Editors’ Summary: This introduction to the Journal of Cultural Analytics special issue redefines what cultural analytics means from the perspective of the Global South. Rather than viewing digital humanities as the application of computational tools to ready-made datasets, the authors argue that building archives, designing metadata, negotiating community governance, and preserving Indigenous knowledge are themselves deeply analytical acts. Drawing on case studies from Mexico, India, the Texas-Coahuila borderlands, and Vietnam, the issue demonstrates how computational methods can advance cultural heritage while addressing colonial legacies, linguistic marginalization, and epistemic inequality. By foregrounding community participation, data sovereignty, and locally grounded infrastructures, the collection challenges Global North assumptions about digital scholarship and offers a more inclusive framework for computational humanities. This special issue shows that equitable knowledge creation begins long before algorithms are applied.
Editors’ Choice: Computational Approaches to Cultural Heritage in the Global South: Infrastructures, Analytics, and Epistemic Justice
