Algorithmic Personalization as a Mode of Individuation

Lury, Celia and Day, Sophie E.. 2019. Algorithmic Personalization as a Mode of Individuation. Theory, Culture & Society, 36(2), pp. 17-37. ISSN 0263-2764 [Article]

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Abstract or Description

Recognising that many of the modern categories with which we think about people and their activities were put in place through the use of numbers, we ask how numbering practices compose contemporary sociality. Focusing on particular forms of algorithmic personalisation, we describe a pathway of a-typical individuation in which repeated and recursive tracking is used to create partial orders in which individuals are always more and less than one. Algorithmic personalisation describes a mode of numbering that involves forms of de- and re- aggregating, in which a variety of contexts are continually included and excluded. This pathway of a-typical individuation is important, we suggest, to a variety of domains and, more broadly, to an understanding of contemporary economies of sharing where the politics of collectivities, ownership and use are being reconfigured as a default social.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276418818888

Keywords:

algorithm, individuation, personalisation, optimisation, algorithm, pathway, numbering Abstract

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Anthropology

Dates:

DateEvent
3 May 2018Accepted
28 January 2019Published Online
1 March 2019Published

Item ID:

23851

Date Deposited:

23 Jul 2018 13:54

Last Modified:

02 Mar 2021 13:57

Peer Reviewed:

Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/23851

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