Author:

Deborah Lupton

Abstract:

Humans have become increasingly datafied with the use of digital technologies that generate information with and about their bodies and everyday lives. The onto-epistemological dimensions of human–data assemblages and their relationship to bodies and selves have yet to be thoroughly theorised. In this essay, I draw on key perspectives espoused in feminist materialism, vital materialism and the anthropology of material culture to examine the ways in which these assemblages operate as part of knowing, perceiving and sensing human bodies. I draw particularly on scholarship that employs organic metaphors and concepts of vitality, growth, making, articulation, composition and decomposition. I show how these metaphors and concepts relate to and build on each other, and how they can be applied to think through humans’ encounters with their digital data. I argue that these theoretical perspectives work to highlight the material and embodied dimensions of human–data assemblages as they grow and are enacted, articulated and incorporated into everyday lives.

Document: https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951718786314

References:
Amoore, L, Hall, A (2009) Taking people apart: Digitised dissection and the body at the border. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 27: 444–464.
Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI

Andrejevic, M, Hearn, A, Kennedy, H (2015) Cultural studies of data mining: Introduction. European Journal of Cultural Studies 18: 379–394.
Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI
Barad, K (2003) Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs 28: 801–831.
Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI
Barad, K (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, Durham: Duke University Press.
Google Scholar | Crossref
Barad, K (2014) Diffracting diffraction: Cutting together-apart. Parallax 20: 168–187.
Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI
Beer, D (2013) Popular Culture and New Media: The Politics of Circulation, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Google Scholar | Crossref
Beer, D, Burrows, R (2013) Popular culture, digital archives and the new social life of data. Theory, Culture & Society 30: 47–71.
Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI
Bennett, J (2004) The force of things: Steps toward an ecology of matter. Political Theory 32: 347–372.
Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI
Bennett, J (2010) A vitalist stopover on the way to a new materialism. In: Coole, D, Frost, S (eds) New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency and Politics, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 47–69.
Google Scholar | Crossref
Berson, J (2015) Computable Bodies: Instrumented Life and the Human Somatic Niche, London: Bloomsbury.
Google Scholar
Brunton F and Nissenbaum H (2011) Vernacular resistance to data collection and analysis: A political theory of obfuscation. First Monday, 16. Available at: http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3493 (accessed 18 September 2017).
Google Scholar
Coole, D (2013) Agentic capacities and capacious historical materialism: Thinking with new materialisms in the political sciences. Millennium 41: 451–469.
Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI
Fors V and Pink S (2017) Pedagogy as possibility: Health interventions as digital openness. Social Sciences, 6; http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/6/2/59/htm (accessed 1 March 2018).
Google Scholar
Frank M, Walker J, Attard J, et al. (2016) Data literacy – What is it and how can we make it happen? The Journal of Community Informatics, 12; http://www.ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/article/view/1347 (accessed 12 September 2017).
Google Scholar
Franklin, S, Haraway, D (2017) Staying with the manifesto: An interview with Donna Haraway. Theory, Culture & Society 34: 49–63.
Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI
Frost, S (2016) Biocultural Creatures: Toward a New Theory of the Human, Durham: Duke University Press.
Google Scholar | Crossref
Gabrys J, Pritchard H and Barratt B (2016) Just good enough data: Figuring data citizenships through air pollution sensing and data stories. Big Data & Society, 3; https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951716679677 (accessed 12 September 2017).
Google Scholar
Gardner, P, Jenkins, B (2016) Bodily intra-actions with biometric devices. Body & Society 22: 3–30.
Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI
Grinberg, Y (2017) The Emperor’s new data clothes: Implications of ‘nudity’ as a racialized and gendered metaphor in discourse on personal digital data. In: Daniels, J, Gregory, K, Cottom, TM (eds) Digital Sociologies, Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 421–433.
Google Scholar
Hallam, E (2010) Articulating bones: An epilogue. Journal of Material Culture 15: 465–492.
Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI
Hallam, E (2016) Anatomy Museum: Death and the Body Displayed, London: Reaktion Books.
Google Scholar
Haraway, D (2003) The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness, Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm.
Google Scholar
Haraway, D (2008) When Species Meet, Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.
Google Scholar
Houston L, Jackson SJ, Rosner DK, et al. (2016) Values in repair. Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘16), San Jose, 7–12 May 2016, pp. 1403–1414. ACM.
Google Scholar
Hultman, K, Lenz Taguchi, H (2010) Challenging anthropocentric analysis of visual data: A relational materialist methodological approach to educational research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 23: 525–542.
Google Scholar | Crossref
Ingold, T (2013) Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, London: Routledge.
Google Scholar | Crossref
Ingold, T, Hallam, E (2014) Making and growing: An introduction. In: Ingold, T, Hallam, E (eds) Making and Growing: Anthropological Studies of Organisms and Artefacts, London: Routledge, pp. 1–24.
Google Scholar
Intel (2017) Data Sense. Available at: https://makesenseofdata.com/ (accessed 12 September 2017).
Google Scholar
Jackson SJ and Kang L (2014) Breakdown, obsolescence and reuse: HCI and the art of repair. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, Toronto, 26 April–6 May 2014, pp. 449–458. ACM.
Google Scholar
Kang, J, Cuff, D (2005) Pervasive computing: Embedding the public sphere. Washington and Lee Law Review 62: 93.
Google Scholar
Kennedy H and Moss G (2015) Known or knowing publics? Social media data mining and the question of public agency. Big Data & Society 2; http://bds.sagepub.com/content/2/2/2053951715611145.abstract (accessed 12 September 2017).
Google Scholar
Kitchin R (2014) Big Data, new epistemologies and paradigm shifts. Big Data & Society 1; http://bds.sagepub.com/content/1/1/2053951714528481.abstract (accessed 12 September 2017).
Google Scholar
Kitchin R and Lauriault T (2014) Towards critical data studies: Charting and unpacking data assemblages and their work. Social Science Research Network; http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2474112 (accessed 18 September 2017).
Google Scholar
Latimer, J (2008) Introduction: Body, knowledge, worlds. The Sociological Review 56: 1–22.
Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI
Lenz Taguchi, H (2012) A diffractive and Deleuzian approach to analysing interview data. Feminist Theory 13: 265–281.
Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI
Lupton D (2016a) Digital companion species and eating data: Implications for theorising digital data–human assemblages. Big Data & Society 3; http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2053951715619947 (accessed 20 October 2017).
Google Scholar
Lupton, D (2016b) The Quantified Self: A Sociology of Self-Tracking, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Google Scholar
Lupton, D (2017a) Digital bodies. In: Andrews, D, Silk, M, Thorpe, H (eds) Routledge Handbook of Physical Cultural Studies, London: Routledge, pp. 200–208.
Google Scholar | Crossref
Lupton, D (2017b) Feeling your data: Touch and making sense of personal digital data. New Media & Society 19: 1599–1614.
Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI
Lupton, D (2017c) Personal data practices in the age of lively data. In: Daniels, J, Gregory, K, McMillan Cottom, T (eds) Digital Sociologies, Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 339–354.
Google Scholar
Lupton D (2018a) ‘I just want it to be done, done, done!’ Food tracking apps, affects, and agential capacities. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction 2; http://www.mdpi.com/2414-4088/2/2/29/htm (accessed 22 June 2018).
Google Scholar
Lupton, D (2018b) Lively data, social fitness and biovalue: The intersections of health self-tracking and social media. In: Burgess, J, Marwick, A, Poell, T (eds) The Sage Handbook of Social Media, London: Sage, pp. 562–578.
Google Scholar | Crossref
Lupton D and Maslen S (2018) The more-than-human sensorium: Sensory engagements with digital self-tracking technologies. The Senses and Society. Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3170701.
Google Scholar
Lupton D, Pink S, LaBond CH, et al. (2018) Personal data contexts, data sense and self-tracking cycling. International Journal of Communication 12; http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/5925/2268 (accessed 5 June 2018).
Google Scholar
Lupton, D, Smith, GJD (2018) ‘A much better person’: The agential capacities of self-tracking practices. In: Ajana, B (ed.) Metric Culture: Ontologies of Self-Tracking Practices, London: Emerald Publishing, pp. 57–75.
Google Scholar | Crossref
Michael, M, Lupton, D (2016) Toward a manifesto for the ‘public understanding of big data’. Public Understanding of Science 25: 104–116.
Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI
Milan, S, Velden Lvd (2016) The alternative epistemologies of data activism. Digital Culture & Society 2: 57–74.
Google Scholar | Crossref
Pink, S, Fors, V, Berg, M (2017a) Sensory, digital and visual methodologies. In: Silk, M, Andrews, D, Thorpe, H (eds) Routledge Handbook of Physical Cultural Studies, London: Routledge, pp. 528–536.
Google Scholar | Crossref
Pink S, Sumartojo S, Lupton D, et al. (2017b) Mundane data: The routines, contingencies and accomplishments of digital living. Big Data & Society, 4; http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2053951717700924 (accessed 18 June 2018).
Google Scholar
Ruppert E, Isin E and Bigo D (2017) Data politics. Big Data & Society, 4; https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951717717749 (accessed 12 September 2017).
Google Scholar
Savage, M (2013) The “social life of methods”: A critical introduction. Theory, Culture & Society 30: 3–21.
Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI
Sumartojo, S, Pink, S, Lupton, D(2016) The affective intensities of datafied space. Emotion, Space and Society 21: 33–40.
Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI
Tahani N (2016) Blind regards: Troubling data and their sentinels. Big Data & Society, 3; https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951716666301 (accessed 28 September 2017).
Google Scholar
Tanweer, A, Fiore-Gartland, B, Aragon, C (2016) Impediment to insight to innovation: Understanding data assemblages through the breakdown–repair process. Information, Communication & Society 19: 736–752.
Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI
Wolff A, Gooch D, Cavero Montaner JJ, et al. (2016) Creating an understanding of data literacy for a data-driven society. Journal of Community Informatics 12: 9–16.
Google Scholar
Zuboff, S (2015) Big other: Surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization. Journal of Information Technology 30: 75–89.
Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI