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SUMMARY:Time-bound: The digitalising state and fugitive urbanisation in th
 e global south - Ayona Datta\, University College London
DTSTART:20260210T163000Z
DTEND:20260210T180000Z
UID:TALK243349@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Ben Platt
DESCRIPTION:This talk will focus on temporality as a significant aspect of
  state power as it digitalises and transforms how we might conceive of the
  ‘urban’. In the global south\, a key strategy to address the challeng
 es of urbanisation has been a push towards digitalising the state's territ
 orial information management systems that are reliant upon the increased u
 se of algorithmic scripts and machine learning. Here the state acts as a 
 ‘time-fixer’ as it shapes in the most fundamental ways\, the time-boun
 d nature of policy\, the adoption of new technologies for mapping territor
 ial expansion\, and its relationship with past\, present and future urban 
 worlds. Based on the findings of a five-year international research projec
 t across Kenya\, Mexico and India\, I will examine how our understanding o
 f the ‘urban’ is in fact ‘time-bound’ with the temporal power of t
 he digitalising state that mediates when\, where and how territories  are 
 drawn into fugitive landscapes of urbanisation. Drawing upon examples of t
 erritorial struggles in the metropolitan peripheries of Nairobi\, Guadalaj
 ara and Mumbai\, I will show how indigenous and marginal communities also 
 in turn get entangled with the time-bounded nature of the digitalising sta
 te in the peripheries where place is assumed to be timeless\, and history 
 is enacted through their struggles with the state’s temporal power to as
 sert control over the nature and meaning of what it means to be ‘urban' 
 in the global south.
LOCATION:Department of Geography\, Small Lecture Theatre
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