introduces the concept of ‘platform sub-imperialism’ to describe how certain Majority World countries, like Brazil, act as regional hubs for data and capital accumulation through the expansion of their platforms into neighbouring nations. This dynamic positions these countries between dominant global powers and ‘digital colonies’ in the international division of platform labour, data accumulation, and technological dependency. The article highlights the need to critically assess the influence of Southern-based platforms, such as Brazil's iFood, which combine precarious work practices with significant data processing capabilities, thereby reinforcing regional inequalities and dependencies.

In ‘Participatory Action Research in Critical Data Studies: Interrogating AI from a South–North Approach’, Medrado and Verdegem (2024) draw upon Latin American participatory action research (PAR) and the works of thinkers like Freire and Fals Borda to critically examine AI. They advocate for a South-to-North knowledge flow, challenging the traditional North-centric perspectives on AI epistemologies and experiences, bringing new directions for participatory AI research, using a Latin American methodological lens. Through workshops with students, tech workers, and activists, the study explores AI and data (in)justice, focusing on autonomy, empathy, and dialogue. Findings reveal that the Latin American methodological approach encourages participants to critique superficial notions of empathy, promotes collective over individualistic views on autonomy, and emphasizes the value of human intelligence in AI discourse.

In ‘Data Artivism and Feminicide’, Helena Suárez Val, Catherine D'Ignazio, Jimena Acosta Romero, Melissa Q. Teng, and Silvana Fumega (2023) explore the fusion of data activism and art – termed ‘data artivism’ – to combat feminicide in Latin America. They present case studies demonstrating how creative data representation can raise awareness, honour victims, and challenge systemic gender-based violence. The authors argue that data artivism not only makes the issue of feminicide more visible but also fosters public engagement and collective action, transforming data into a powerful tool for social change.

In ‘An Alternative Planetary Future? Digital Sovereignty Frameworks and the Decolonial Option’, Sebastián Lehuedé (2024) critically examines digital sovereignty initiatives by the Chinese state, the European Union, and Latin American civil society through the lens of Walter Mignolo's decolonial option. Lehuedé explores whether these frameworks genuinely support alternative, polycentric, non-capitalist, and non-anthropocentric planetary futures or merely shift power within the existing technological status quo. The analysis reveals that Latin American civil society presents a promising grassroots approach to digital sovereignty, aiming for harmonious coexistence with the environment.

In ‘Against Decolonial Reductionism: The Impact of Latin American Thinking on the Data Decolonization Project’, Stefania Milan and Emiliano Treré (2024) emphasized the critical role of Latin American scholarship and activism in understanding and challenging data inequalities. They critique the superficial adoption of decolonial theories – or ‘decolonial reductionism’ – and advocate for genuine praxis informed by thinkers like Jesús Martín-Barbero, Paulo Freire, and Arturo Escobar. The authors propose practical strategies such as embracing multilingualism, promoting public scholarship, and fostering mentorship to transform knowledge production and advance authentic data decolonization efforts.

As the articles in this special issue demonstrate, Latin America is not simply a site of research, but a generative space for theoretical and methodological innovation in critical data studies. The region's contributions are essential for fostering a more diverse and plural understanding of data – infrastructures, practices, communities – resisting universalizing tendencies and instead embracing situated knowledge, lived experiences, and alternative data imaginaries that grapple with distinct legacies of imperialism, power, and struggles.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Rafael Grohmann

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Insight Development Grant), Connaught Fund (New Researcher Award).

Conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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