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Performativity of
(Biomedical)Data
Darren Reed, SATSU, York
 Overview
1.“Public Life of Data” (PLoD), Outline ESRC
bid(Manchester, Open University, Durham, York)
2.Analytic Schema; concepts and concerns
3.“Performativities” of data
4.Case studies
5.Re-imagining BLISS as performative

1.Restro-spective, pro-spective, per-spective

 1. PLoD
• Existing and New regimes of data
• From Government to Commercial
interests
• From Survey and census to profiling,
data mining, risk scoring etc.
• Surveillance v’s ‘digitally active
citizens’
“...new population data techniques, and projects like
Gov2 crowdsourcing and e-borders, embody a
digitally active citizen, a subject whose online
biography, social and transactional data are not
simply traces left behind, but data which migrate,
transform and act. Data now go travelling – between
database and real world, between agents, objects
and media, in complex and recursive patterns. In
short, to consider the contemporary turn to data as
primarily and specifically a way of governing life is
to miss the profoundly lively, liveable and public life
of data itself.”

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 Project objectives
• The life-world of data. To generate new
empirical knowledge of, and conceptual tools for
understanding, the novel modes and forms of
data as they are created, mined, analysed,
integrated, shared and deployed
• Data subject, objects and publics. ... how people,
things and populations become newly attentive
and attended to via data practices
• Data and method ... [potential for] critical social
science engagement with new modes of data
and new forms of data life

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 Projects
1.Dataworlds: new ‘data devices’
2.Data profiles: commercial data mapping
3.Data memories: interactive heritage
4.Data assemblages in higher education
5.Data bio-metries, the public lives of biodata
6.Data derivatives: border security and flood
risk

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2. Analytic Schema
 Public / Life / Data
AnalyticSchema
Analytic Case/Category Core concepts
1. Public-Private: “life marshaled” 1. Performativity
Fluidity, translation, and movement of
data as it 2. Authorisation/authenticity
becomes ‘capta’ in governance,
administration 3.
and commerce, e.g. ‘bio-graphies, bio- Exclusion/Access/engagem
metries, ent
info-demiology
4. Sous/Sur-veillance
2. Private-Public: “life created”
(‘capta’/’data’)
Production of pre-formated data, e.g.
(exterior/interior)(Dodge &
post-codes and their recombination e.g.
Kitchen, 2005)
‘mashups’ in governance and commerce
e.g. mosaic
3. Open-ended: “life unbounded”
New domains of public/private question
the distinction; plasticity, e.g. social
 Key concepts and concerns
• Performativity
• Authorisation/Authenticity
• Exclusion/Access/Engagement
• Sous/sur-veillance (Dodge & Kitchin,
2005) [quote]
 3. Performativities
Bio-metries
Data are: representations,
measurements, they can be
codified, calculated, and compared
(Lyotard, 1984 ‘technological
criterion’)
Tend to be: ‘capta’
Bio-graphies
Data as: expressive, spontaneous,
emergent, reflexive (‘enacting’ Law
& Urry, 2004), mobile, contingent,
relational
Tend to be: ‘datum’ e.g. ‘given up’,
‘given-off’

‘Performance’ as: Performance as:

Effectiveness, efficiency, “efficient- Flow, emergent “biographic-
performativity” (Reed, 2009) performativity” (Reed, 2009)

Of course, there is “biographical capture” but, also ‘data go

travelling’, therefore bio-metries have biographies too !
 4. Case Studies
• Domestic Assistive technology,
• Mobile health/assistive devices
• Direct to customer genetic tests
• Biobanks

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Tunstall
ADLife
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Wii Fit
Nike +
Apple’s External Accessory framework
 4. Re-imaging BLISS
• BLISS - Bus Location and Information
SubSystem
• GPS tracking of buses
• Bus priority through traffic lights
• ‘real-time’ passenger information
(bus stop, SMS, Web)
• New basis for timetable
creation/management
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BLISS Bus Location and Information
SubSystem
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Construction of a “late bus”

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are needed to see this picture.

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Bus biography “getting
priority”

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Managing BLISS - “Life-
marshaled”

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Public privacy
• ‘life created’? : written timetable
• ‘life marshalled’?: GPS tracking of
bus and driver; management
reports; leading to new timetables
• ‘life unbounded’?: PIPs, Console
Screen, Web presentation
• performativity biography & [bio]metry=
‘late-bus’ -- passenger information; traffic
light ‘priority’;
• authentification new governing of buses
• exclusion/access/engagement ‘management
view’; ‘public view’, but no ‘driver view’
• sous/sur-veillance capta of bus, ‘given-off’
behaviour; resistance to ‘giving-up’ data

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• Thoughts, comments, question?

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