Modeling Abolition: Building a New World from the Data of the Old

Modeling Abolition is a monograph that takes seriously the structuring forces of white supremacy and transphobia on the daily practices of making software. Through historical, reverse, and speculative engineering methodologies, I demonstrate the impacts of structural oppression on software design, and suggest abolitionist theory as an alternative paradigm for software making. Modeling Abolition offers abolitionist data patterns and open source software recommendations to orient technical systems toward liberation.

The RJRI grant supported interviews of the first 9 (of 40) participants for a forthcoming book and to make connections to other scholars and labs working on similar projects. The RJRI grant data also supported a presentation at the Society for the History of Technology about the concurrent rise of relational databases and mass incarceration.

Led by: Nikki Stevens (postdoc, Data + Feminism Lab)

Geography: Present day United States