Technocolonialism

Madianou, Mirca. 2021. Technocolonialism. In: Lilie Chouliaraki and Anne Vestergaard, eds. Routledge Handbook of Humanitarian Communication. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 185-202. ISBN 9781138230576 [Book Section]

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Abstract or Description

Digital innovation and data practices are increasingly central to the humanitarian response to recent refugee and migration crises. In this chapter, I introduce the concept of technocolonialism to capture how the convergence of digital developments with humanitarian structures and market forces reinvigorates and reshapes colonial relationships of dependency. Technocolonialism shifts the attention to the constitutive role that data and digital innovation play in entrenching power asymmetries between refugees and aid agencies and, ultimately, inequalities in the global context. This occurs through a number of interconnected processes: by extracting value from refugee data and innovation practices for the benefit of various stakeholders; by materializing discrimination associated with colonialism; by contributing to the production of social orders that entrench the ‘coloniality of power’ and by justifying some of these practices under the context of ‘emergencies’. By reproducing the power asymmetries of humanitarianism, data and innovation practices become constitutive of humanitarian crises themselves.

Item Type:

Book Section

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315363493

Related URLs:

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Media, Communications and Cultural Studies

Dates:

DateEvent
30 September 2021Published

Item ID:

30618

Date Deposited:

01 Nov 2021 09:37

Last Modified:

01 Nov 2021 09:37

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/30618

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