We cannot effectively combat negative exercises of power—that is domination—unless we are able to articulate an alternative, coherently and concisely. Power-to and power-with emerged in separate dichotomous debates to oppose domination (power-over), the traditional focus of power theory. Efforts to combine power-to, power-over, and power-with into a trichotomy, rather than producing a clear and robust positive theory of power to challenge domination, have created a complex and contested mix of definitions. This paper proposes a simplified formulation of the trichotomy: power at its most fundamental is the capacity to act and achieve outcomes and is labelled power-to. Power-over and power-with become two opposing exercises of this capacity. Power-over retains its emphasis on the hoarding of value by the dominant (normatively negative). Power-with is redefined to refer to an exercise of power in which value is equitably shared (normatively positive). These new definitions require that we abandon some of the distinguishing features that have been attached to these terms, but doing so resolves some outstanding disputes and provides new opportunities. It opens the way to more effectively ask what power-with and the conditions for collective flourishing and value creation might look like and why we should choose them over domination.

This paper addresses the problem that we lack clarity about what value and value creation look like which impedes its realisation. Three propositions to address this problem are offered, which are expanded upon in three subsequent working papers. The first proposition is that value is the expanded capacity to act (i.e. power) that we seek from all social investments. The second proposition differentiates collective value creation from value extraction. Power-with is where the value produced from social investments is shared (value sharing). Power-over is where value is hoarded (value extraction). The third proposition is that only a power-with (value sharing) leads to long-term collective virtuous cycles of value creation. Examples are provided of what this looks like in practice indicating the key features of a power-with. In contrast, value extraction risks and undermines value creation by eroding trust, reducing effective feedback, reducing collective members’ capacity to contribute, and can lead to passive withdrawal from value creation arrangements or their active resistance. The authority and legitimacy of society’s agents (e.g. elected officials, public administrators, corporate executives) rests on their facilitation of collective value creation and its dispersal, and on protecting the collective from value extraction.

Over nearly a decade, Critical Data Studies (CDS) scholars have interrogated a range of framings of data that struggle for discursive dominance. This paper argues that four discourses have emerged: data as an asset, data as latent knowledge, data as a technology of governing, and data as resistance. These four discourses align with Deleuze and Guattari’s capitalist, territorial, statist, and nomadic social formations, respectively. The social forms exist in reciprocal relationship to and are the aggregates of concrete assemblages. This paper outlines how CDS scholarship can be connected conceptually and methodologically through this four discourse framework and the relationship between discourse, social form, and concrete assemblage. This coherence and Deleuze and Guattari’s approach to identifying and harnessing opportunities for change can be used to amplify the CDS agenda of challenging data power asymmetries and creating more widely valued data assemblages.

Governments and businesses are under pressure to realise the value of data, yet value realisation is often elusive. This paper examines the origins and logics of the discourses that underpin the drive to invest in data and analytics. It finds that a linear-mechanic logic scaffolds the ideas drawn from public administration theory, economics, and theories of data and evidence use that permeate government, business, and academic framings. However, within the critique of these ideas, another pattern emerges. The view that simple metrics and universal solutions should guide and evaluate the actions of centralised, hierarchical decision makers competes with an alternative perspective. Value creation and its consumption are increasingly seen as a collective and complex endeavour. Yet we lack theories of value to support this approach. In response, this paper proposes that a new theory of value is required if we are to understand and articulate what collective value looks like and how to create it. Subsequent papers propose that new theory.

This paper provides the metaphysical and ethical foundations for understanding what value is and how to create it. Mapped over Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of desiring production, value becomes enhanced capacity to act (or power) and the desire for value creates our entire social world. We enter social relationships—friendships, families, organisations, nation-states, etc—to enhance our capacity to act. In the process, we create desiring machines or assemblages which are temporary collections of things (people, objects, ideas, etc) arranged to create and disperse value for its participants. These assemblages adhere and are legitimate where they produce value for all their contributors and risk dissolution and harm where they disempower and extract value (i.e. illegitimate desiring-production). An inverse metaphysics to traditional Western thought is required in which, firstly, things are motivated internally rather than externally such as by universal laws or truths, and secondly, existence is inherently dynamic rather than static. In this dynamic, complex world, understanding flows of value and their blockers becomes critical to creating collective value and flourishing.