Data vs. Narrative? Technology and Knowledge Regimes on Poverty Governance

Margarita Rodriguez, University of Michigan

My presentation explores poverty knowledge regimes behind Algorithmic Scoring Technologies (AST) for targeting social programs in Colombia (Sisbén and Registro Social de Hogares). How do different interpretations of poverty by local bureaucracies challenge technocratic knowledge of poverty based on economic-style reasoning? How do these multiple conceptions of poverty influence the way in which different levels of the State relate to their citizens? How do AST reflect, reinforce, or transform these conceptions of poverty? I situate myself at the intersection of Political Sociology and Science and Technology Studies to analyze how bureaucrats from the national and local levels navigate the challenges of translating multiple understandings of poverty. My multisited ethnography of Sisbén observes how everyday tasks of these men and women produce such expertise and the ways in which different actors use that knowledge, producing a system of interactions that complicates the design and operation of an AST that reflects the tensions of a state constitutionally conceived as decentralized, yet remains far from achieving that goal. I argue that AST for targeting social programs reveal the complexities and epistemological contradictions surrounding poverty in the country.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 173. Tactics of Resistance Against Technocratic and Linguistic Domination