Data Feminism, Catherine DIgnazio
Data Feminism, Catherine DIgnazio
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Data Feminism

Author: Catherine D'Ignazio, Lauren F. Klein

Narrator: Teri Schnaubelt

Unabridged: 7 hr 37 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/23/2020

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

Today, data science is a form of power. It has been used to expose injustice, improve health outcomes, and topple governments. But it has also been used to discriminate, police, and surveil. This potential for good, on the one hand, and harm, on the other, makes it essential to ask: Data science by whom? Data science for whom? Data science with whose interests in mind? The narratives around big data and data science are overwhelmingly white, male, and techno-heroic. In Data Feminism, Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein present a new way of thinking about data science and data ethics—one that is informed by intersectional feminist thought.

Illustrating data feminism in action, D'Ignazio and Klein show how challenges to the male/female binary can help challenge other hierarchical (and empirically wrong) classification systems. They explain how, for example, an understanding of emotion can expand our ideas about effective data visualization, and how the concept of invisible labor can expose the significant human efforts required by our automated systems. And they show why the data never, ever "speak for themselves."

Data Feminism offers strategies for data scientists seeking to learn how feminism can help them work toward justice, and for feminists who want to focus their efforts on the growing field of data science.

About Catherine D'Ignazio

Catherine D'Ignazio is assistant professor of urban science and planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Paz on January 03, 2021

This book ignores the ideology that fuels data today. In a flawless feminist liberal approach, structural oppression is characterized like a "privilege hazard," ignoring a serious analysis of the economic framework where technology is situated today to fortress those oppressions.......more

Goodreads review by Harsh on November 05, 2020

Let me begin this review by paraphrasing something the authors express early on in the book: don’t let the title dissuade you; this is a book that everyone should pick up (and the authors facilitate this by making it freely available online). A true understanding of feminism and the values that defi......more

Goodreads review by yaya on January 07, 2024

celui-là c'était vraiment pour l'école j'ai même pas réalisé que je suis passé au travers en moins d'une semaine. c'était plaisant de le lire en buvant des cafés vanille-française d'la machine cheap du MIL pis de passer l'après-midi à coder et à "lire" des pages et des pages de codes incompréhensible......more

Goodreads review by Rachel on September 20, 2021

After being assigned bits and pieces of this text in class, I finally bit the bullet and read it start to finish (mainly via the Open Access version from MIT Press). I'll start by saying that a lot of critiques I'm seeing on Goodreads here are a bit unfounded. Many of them center around the idea tha......more

Goodreads review by Nikki on October 17, 2020

This is a fantastic introductory text for several fields— most notably intersectional feminism, data ethics/justice, and visual cultures. D'Ignazio and Klein dive into the highly relevant dangers that unmonitored data can cause, and use concrete and timely examples to ground their theories in realit......more