Ethicizing Agency in Body Documentification
ORCID
Leah T. Dudak: 0000-0002-9535-2580
Tyler Youngman: 0000-0003-4665-8337
Sarah Appedu: 0000-0002-5405-7016
Document Type
Conference Document
Date
10-15-2024
Keywords
datafication, documentation, embodiment, agency
Disciplines
Library and Information Science | Science and Technology Studies
Description/Abstract
While considerations of documents and data are longstanding in the tenants and practices of library and information science (LIS), the recent turn toward bodies and embodiment in the social sciences invites a critical interrogation of our assumptions about the interplay of documents, data, and bodies embedded within sociotechnical systems of power and bodily agency. In response, we begin to theorize the intersection of datafication and documentation as documentification, encapsulating how acts of datafication revoking agency results in a one-directional superficial documentary status, producing assumptions about bodies by power systems which aim to simplify, nullify, and suppress. We initially examine documentification as it relates to practices of surveillance, BMI, and memory institutions. In doing so, we interrogate the ethical dilemmas emerging from assumptions about agency ascribed to documentified bodies. Finally, we challenge the library and information professions to imagine a world designed with putting people first that centers, rather than reduces, their agency.
Recommended Citation
Dudak, L. T., Youngman, T., Appedu, S., & Foster, B. (2024). Ethicizing Agency in Body Documentification. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 61(1), 499–505. https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.1047
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
