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The Informational Logic of Human Rights: Network Imaginaries in the Cybernetic Age

The Informational Logic of Human Rights: Network Imaginaries in the Cybernetic Age

Author: Joshua Browsher
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 9781399509909

Published In: October 2022
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only
Paperback Edition ISBN: 9781399509916

RM600.21

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Description
Contents

Details

Shows how digital capitalism has shaped human rights practices

Offers an in-depth and critical examination of the processes and pitfalls of human rights
Contributes an original theoretical approach that intervenes in influential and current debates regarding the limits of human rights
Uses three ‘case studies’ based on particular human rights practices – conceptualizing violations as events, using indicators to monitor social and economic rights and the contemporary uses of machine learning and big data
Provides new theoretical tools that can support ongoing efforts to articulate a more radical vision of human rights

What happens to the cultural politics of human rights when atrocities are rendered calculable, abuses are transformed into data, and victims become vectors? As human rights organizations have increasingly embraced information technologies this ‘datafication’ of rights has become both a reality and a pressing concern, one inextricably tangled up with questions regarding the broader political valences of human rights.

Combining contemporary social and cultural theory with archival research and original ethnographic work, Josh Bowsher resituates recent critiques of human rights within ongoing theoretical discussions concerning informational capitalism, digital culture and the politics of data.

Critically analysing the contemporary human rights movement as an informational politics, Bowsher provides a new conceptual agenda for both exploring and overcoming the limits of human rights in an era shaped by the data flows, network infrastructures and informational logic of late capitalism.

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Beyond the Neoliberal Critique?

1. Cybernetic Capitalism/Informational ‘Politics’

2. Seeing Violations as Events: Technologies of Capture and Cutting

3. Doing Rights as Indicators: Informatizing Social and Economic Rights

4. When Violations Become Vectors: Human Rights Work in the Era of Big Data

5. After Informational Logic: Rethinking Information/Rethinking Rights

Notes