Towards a new paradigm of “datafied development”: Epistemic, infrastructural, economic, and geopolitical domains

Development is broadly defined as progressive change or improvement in human wellbeing through multifaceted approaches, such as infrastructure enhancement, trade and investment, access to decent work, skills development, and social inclusion. It is increasingly entangled with data-centric practices and digital infrastructures like artificial intelligence systems, platforms, the internet, computers, and mobile phones. This trend warrants attention on how various digital innovation initiatives intertwine with conflicting visions of enhanced human wellbeing and perpetuate historically harmful power structures. As a result, this special issue introduces the concept of “datafied development” to critically examine human development in relation to contemporary data-intensive technologies. Datafied development allows us to be attentive to new modalities of governance: from retrospective measurement to prediction and preemption; from public statistics to proprietary data assets; from territorial state infrastructures to transnational cloud and platform systems; and from development expertise grounded in field-based knowledge to knowledge practices increasingly shaped by datasets, proxies, dashboards, and algorithmic outputs. In doing so this special issue integrates multidisciplinary scholarship on critical data studies, science and technology studies into conversation with development studies. It aims to facilitate a substantial cross-disciplinary conversation on the increasing intersections between theories and practices of development initiatives and datafication. The special issue proposes analyzing datafied development across four interrelated domains: epistemic, infrastructural, economic, and geopolitical.