
Technology and Sovereignty
Research Group
Carola Westermeier
While technologies and infrastructures have never been neutral, their political and societal relevance has become more apparent in the context of (geo-)political tensions and heightened security: Relationships between technology companies and state actors are intensifying as efforts to achieve digital, technological, and monetary sovereignty are pursued. New technologies are emerging as central arenas of geo-economic ambitions, as exemplified by the “Chip Wars,” competition for Artificial Intelligence, or Cloud Computing. Digital currencies are being developed to reconfigure monetary dependencies and alter the established financial architecture.
The research group focuses on the reconfigurations of socioeconomic relations engendered by articulations of sovereignty that manifest in concrete technologies, and on how economic technologies are in turn shaped by sociopolitical demands of sovereignty and security. While forms of digital, technological, and monetary sovereignty have primarily been studied as legal concepts and political discourses, the research group investigates sovereignty as a set of technologies, infrastructures, and socio-material practices. Its aim is to widen the study of technological transformations by embedding the interplay of economic demands and technology in their sociopolitical contexts.