Azadeh Akbari
This article develops the concept of uneven datafication, drawing on literature on coloniality, uneven development and dependency theory. Uneven datafication refers to uneven development in the contemporary political economy of data, showing how global cycles of differentiation and totalisation perpetuate inequality to sustain capitalist structures. Datafication is neither homogeneous nor universal, but marked by colonial continuities, spatial differentiation and temporal unevenness. Uneven datafication operates through three interrelated dynamics. First, territorialisation, deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation produce uneven geographies of digital colonial capitalism, from datafied bodies to platform infrastructures and space-based data centres. Second, dispossession enacts spatial, temporal and dehumanising violence, ranking populations as more or less valuable and enforcing biopower ‘within’ and necropower ‘beyond’. Third, unequal exchange sustains asymmetrical valuation and circulation of data and data labour, enabling Big Tech and core economies to extract surplus value from peripheral regions. Uneven datafication thus sustains colonial capitalist accumulation through differentiated dispossession and dependency across populations, spaces and classes.