Data centers and Indigenous sovereignty: Data center materialities, representation and power in Sápmi/northern Sweden
2022 (English) Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
From “disguised and concealed” (Parks and Starosielski 2015) in nature to more recent, select attempts at “visible, accessible, environmentally friendly” (Holt and Vonderau 2015), data centers are the backbone of the digital infrastructure. Studies of data centers continuously help develop media and communications studies in understanding the role of media infrastructure, representations of imaginaries of the cloud; social, political and economic realities embedded in data, and issues of power, agency and resistance against the backdrop of increased global concerns for the environment and greening practices, built into the discourse of tech companies. This research provides an insight into data centers in S.pmi, in the Arctic and near-Arctic regions in Sweden, from the perspective of Indigenous S.mi communities. Data centers are examined here through their materialities and representations and as industrial sites of politics, power and promise through lived realities of the S.mi people in Sweden. As a result, data centers emerge not only as entities with built-in, inherent dependence on materialities and representations of land, water and air but also as contrapuntal nodes – assemblages perpetually at odds with their built-in power through time: their narratives –neutral connectedness and natural sustainability – at odds with their material infrastructure: detaching and uprooting from land.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages 2022. , p. 68
Keywords [en]
data center, Indigenous, Sámi, Sami, contrapuntal, digital infrastructure, Sápmi, Sapmi, Sweden
National Category
Humanities and the Arts Engineering and Technology Social Sciences
Identifiers URN: urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-50077 OAI: oai:DiVA.org:sh-50077 DiVA, id: diva2:1703893
Subject / course Media and Communication Studies
Supervisors
Examiners
2022-10-182022-10-152022-10-18 Bibliographically approved