For two months, ITA researcher Rafaela Cavalcanti de Alcantara visited Instituto Mora in Mexico City to find out more about how digitization affects people living in cities in different ways, when aspects like gender, sexual orientation, ability, ethnicity, and class, for instance, are taken into consideration.

Rafaela Cavalcanti de Alcantara, you spent two months in Mexico during the EU PRODIGEES project researching the impact of digitization on urban planning and human rights. What where the experiences that will stay with you the most?

Cavalcanti de Alcantara: As a Latin American researcher in diaspora   , it is meaningful when I have the opportunity for an exchange with colleagues about issues relevant for Latin America.  Being hosted by Instituto Mora fostered significant encounters with researchers and students who also have been elaborating on themes like territorialities, social struggles, and new technologies. Moreover, my exchange with the Center for Gender Researches and Studies of the National Autonomous University of Mexico was a highlight of my stay. I attended three workshops they offered, visited their Fanzine library, and had relevant talks with their staff and researchers connected to the centre. It was exceptional to get to know their transdisciplinarity as well as experience generosity as an academic practice both at Instituto Mora and CIEG.

What led you to do research about “body-territory”? Can you explain the concept?

Cavalcanti de Alcantara: The concept of body-territory itself comes originally from Latin America.  It raises awareness about how the exploitation of common goods, such as indigenous, urban or rural land, involves the violation of the body of each person as well as the collective body. Coming from Brazil and being currently based in Europe makes me think about a colonialist past and present, so questions of territory, of what land who is entitled to use and why, are always crucial. Also, I think about the body as the first place we occupy in the world. What those bodies represent affects the access to, or exclusion from, specific spaces and rights.

This research trip gave me an opportunity to look at the increasing use of databases to manage cities. I also got to further explore the body-territory concept. By raising awareness about the situation   of each body in the world, it challenges the liberal idea of the “individual” as being a cis-white male. I believe this is important because “abstract” or “imagined” urban citizen models consider rights somehow “taken for granted.” However, when thinking about people living in the cities, we should consider conditions in the real world.

You are focusing on the digitization of cities in your research. How is that related to technology assessment?

Cavalcanti de Alcantara: Digitization or datafication of cities may refer to a diversity of initiatives deployed in urban spaces, often including new technologies involving big data. Bearing in mind those contexts, for technology assessment we should consider that there is no such thing as a neutral technological tool or neutral knowledge production. Ideas, priorities, budget allocation, urban policies, and data analysis come from situated perspectives and views about the world. Therefore, assuming the lack of neutrality in technology is an essential initial step to avoid thinking about “one size fits all” urban technological tools.
Our bodies, as the first place we occupy in the world, inform the possibilities of living as a first scale of territoriality, so we all have a position from which we see and interact with the world. Recognizing it is a crucial step to realise the need to discuss city policies with the diversity of people, groups, social movements, and collectives that make a city.

In your experience, how do governments use big data to make decisions about individual rights? How does this affect people and human rights?

Cavalcanti de Alcantara: I have some years of experience in human rights advocacy in South America, where I have closely followed debates about mass biometric surveillance. The untargeted use of facial recognition on streets and other spaces accessed by the public is a significant issue concerning not only privacy but also the presumption of innocence and other rights like freedom of expression and association. When I was involved in those discussions, I learnt that new urban technologies are never deployed in a “vacuum.” If a technology tool is applied within a specific space, we have to take into consideration that it is enacting a territory with meanings, needs, inequalities, and differences. This encompasses, of course, considering the diversity of bodies that inhabit those places.  

With my work, I want to raise awareness about different ways to use big data in the cities, which also encompasses thinking about whether performing some of those uses is really necessary. Challenging narratives that frame big data deployments as objective or neutral is crucial.

Bio

Rafaela Cavalcanti de Alcantara has been a researcher at ITA since January 2023. She is a PhD candidate in Science and Technology Studies, holds a Master’s Degree in Human Rights and is also a registered lawyer in Brazil. In addition to her research experience, she served civil society organizations for around six years, involved in legal empowerment and Human Rights advocacy efforts . At ITA, she dedicates herself to understanding the connections between welfare, data analysis, and the use of algorithms in the public sector – especially regarding urban management and social security. Her stay in Mexico was funded by the EU project PRODIGEES.