  The idea of "data justice" is of recent academic vintage. It has arisen over
the past decade in Anglo-European research institutions as an attempt to bring
together a critique of the power dynamics that underlie accelerating trends of
datafication with a normative commitment to the principles of social justice-a
commitment to the achievement of a society that is equitable, fair, and capable
of confronting the root causes of injustice.However, despite the seeming
novelty of such a data justice pedigree, this joining up of the critique of the
power imbalances that have shaped the digital and "big data" revolutions with a
commitment to social equity and constructive societal transformation has a
deeper historical, and more geographically diverse, provenance. As the stories
of the data justice initiatives, activism, and advocacy contained in this
volume well evidence, practices of data justice across the globe have, in fact,
largely preceded the elaboration and crystallisation of the idea of data
justice in contemporary academic discourse. In telling these data justice
stories, we hope to provide the reader with two interdependent tools of data
justice thinking: First, we aim to provide the reader with the critical
leverage needed to discern those distortions and malformations of data justice
that manifest in subtle and explicit forms of power, domination, and coercion.
Second, we aim to provide the reader with access to the historically effective
forms of normativity and ethical insight that have been marshalled by data
justice activists and advocates as tools of societal transformation-so that
these forms of normativity and insight can be drawn on, in turn, as
constructive resources to spur future transformative data justice practices.
