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

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.