Data and the sensorium, or what data can teach us about ourselves through ourselves: an inquiry on wellbeing, data justice and the human experience of knowing, sensing and being

In tackling knowledge structures and power injustices that would allow for each one of us to live better lives, data – its uses, constructions and consequences – has become a factor of change. In this paper, the consideration of data justice takes a new road in the inquiry of the nature of wellbeing and justice. Using the capability approach, first, the paper discusses the constraints of agentic elements within individual justice. Secondly, inserted among traditional debates of wellbeing, life-satisfaction approaches are pinpointed to secure a definition of what means to live well within each one of ours perceptions. By reviewing these incongruencies in the applicability of the capability approach within data justice frameworks, the paper seeks to establish the consequences of taking an ‘emotional distance’ in the inquiry of people’s wellbeing and justice. By accounting for the need of more humanistic ways of analysis, the paper stands on the strengths of the sensorium as a scope that considers an unlimited array of points of entry for thinking, sensing and being. This paper anticipates new possibilities for data representation by focusing on ‘data futures’ that welcome creative, sensorium knowledge-making. These possibilities go beyond mainstream Western epistemologies and ontologies and instead, focus on more inclusive and contextual world-making practices.