The Informational Logic of Human Rights

Abstract

How might we understand politics of human rights at a time when atrocities are increasingly rendered calculable, abuses are transformed into data, and victims become vectors? As human rights organizations have embraced information technologies, this ‘datafication’ of rights has become both a reality and a pressing concern, inextricably tangled up with questions regarding the broader political valences of human rights. Combining contemporary social and cultural theory with archival research and ethnographic insights, this book resituates recent critiques of human rights (i.e. as instruments of neoliberal globalization) within ongoing debates regarding informational capitalism, digital culture, and data politics. Critically exploring the contemporary human rights movement as an informational politics shaped by the imaginary of networks and digital computation, the book provides a new conceptual agenda for analysing the limits of human rights in an era shaped by the data flows, network infrastructures, and informational logic of late capitalism.