Deconstructing big data for development (BD4D): continuities and reflections of development discourse in the age of datafication

Increasing attention to BD4D has raised scholarly concern, reflecting on its assumptions and practices. However, little is known about the extent to which it is reflected at the institutional level. Examining recent publications from major development institutions, this article deconstructs contemporary BD4D discourses. Despite years of criticisms against the enthusiasm of datafication, the analysis illustrates the persistence of materialistic and modernistic discourses within which big data becomes analogous to the new form of natural resource, knowledge, and an engine necessary for addressing socio-economic problems and sustainable development. It demonstrates how treating big data as such depoliticizes data extractivism while endorsing exogenous epistemologies and technocentric development models at the expense of critically questioning the enduring structures underlying global development and data infrastructures. Constructive deconstruction of BD4D enables us to think beyond asking what big data can ‘do better for’ development toward asking how development should also ‘do better with’ big data.