A Post-Capitalocentric Critique of Digital Technology and Environmental Harm: New Directions at the Intersection of Digital and Green Criminology

Laura Bedford,Reece Walters,Marcus Foth,Monique Mann

doi:10.5204/ijcjsd.2191

Abstract

Only recently have scholars of criminology begun to examine a wider spectrum of the effects of digital technologies beyond ‘cybercrime’ to include human rights, privacy, data extractivism and surveillance. Such accounts, however, remain anthropocentric and capitalocentric. They do not fully consider the environmental impacts caused by the manufacture, consumption, use and disposal of digital technologies under conditions of ecologically unequal exchange. The worst impacts of extractivism and pollution are borne by societies and ecosystems in the world’s economic periphery and contribute to an acceleration of planetary ecocide. Three examples illustrate our argument: (1) deep-sea mining of metals and minerals; (2) the planned obsolescence of digital devices while limiting the right to repair; and (3) the disposal of e-waste. Acknowledging the urgent need to reorient the trajectory of technology innovation towards more-than-human futures, we advance some ideas from the field of design research—that is, the field of scholarly inquiry into design practices—on how to decouple technological progress from neoliberal economic growth. We venture outside criminology and offer a glimpse into how design researchers have recently begun a similar reflective engagement with post-anthropocentric critiques, which can inspire new directions for research across digital and green criminology.

Highlights

As we leap from the Third Industrial Revolution into Industry 4.0 and its emerging successors, the role of technology as an accelerator of innovation and disruption has come to the fore as a possible ‘solution’ or ‘technofix’ in discussions of ‘green’ economic growth (Foth et al 2021; Monteiro 2019; Wakkary 2021)
In pursuit of capitalist efficiencies and profit, technology leads to increased extractivism to supply the raw materials that are central to the ‘green energy revolution’
Whereas significant mining of minerals for digital technology occurs ‘in regions with little or no legislation and enforcement of social and environmental protection regulation’ (Fox et al 2020: 113), without reference to the global system of exchange and regulation, we argue that discussions of the effects of mining are founded on a colonial deficit narrative and adopt a ‘developmentalist’ ideology

Summary

Introduction

As we leap from the Third Industrial Revolution into Industry 4.0 and its emerging successors, the role of technology as an accelerator of innovation and disruption has come to the fore as a possible ‘solution’ or ‘technofix’ in discussions of ‘green’ economic growth (Foth et al 2021; Monteiro 2019; Wakkary 2021). In the global economic core, proposals for green solutions to environmental crises tend to centre technology, which is heralded as indispensable for driving sustainable development and growth (for a discussion of the core and periphery concepts, see Wallerstein 2004).

Results

Conclusion