Decolonizing data relations: On the moral economy of data sharing in Palestinian refugee camps

Abstract

Background: This article interrogates the critical intersection of measurement, datafication, and value extraction in humanitarian settings, drawing on empirical examples of data sharing in Palestinian camps in Lebanon. Analysis: Building on decolonial theory and post-humanist perspectives, the article offers a critical rereading of the moral economy as historically situated transversal practice and explores how the nonlinear transition of lived and embodied knowledge into and out of data (re)configures the calculus of reciprocity, justice, and fairness in the anticolonial struggle of Palestinians. Conclusion and implications: The article introduces the concept of “ethico-political substance” to problematize the historical entanglement of social ontologies, coloniality, and power-knowledge and to show a constitutive split between data and its subjects, which continues to undermine the political possibilities of datafication to this day.