Dear Sandeep Thanks so much for sharing this. Indian and South Asian digital media scholarship has been so useful for us to make sense of digital media practices in South Africa - we actually had Ravi Sundaram here in Makhanda for a short lecture series. I have also been following the work of Payal Arora, Nimmi Rangaswamy, Neha Kumar and Syed Ahmed - so great to be introduced to your work and numerous other Indian colleagues and to have it available to share with students. Thank you for publishing with an open access publisher - as our library budgets have been slashed I can attest that this decision really helps to make scholarship accessible to institutions in the Global South. Much appreciation Alette On Thu, 17 Dec 2020 at 09:37, Sandeep Mertia <sandeepmertia@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
(Hope you are safe and well. Apologies for cross posting)
I’m happy to announce the publication of my edited volume, "*Lives of Data: Essays on Computational Cultures from India*", with the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam <
https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/lives-of-data-essays-on-computa...
. It is available for download in ePub and PDF formats and for print-on-demand orders (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International).
Foreword by Ravi Sundaram. Authors: Sandeep Mertia, Karl Mendonca, Sivakumar Arumugam, Ranjit Singh, Puthiya Purayil Sneha, Lilly Irani, Anumeha Yadav, Preeti Mudliar, Prerna Mukharya and Mahima Taneja, Guneet Narula, Gaurav Godhwani, Noopur Raval, Aakash Solanki, and Anirudh Raghavan.
Blurb: *Lives of Data* maps the historical and emergent dynamics of big data, computing, and society in India. Data infrastructures are now more global than ever before. In much of the world, new sociotechnical possibilities of big data and artificial intelligence are unfolding under the long shadows cast by infra/structural inequalities, colonialism, modernization, and national sovereignty. This book offers critical vantage points for looking at big data and its shadows, as they play out in uneven encounters of machinic and cultural relationalities of data in India’s socio-politically disparate and diverse contexts.
*Lives of Data* emerged from research projects and workshops at the Sarai programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. It brings together fifteen interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners to set up a collaborative research agenda on computational cultures. The essays offer wide-ranging analyses of media and techno-scientific trajectories of data analytics, disruptive formations of digital economy, and the grounded practices of data-driven governance in India.Encompassing history, anthropology, science and technology studies (STS), media studies, civic technology, data science, digital humanities, and journalism, the essays open up possibilities for a truly situated global and sociotechnically specific understanding of the many lives of data.
Reviews: "This remarkable collection is the first major portrait and assessment of the social and technical relationalities that constitute the ecology of big data in India today. Equally remarkably, the authors represent the first generation of scholars of digital media who speak through an Indian lens while being totally conversant with the cutting edge of global scholarship on big data." — Arjun Appadurai, Goddard Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University
"Wide-ranging and incisive, *Lives of Data* is essential reading for those who wish to understand the seductions and contingencies of being or becoming data-driven." — Lisa Gitelman, author, *Paper Knowledge* and editor, *‘Raw Data’ Is an Oxymoron*
...
Regards,
Sandeep Mertia
PhD Candidate, Dept. of Media, Culture, and Communication
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-- <https://www.ru.ac.za> Dr Alette Schoon Senior Lecturer School of Journalism and Media Studies t: +27 (0) 46 603 7115 Africa Media Matrix, Prince Alfred Street, Makhanda, 6139 PO Box 94, Makhanda, 6140, South Africa www.ru.ac.za