technology
Millions of individuals and communities around the world today use digital technologies to explore, express, navigate and advocate for their gender, sexuality and rights. This track will provide a crucial opportunity for us to engage with the formulations and contestations that technology has reinforced and enabled.
At reconference we will:
rethink the role and significance of technology on our lives, and collapse binary understandings of the online and the on ground.
reimagine the digital as a powerful political space of opportunities and threats, which is used both to surveill, oppress and exclude, and also as a space of struggle, resistance, and organizing.
reboot our activism away from the false binary of physical only versus digital only, and think about how they are interwoven.
The way we live is now defined, to some extent or another, by technology: Phones, simple or smart. Desktops. Smart watches. Tablets.
In the digital age, our lives are no longer ‘physical only’. The tapestry of our lives today has shifted from to the physical + digital, both of which weave in and out of each other in ways that are difficult to untangle.
Simultaneously, technology has become a site of pleasures and dangers with offline hierarchies being replicated online. Even as queer communities start online, the internet is used to target queer people, particularly in contexts where their lives are criminalized. Sex workers face online censorship, while trans people face heightened abuse that is eerily similar to on ground abuse.
Under the neoliberal state, biometrics and data are used to track, surveil and gather information about people, with giant biometric systems identifying and classifying citizens. Biometrics has become a way to exclude entire communities while masquerading as being inclusive. The boundaries between the state and corporations have become blurred, and it is the most marginalized people who face the brunt of these surveilling systems.
Even as the digital becomes a space where inequalities are replicated, it also becomes – like the physical – a site of resistance and possibility. Online activism goes far beyond simply being an instrumentof on-the-ground mobilization. The Internet is now a critical public sphere for the claiming of citizenship rights and civil liberties, particularly for marginalized communities that face stigma and discrimination offline.
At recon, we will rethink the political economy of the digital, and its intimate connection with both the reinforcement of systems of surveillance and exclusion, and resistance to these.
We will reimagine digital technologies as crucial sites for meaning-making and movement-building. Digital organizing is giving rise not just to new forms of activism, but also changing “how we understand leadership, accountability, constituency building, representation, issues, ways of organising, sites of activism, pace, change and impact” in the context of movements (Jac SM Kee).
Digital technologies are giving rise to new rights claims, such as the right to be forgotten. This is an opportunity for us to reimagine how our movements are built and can be strengthened and sustained in the digital age.
The Internet provides a space for building new discourses, counter-publics and counter-narratives that challenge and disrupt norms and hierarchies around sexuality and gender. In many cities and regions, queer communities first form online and then move offline, only when it’s safe enough to do so. (Think #queerlivesmatter.) Global protests and activism around gender-based harassment and violence erupt or are amplified in digital spaces. (Think #metoo.)
With this track we will reboot the way we think about the digital – not as a lesser site of activism, but as a space for resistance and contestations of meaning.
At reconference we will:
rethink the role and significance of technology on our lives, and collapse binary understandings of the online and the on ground.
reimagine the digital as a powerful political space of opportunities and threats, which is used both to surveill, oppress and exclude, and also as a space of struggle, resistance, and organizing.
reboot our activism away from the false binary of physical only versus digital only, and think about how they are interwoven.
The way we live is now defined, to some extent or another, by technology: Phones, simple or smart. Desktops. Smart watches. Tablets.
In the digital age, our lives are no longer ‘physical only’. The tapestry of our lives today has shifted from to the physical + digital, both of which weave in and out of each other in ways that are difficult to untangle.
Simultaneously, technology has become a site of pleasures and dangers with offline hierarchies being replicated online. Even as queer communities start online, the internet is used to target queer people, particularly in contexts where their lives are criminalized. Sex workers face online censorship, while trans people face heightened abuse that is eerily similar to on ground abuse.
Under the neoliberal state, biometrics and data are used to track, surveil and gather information about people, with giant biometric systems identifying and classifying citizens. Biometrics has become a way to exclude entire communities while masquerading as being inclusive. The boundaries between the state and corporations have become blurred, and it is the most marginalized people who face the brunt of these surveilling systems.
Even as the digital becomes a space where inequalities are replicated, it also becomes – like the physical – a site of resistance and possibility. Online activism goes far beyond simply being an instrumentof on-the-ground mobilization. The Internet is now a critical public sphere for the claiming of citizenship rights and civil liberties, particularly for marginalized communities that face stigma and discrimination offline.
At recon, we will rethink the political economy of the digital, and its intimate connection with both the reinforcement of systems of surveillance and exclusion, and resistance to these.
We will reimagine digital technologies as crucial sites for meaning-making and movement-building. Digital organizing is giving rise not just to new forms of activism, but also changing “how we understand leadership, accountability, constituency building, representation, issues, ways of organising, sites of activism, pace, change and impact” in the context of movements (Jac SM Kee).
Digital technologies are giving rise to new rights claims, such as the right to be forgotten. This is an opportunity for us to reimagine how our movements are built and can be strengthened and sustained in the digital age.
The Internet provides a space for building new discourses, counter-publics and counter-narratives that challenge and disrupt norms and hierarchies around sexuality and gender. In many cities and regions, queer communities first form online and then move offline, only when it’s safe enough to do so. (Think #queerlivesmatter.) Global protests and activism around gender-based harassment and violence erupt or are amplified in digital spaces. (Think #metoo.)
With this track we will reboot the way we think about the digital – not as a lesser site of activism, but as a space for resistance and contestations of meaning.