Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE)
On 5 July 2021, GTGC Chair Jan Aart Scholte moderated a panel on digital data governance during the 2021 Conference of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE).
The SASE Conference, called ‘After Covid? Critical Conjunctures and Contingent Pathways of Contemporary Capitalism’, started from the idea that the Covid-19 pandemic represents a ‘critical conjuncture of historical dimensions, which demands scholarly investigation’ not only into its causes and dynamics but just as much into long term consequences and the ‘pathways that may lead out of the crisis’. These and related fundamental questions informed the programme of this year’s conference.
“Are we witnessing a series of events at the confluence of structural forces that limit future possibilities and shape future action? Or are we in the midst of a historical opening of possibilities for far-reaching transformation and change in which collective expressions of everyday life experiences and social mobilization within and across groups will foster creative organizational and technological breakthroughs, generate significant policy change or even push (varieties of) capitalism onto a different, and perhaps more sustainable pathway of socio-economic development?” (SASE Conference 2021)
Jan Aart discussed these questions in relation to digital data governance together with Carolia Aguerre (Universität Duisburg-Essen), Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen), Nathalia Sautchuk-Patricio (Universität Duisburg-Essen) and Janet Xue (Universität Duisburg-Essen).
Much research has been done already on the ways in which digitization is transforming long held foundations of cultural, social, political and economic spheres, the use, regulation and transformation of digital data remains a puzzle. After all, ‘[t]here is no single mechanism to address its governance’. The panel led by Jan Aart explored the polycentric dimension of governing digital data. Together, the speakers looked into the (changing) role of state and non-state actors, as well as different technologies like blockchain and Artificial Intelligence.
The source of this news item can be found here.