Paper short abstract

This paper explores the social energies that are created as we wait in traffic jams.

Paper long abstract

This paper explores the creative energies of the traffic jams that form and transform the urban spaces of the crammed megacity Dhaka. I focus on the types of sociality that are produced by the jam. Mapping these through the languages that are produced in and about the jam, I argue that jam is a singular utterance, the coming into being of an unstable and transient socio-material form, erupting out of the contours of the urban space through a collective slowing down.