Rethinking situated knowledge

Abstract

This presentation articulates commitments to an updated “ethics of care” (Miller, Birch, Mauthner & Jessop, 2012) and “situated knowledge” (Haraway, 1988) as a methodological strategy in the era of big data. Such commitments enable the problematization of underlying assumptions made in ‘big data’ digital methods and research through a feminist lens, as well as the collective nature of such an endeavour. Taking up current debates within feminist materialism (Asberg, Thiele, and van der Tuin, 2015; Gibson-Graham, 2015), and digital data, including big, small, thick and “lively” data (e.g. Lupton, 2015), the presentation addresses how a set of coherent feminist digital methods and a corollary epistemology is being rethought in the field today. In particular, I mobilize recent literature on feminist materialism to suggest how the concept of speculation may profitably be 'turned' for use as ethical method as well as ontological construct, alongside aims to recognize intersectional situated knowledges. I also point to ways in which the “queering” (Jones, 2015; Luka & Millette, in review) of Hannah Arendt’s (1958; 1961) concept of “political action” might contribute to a critically optimistic and inclusive reflection on the role of ethical political commitments to subjects/objects of study imbricated in big data, even while acknowledging the challenges presented by Arendt’s own epistemological and ontological framework. Overall, I aim to clarify the evolving collegial and process-oriented rationale of a feminist, intersectional methodology for conducting ethical research in the era of big data—including our actions as researchers and our role as citizens in a public sphere.