Digital Politics and the Politics of Disengagement: Social Justice, Data Justice, and Environmental Justice
The talk will focus on the recently published co-authored book, “Paradoxes of Digital Disengagement: in search of the Opt-Out Button” (Westminster University Press), and address a number of topics which push the boundaries of what we think of as the field of digital politics. The talk will address these so through the lens of digital reduction and digital disengagement. Firstly, it will discuss the ordinary violence of digital public services and automated decision making which increase the hold of the state on the poor and the racialised, while leaving little room to refuse the digital; secondly, it will explore the growth in everyday datafication from the perspective of digital justice; and finally, the talk will turn to global environmental harms of digital communication and discuss promises and limitations of environmentally driven digital disengagement. Weaving together a number of disciplinary and conceptual frameworks, the talk will show that the conceptual and political framework of digital disengagement is a powerful tool to imagine a different (digital) future.
Biography
Adi Kuntsman is Reader in Digital Politics at the Department of History, Politics and Philosophy and the coordinator of Digital Politics PhD Pathway. Adi’s past research explored Internet cultures in Russia, Eastern Europe and Russian-speaking diasporas; digital emotions, digital memory and social media militarism in settler-colonial Israel/Palestine, and selfies between political activism and biometric governance. Adi’s recent work focuses on the politics of ‘opting out’ of digital communication; and on environmental impacts of digital technologies. Adi is the author of Figurations of Violence and Belonging: Queerness, Mingranthood and Nationalism in Cyberspace and Beyond (Peter Lang 2009), Digital Militarism: Israeli Occupation in the Social Media Age (co-authored with Rebecca L. Stein, Stanford UP 2014); and Paradoxes of Digital Disengagement: In Search of the Opt Out Button (with Esperanza Miyake, University of Westminster Press, 2022). Adi has edited multiple collections, including Digital Cultures and the Politics of Emotion (with Athina Karatzogianni, Palgrave 2012), Selfie Citizenship (Palgrave 2017), and Digital Politics, Digital Histories, Digital Futures (with Liu Xin, Emerald 2023); and is currently setting up a new book series on digital technologies, sustainability and the environment.
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