From welfare to tenant state? State-tech relations in an age of AI

Joint CDER / Nuffield College Sociology Seminar

This talk argues that the relationship between the welfare state and digital technology providers, in a context of data-driven innovation and most notably AI, may be giving rise to a new institutional form: the ‘tenant state’. Bringing together previously siloed insights from critical data studies and from economic and political sociology, the talk sets out four features of state-tech relations in an age of AI that underpin this transformation of the welfare state: rentiership, compute, dataism and regulatory marketisation. Collectively, these features challenge and undermine the operations and functions of the welfare state, and suggest a need to revise existing frameworks for understanding current forms of digital service provision. In particular, the talk argues that earlier accounts of welfare state transformation, bound up with notions of privatisation and neoliberalism, may not be adequate for assessing the implications of state-tech relations in a datafied welfare state.

About the speaker

Lina Dencik is Professor and University Research Leader in AI Justice at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is Co-Founder and Director of the Data Justice Lab and has published widely on digital media and the politics of data, with a particular focus on governance and resistance. Her publications include *Data Justice* (Sage, 2022), *The Media Manifesto* (Polity, 2020) and *Digital Citizenship in a Datafied Society* (Polity, 2018). She is currently Principal Investigator of STATETECH, funded by an ERC Advanced Grant.

The Sociology Seminar Series is convened by Zachary Parolin and Carlo Perrotta. For more information about any of the seminars in the series, please contact sociology.secretary@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.