Southern Digitalities

Beyond entrenched notions of digital studies researchWestern histories and ideas dominate studies of digital technologies despite the fact most of today's digital users live outside the West. Clovis Bergère, Marwan M. Kraidy, and Marina R. Krikorian curate essays that explore new ways of understanding global digital life by centering the experiences, practices, and infrastructures of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.The contributors proceed from the idea that the plural term "digitalities" reflects how material conditions, social hierarchies, and local histories shape digital life. Their approach sees so-called Southern digitalities as a gateway to rethinking digital theory from a starting point that draws on grounded knowledge, multilingual concepts, and place‑based research. Four organizing themes—data, belonging, work, and epistemologies—reveal how scholars can navigate and reinterpret digital systems with concepts and methods that challenge established ways of studying and understanding international digital life.A merger of the theoretical and imaginative, Southern Digitalities provides a blueprint for uncovering more inclusive understandings of contemporary digital worlds.