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

This event is part of the Sociology Seminar Series.

Abstract: This talk puts forward the argument that the relationship between the (welfare) state and digital technology providers in a context of data-driven innovation, most notably AI, may be giving rise to a new institutional form that I refer to as a ‘tenant state’. Bringing together previously siloed insights from critical data studies and economic and political sociology, I present four particular features of state-tech relations in an age of AI that I argue underpin this transformation of the welfare state: i) rentiership; ii) compute; iii) dataism; and iv) 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, I argue that previous ways of understanding transformations in the welfare state that were 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.

Bio: Lina Dencik is Professor and University Research Leader in AI Justice at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is Co-Founder/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 (2022, Sage), The Media Manifesto (2020, Polity) and Digital Citizenship in a Datafied Society (2018, Polity). She is currently Principal Investigator of the project STATETECH, funded by an ERC Advanced Grant.

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