Situating Data in a Trumpian Era: The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative

Dillon, Lindsey; Lave, Rebecca; Mansfield, Becky; Wylie, Sara; Shapiro, Nicholas; Chan, Anita; Murphy, Michelle

doi:10.1080/24694452.2018.1511410

Cited by 26 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Illegibility provides cover for and the dismantling of regulation and publicly-funded research and for corporate capture of regulatory agencies (often by companies with long histories of manufacturing doubt) (cf. Proctor and Schiebinger, 2008;Oreskes and Conway, 2010;Dillon et al,2019). 26 Li argues for "a continuum" between coercive, authoritarian government and Foucauldian, governmentality-style approaches (2005,387); perhaps what we see here then is a swing of the pendulum, as the germ of anti-democratic politics has grown bolder and more boisterous, from "low-key fascism" into full-blown authoritarianism (Pred, 2007, 376;McCarthy, 2019).…”

Section: Illegibility As Political Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…I thus build on work by Li (2005) and others in a constructive critique of legibility and state power, bringing together insights from political ecology, science and technology studies, and an emerging "sociology of nonknowledge" to help think through agents' decision-making. Following Dillon et al (2019), I position these arguments in the context of pressing contemporary concerns: the current administration's increasingly anti-environmental stance and dismissal of evidence-based claims, capital's capture of regulatory agencies along with the slashing of regulations and efforts to defund and dismantle scientific work, and amid a longstanding trend of neoliberalization. Squeezed between budget cuts on one side and political pressure and litigation on the other, agents pursue a sort of "satisficing" strategy to avoid reaction in the face of unrealistic demands (cf.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Between Scylla and Charybdis: Environmental governance and illegibility in the American West

Martin

2021

Geoforum

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In The Odyssey, Odysseus and his crew must navigate the Strait of Messina between two great hazards: the six-headed monster Scylla on one side, and the whirlpool Charybdis on the other. This conceit here guides a critical engagement with scientific knowledge and state power, grounded in the positionality and practices of government agents charged with the management of controversial species and processes in the American West. Based in ethnographic and archival research on wolflivestock conflict and public lands grazing in Central Idaho, I relate how agents with the U.S. Forest Service and Idaho Department of Fish and Game navigate conditions not of their own choosing. Sailing the "choppy seas" of complex systems and multiple-use mandates, with the "whirlpool" of cuts to capacity on one side and the "monster" of political controversy and litigation on the other, agents appear to collect less or more ambiguous information on their charges, resulting in a partial "blindness" or illegibility. Although a rational adaptation to unrealistic expectations, this ignorance is not bliss but rather symptom and source of dysfunction, limiting agents' ability to carry out monitoring, collaboration, and effectively conduct on-the-ground management. Understanding patterns of illegibility requires that we attend both to broader contextual pressures and situated motivations. In so doing, we might account for the seeming disconnect between agencies' stated aims and practices, complicate traditional assumptions of evidence-based scientific management and analyses of bureaucratic rationality and state power, and make sense of the apparent dysfunction around environmental governance in the American West today.

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Section: Illegibility As Political Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Between Scylla and Charybdis: Environmental governance and illegibility in the American West

Martin

2021

Geoforum

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“…While people react to outrageous “truthiness” tweets, the Environmental Protection Agency under the current administration is quietly removing restrictions on the fossil fuel industries (Dillon et al. ).…”

Section: “Post‐truth” Resistance To Scientific Authoritymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Scientific projections of climate change are inconvenient to those whose fortunes depend on the sale of fossil fuels and to those whose political careers depend on the support of the fossil fuel industries (Oreskes and Conway 2011). While people react to outrageous "truthiness" tweets, 6 the Environmental Protection Agency under the current administration is quietly removing restrictions on the fossil fuel industries (Dillon et al 2019).…”

Section: "Post-truth" Resistance To Scientific Authoritymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another excellent example is provided by the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) group (Dillon et al 2019). They are responding to "posttruthers" by proactively building data infrastructures to retain and maintain data about global climate change, to make the information available to the public, and to track any changes in the data that the Trump administration might make to those infrastructures.…”

Section: Science and Technology Studies In The Age Of "Truthiness"mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Staying the Course: On the Value of Social Studies of Science in Resistance to the “Post‐Truth” Movement

Fujimura

Holmes

2019

Sociological Forum

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Scientific knowledge has been under attack recently, especially during and from the Trump administration. This article discusses the value of research in social studies of science in relation to scientific practice and post‐truth attacks on science. This literature analyzes the expert work and social values that enter into the production of evidence, the development and testing of methods, and the construction of theoretical and epistemological frames for connecting evidence, methods, and methodologies. Although researchers in this area argue that there are politics in science, this article demonstrates that their analyses of the processes of adjudicating evidence and epistemologies contribute to science. In contrast, post‐truth attacks on scientific expertise exemplify a particular kind of politics aimed at supporting a particular group's political and economic interests.

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Counting, Debunking, Making, Witnessing, Shielding: What Critical Data Studies Can Learn from Data Activism During the Pandemic

Milan

2022

Transforming Communications – Studies in Cross-Media Research

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The COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to shift data power—the power of data structures as well as the power exerted by data on social life—in two directions. Key state functions and infrastructure are transferred to private corporations at the expenses of state sovereignty and oversight, while individual control over personal information such as political preferences and biomedical data is delegated to quasi-monopolistic platforms. Data activism as the civil society response to data power and the field of critical data studies in its role of the scholarly interpreter of a datafied society can both help us make sense of these challenges. Dialoguing with political sociology, this chapter explores data activism as a counterforce to predominant data power, takes stock of its most recent evolutions, and identifies pathways for critical data studies in the post-pandemic world. First, it distinguishes five focal strategies for data activists as they grappled with the challenges of the first pandemic within a datafied society: counting, debunking, making, witnessing, and shielding. It then singles out three challenges for data activism in the post-pandemic world, namely the question of infrastructure, the diffusion of data poverty, and scarce digital literacy. This chapter concludes by deriving lessons learnt from data activism during the pandemic that point to potential new perspectives for critical data studies in the post-pandemic world.

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Situating Data in a Trumpian Era: The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative

Cited by 26 publications

References 15 publications

Between Scylla and Charybdis: Environmental governance and illegibility in the American West

Between Scylla and Charybdis: Environmental governance and illegibility in the American West

Staying the Course: On the Value of Social Studies of Science in Resistance to the “Post‐Truth” Movement

Counting, Debunking, Making, Witnessing, Shielding: What Critical Data Studies Can Learn from Data Activism During the Pandemic

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