Qualitative Inquiry· 2026Q1
The Slow Violence of the Anthropocene: Ecological Degradation, Qualitative Ethics, and Artificial Intelligence
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- Q1SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
AI's computational facade hides its material impact, reproducing colonial dispossession through land, labor, and knowledge extraction, according to a qualitative ethics framework.
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Key points
- AI's computational nature obscures its material reliance on extraction, accumulation, and waste.
- AI reproduces colonial dispossession by making lands, labor, and knowledge extractable.
- Qualitative research ethics must confront complicity in AI's ecological and colonial violence.
- The paper poses questions about accountability, refusal, and knowledge production with AI.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Artificial intelligence (AI) is often presented as immaterial and purely computational, obscuring the infrastructures that sustain it through extraction, accumulation, and waste. Drawing on theories of slow violence, infrastructure, and settler colonialism, we examine how AI reproduces colonial logics of dispossession by rendering lands, labor, and knowledge extractable. Through three interconnected dimensions, we argue that qualitative research ethics must extend beyond human subjects to confront our complicity in the ecological and colonial violence of AI use. Rather than resolution, we offer questions about accountability, refusal, and what it means to produce knowledge through and with AI.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Qualitative Inquiry, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Cultural Studies
Cultural StudiesSocial Sciences