Resisting the inevitable: human rights and the data society

Abstract

This article outlines a methodology for describing the encounter between human rights and digital data technologies. The methodology is orientated around a set of traditions within law and humanities scholarship—in particular, thinking critically and co-productively about human rights, as well as a concern with the plurality of law, and forms of authority. The aim of the methodology is to resist digital and human rights fatalism. It does so by producing descriptions that offer resources towards a better understanding of how certain visions of the future succeed, and how failed visions might be rearticulated.