We (Beverley Skeggs and Simon Yuill) ran a sociological software project (ESRC ES/KO10786) between 2013 and 2016 on “A Sociology of Values and Value”. It began as a study of how the affects of friendship and faith were monetized, but it quickly—because this is what our data identified—turned into a study of the tracking and trading of people’s data. There was so much tracking on people’s browsers that at first, we were overwhelmed. Then, we struggled to make sense of the radically different amounts of tracking and trading that occurred between people. One case stands out. It was the difference we saw between two women: one, a middle-class highly educated global journalist (Lara) and another an older, disabled women in receipt of social security (Belle).

Link to read full text online at Taylor and Francis.