Just(ice) Tech and Data: Kenyan Justice Entrepreneurs’ Role in Creating and Defining Justice
Nicole Ahoya
My dissertation project examines the role of Kenyan justice entrepreneurs within the evolving and emerging relationship between justice, data-driven development approaches and entrepreneurial development. (Access to) Justice has been implemented as a cross-cutting goal for development with the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 which set an overarching global development agenda for all countries until 2030. This stand-alone goal on justice differs from previous implicit notions of justice in international development agendas, which were primarily grounded in human rights. The current goal of justice is framed in a broader, more cross-cutting and transformative manner, envisioned to be “people-centered” (see e.g. Sandvik 2020). The development jargon “people-centered” emphasizes that justice should be defined by the “people” themselves, encompassing different conceptualizations of justice while also upholding universal notions of justice (Satterthwaite and Dhital 2019). Recent studies, however, have highlighted the complexity involved in conceptualizing, implementing and measuring such a comprehensive justice goal (Merry 2019). The current data-driven approach of the SDGs remains focused on defining indicators to measure justice for “evidence-based” development. At the same time, it also emphasizes that data should bring justice to life and evaluate mechanisms and delivery of justice. Recent studies have already highlighted the intricate questions of how to define indicators for measuring justice (see e.g. Satterthwaite and Dhital 2019; Sarfaty 2011). My research project borrows from these studies and moves beyond by asking – how, when and by whom data on justice is produced, compiled, and circulated at the micro-level to bring a context- specific and “people-centered” understanding of justice? In my research project, I focus on justice entrepreneurs as an umbrella term for actors who implement justice in a profit-oriented and digital manner outside the “traditional” legal field. This heterogeneous group of actors has increasingly come to the fore as the SDGs have called upon legal and non-legal actors along with mechanisms and institutions to close the “justice gap” and provide “universal access to justice.” Concurrently, technology has been promulgated as a “game-changer” to fast-track access to justice. Particularly, I am interested in asking how these actors draw on the justice approach in the development goals? How do they conceptualize justice (solutions)? How do they contribute to the production of data on and about justice?
Duration
2023 - 2025
Supervisors
Prof. Dr. Sandra Bärnreuther
Prof. Dr. Olaf Zenker