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- Convenors:
-
Lipika Kamra
(O.P. Jindal Global University)
Philippa Williams (Queen Mary University Of London)
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- Stream:
- Infrastructure
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 16 September, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel will focus on how digital imaginaries and technology are transforming the relationship between the state, corporations, technology and citizens, and the implications for democracy and development.
Long Abstract:
Utopian expectations that digital technology would deepen democratic life have long since been defied, from the Cambridge Analytica facilitated-election campaigns to the everyday uptake of WhatsApp for the circulation of extreme speech. Yet, the use of digital technology now increasingly impacts practices of the state across the world. Against this backdrop, this panel seeks to interrogate how digital imaginaries are transforming relationships between the state-corporate-digital-citizens and the implications for citizenship, governance and development.
The panel will host research and practice related to 'the digital' in the broadest sense and contribute to discussions on, but not limited to: i) the role of DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE in building 'smart cities', 'broadband highways', as well as the growth of a digital payments ecosystem and evolution of the biometric identity programmes; ii) how digital labour PLATFORMS AND PRACTICES are (re)shaping experiences of work and social relations; iii) modes of DIGITAL CONTENT and how the production, circulation and consumption of social media (re)produces and resists everyday life and politics; and iv) DIGITAL METHODOLOGIES which raise old and new questions concerning research practice and ethics. The panel seeks to challenge existing and apolitical conceptions of digital technology as a technocratic fix for poverty and raise critical questions about digital politics and the politics of the digital.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 16 September, 2020, -Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the paradoxical nature of democracy assembled by Integrated Command and Control Centres (ICCC) in India's aspiring smart cities. It argues that ICCCs simulate performance of democracy, while reinforcing centralised State structures that restrict digital democracy of its citizens.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will examine the paradoxical nature of democracy that is performed in the Integrated Command and Control Centres (ICCC) in India's aspiring smart cities. The ICCCs are spatial nodes in the unidirectional flows of data from the citizen to the state, assembling different structures of governance (traffic, waste, water and so on) within a real-time visualisation. In the context of India's 100 smart cities mission, the assemblage of ICCCs in its second-tier cities take a special significance as a simulacrum of 'democracy' and 'development' in transitioning smaller cities towards a 'smart urban future'. The ICCC upholds a performative 'process' of technocracy in a context of disconnected, broken or absent physical infrastructures and rapidly receding democratic processes of municipal governance. Based on research in three small and second-tier cities in India, we argue that this performance of centralised visualised governance exists in parallel to forms of structural and infrastructural violence by the state that has become evident in frequent internet shutdowns across these cities to regulate street protests and public dissent. In this context, the ICCC promises municipal autonomy and accountability to it citizens but performs instead as a surveillance arm of the centralised state that can withdraw access to digital infrastructures at will. Thus the performative governance of the ICCC constructs a simulacrum of democracy while at the same time retracting the very infrastructures of everyday life which makes governance democratic for ordinary citizens.
Paper short abstract:
Based on ethnographic research, this paper will explore the quid pro quo nature of the relationships between philanthropy, technology companies, and development in India.
Paper long abstract:
Based on ethnographic research with the free and open source software (FOSS) community in India, this paper explores the connections between philanthropy, technology companies, and development in India. Despite fiscal and technical advantages of FOSS, the Indian government must balance its desire for technological autonomy with the need for jobs from multinational corporations such as Microsoft via outsourcing and development aid from NGOs such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Several recent studies on how IT billionaires funnel their fortunes through philanthropic organisations demonstrate that these acts of charity are carried out in opaque institutions which are not accountable to governments and that the creation of these foundations also provides a means through which wealth can be 'washed clean' and remain untaxed. FOSS provides a useful lens through which to view how the philanthropic goals of tech billionaires to impact the development. Although it is not possible to verify the extent to which aid from the BMGF is given or received as a form of quid pro quo for purchases of Microsoft products used in government departments, my interlocutors often discussed these relationships as fact. If a corporation can define how governments operate through threats of withdrawing as an employer as well as through hegemonic definitions of what software is and then the philanthropic organisations affiliated with the corporation can come in and offer needed gifts in the form of 'free' software donations to local NGOs or direct aid, what can a sovereign government do?
Paper short abstract:
This paper draws on a collaborative research project with community based advocates for people struggling to access social protection in Delhi. It considers how the shift to online delivery of public services creates new knowledge economies and forms of mediation in low income neighbourhoods.
Paper long abstract:
In Delhi people living in low income neighbourhoods have legal rights to access a range of social protections. However, due to intersecting factors of low literacy, multiple dimensions of poverty, discrimination, corruption and poor service delivery many people have difficulty in accessing these rights. These challenges are complicated by the Indian government's efforts to move the application process for services online, replicating a global movement towards "digital by default" service provision. This paper emerges from a collaborative research project in Delhi with NGO 'community mobilisers' from low income neighbourhoods who monitor local service delivery, and act as advocates for people struggling to access social protection. It considers how the shift to what these advocates call the 'online mode' creates problems for those without internet access, appropriate language skills, or the experiential knowledge of how to interact with computer interfaces. The shift to the online mode opens a new knowledge economy in Delhi. "Cyber-cafes" sprout in neighbourhoods as approaching deadlines for online applications to government schemes open up opportunities to charge for assistance and the preparation of supporting documents. At the same time community mobilisers apply their grounded knowledge to help people safely negotiate application processes through street outreach. Experiential knowledge, the reliability of information and the necessity of mediation intersect with concepts of struggle, empowerment and active citizenship. Is the challenge to untangle them, or to find accommodations that will suit all those involved?
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on the 2019 Indian elections to examine the affective role of digital private spaces, like WhatsApp, to understand how political communication is shaped by emotions, the impact this has on everyday family and community relationships, ideas of citizenship and the nation in India.
Paper long abstract:
India has over 400 million WhatsApp users and serves as one of the main 'private' platforms for communication between individuals and groups with family, friends, colleagues and civic organizations amongst others. This digital 'living room' space is thus valued and trusted because it replicates and extends 'real-world' intimacies. It has also become a powerful digital tool for political parties and was central to campaign strategies in the 2019 Indian national election, particularly for the victorious Bharatiya Janata Party. The high intensity circulation of messages, videos, memes and images from formal party IT Cells as well as proxies often elicited political support by appealing to would be voters' emotions and sentiment. In recent years commentators have observed a shift in world-wide political practice from a focus on facts to emotions. This paper examines the relationship between digital technology, politics and emotions through the engagement of Indian citizens on WhatsApp in the lead up to the Indian elections. It documents the digitised production and lived experience of a range of sentiment from rage and aggression towards the 'other', of sympathy and devotion towards the patriarch of the nation, of insecurity in the face of fear and of humour and delight in ridiculing public figures. As such, it questions the impact of these affective digital private spaces on how we communicate with sentiment in everyday political life, and the impact on everyday family and community relationships as well as ideas of citizenship and the nation.
Paper short abstract:
In an age of increasingly digitised welfare programmes in India, attention to new or reinforced forms of precarity, remain limited. This paper focuses on how 'new forms' of precarity, particularly around gender, extend historical continuities of exclusion among precarious urban citizens.
Paper long abstract:
In an age of increasingly digitised and automated welfare programmes and services across diverse global contexts, attention to new or reinforced forms of precarity and unequal citizenship outcomes that arise, remain limited. These 'new forms' of precarity, particularly around gender, extend historical continuities of exclusion from 'analogue' welfare programmes among precarious people in cities, particularly women.They also deepen unequal citizenship outcomes among labour migrants and the urban poor.
Cities spanning the globe are undergoing rapidly evolving processes of digitisation in public infrastructure; bureaucracy and social welfare programmes, with visceral impacts on life at the urban margins. As regimes of digital service provision are rolled out with increasing speed, they are simultaneously contested as tools of neoliberal development and accumulation. 'Automated inequality' (Eubanks, 2018), 'forced digitisation' (Banaji, 2017) and 'data colonisation' (Couldry and Mejias, 2018) are some of the terms attributed to processes linked to the swift displacement of people from access to welfare systems, for example under programmes of demonetisation and biometric identification systems in India. On the other hand, the role of other forms of digital infrastructures that enable strategies of gendered resilience from below, for example through social media, has been conceptually isolated from understanding urban precarity.
In this paper, I ground understandings of the relationship the digitisation of the welfare programmes, unequal citizenship outcomes and embodied experiences, particularly around gender, in ethnographic work gathered in the Indian city of Delhi to understand the various ways in which digitisation enacts and resists gendered forms of urban precarity.