Rebooting the global consensus: Norm entrepreneurship, data governance and the inalienability of digital bodies

The establishment of norms among states is a common way of governing international actions. This article analyses the potential of norm-building for governing data and artificial intelligence technologies' collective effects. Rather than focusing on state actors's ability to establish and enforce norms, however, we identify a contrasting process taking place among civil society organisations in response to the international neoliberal consensus on the commodification of data. The norm we identify – ‘nothing about us without us’ – asserts civil society's agency, and specifically the right of those represented in datasets to give or refuse permission through structures of democratic representation. We argue that this represents a form of norm-building that should be taken as seriously as that of states, and analyse how it is constructing the political power, relations, and resources to engage in governing technology at scale. We first outline how this counter-norming is anchored in data's connections to bodies, land, community, and labour. We explore the history of formal international norm-making and the current norm-making work being done by civil society organisations internationally, and argue that these, although very different in their configurations and strategies, are comparable in scale and scope. Based on this, we make two assertions: first, that a norm-making lens is a useful way for both civil society and research to frame challenges to the primacy of market logics in law and governance, and second, that the conceptual exclusion of civil society actors as norm-makers is an obstacle to the recognition of counter-power in those spheres.