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E-book Lost in Digital Translations : Studies of Digital Resistance and Accommodation to the Welfare State in Practice

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Penilaian

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Our aim in this chapter is to show and discuss what is lost in digital trans-lations as the welfare state and society increasingly use digital technology in welfare production. We argue that there are several unintended conse-quences we need to be attentive to regarding digitalising society and our welfare production, distribution, and consumption. In addition, there is a need to make what is lost in digital translations more visible in welfare state practices. We use the concept of ‘practical knowledge’, to sensitise ourselves to the effects of how digital technologies disrupt, transform, and change welfare in various ways. Aristotle’s term phronesis, practical knowledge (wisdom), has inspired generations of philosophers and social scientists to explore alternative dimensions of knowledge, in contrast to the hard sciences’ search for neutral, objective, theoretical knowledge (Bourdieu, 1977; Flyvbjerg, 2001; Foucault, 1972; Heidegger, 1962; Wittgenstein, 1997). Practical knowledge is embodied and embedded in context-dependent settings and does not necessarily travel well. Classic works like The Tacit Dimension (Polanyi, 2009), Situated Learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991) or Situated Knowledges (Haraway, 1988) make the point that knowledge unfolds in settings, and cannot, without problems, be transferred from one place to another without a loss of information. As such, practical knowl-edge is embodied and embedded in the settings in which they unfold. Today we find that digital technologies provide a wealth of new opportu-nities for states to exercise and use the power of information and knowledge to influence citizens (Fourcade & Gordon, 2020). Drawing on the work of James Scott (2020) and his analysis of states as a large set of heterogeneous institutions and people working to coordinate, measure and standardise the world according to a particular social ordering, Fourcade and Gordon stress the consequences of a dataist state on ways of governing (2020). This idea of classifying and interpreting the world also engenders a particular way of seeing – seeing like a state (Scott, 2020). Digitalisation is, in this per-spective, bureaucracy on steroids, enforcing the socio-technical machinery that constantly interacts with citizens. Digital technologies standardise and quantify, and thereby de-contextualise information. In this process digital technologies tend to make visible the standardised and quantifiable aspects of human lives, where complexities and irregularities potentially become anomalies. This exacerbates inequalities where ‘... it turns out in practice, the process by which states come to see is a special kind of power that has been variously criticized as intrusive, imperfect, unjust, and oppressive’ (Fourcade & Gordon, 2020). However, digitalisation is not just a question of new technology that offers quantities of data to use in governing. This also signals a qualitative difference in how statecraft is performed, and ‘... heralds a deeper transformation of statecraft itself ’ (Fourcade & Gordon, 2020, p. 80), offering new ways of exercising social control (Deleuze, 1992).

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

362 ALE l

Penerbit

USA : Cappelen Damm Akademisk/NOASP (Nordic Open Access Scholarly Publishing)., 2023

Deskripsi Fisik

205 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9788202781033

Klasifikasi

362

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Social Welfare, Problems and Services

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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