Promises and Realities of Digital (Re)Configurations as a multi-scalar Phenomenon

Abstract

Digital technologies have been lauded as essential for fostering new ways of thinking about public good(s) and services, sustainable futures and universal access. The scramble for ‘going digital’ is undergirded by a repertoire of socio-technical imaginaries, utopian visions, and values– striving for efficiency, averting corruption, and innovating for sustainability– that aim to overcome contemporary challenges. We are witnessing traveling models of digital innovations and funding mechanisms for digital futures, implanted across multiple territories, with similar effects at a global scale.

In this workshop we invite papers that use empirical research to explore themes on digital governance, digitization projects as ‘glocal’ phenomena, re-spatialization/infrastructuring dimensions of nation-wide digital plans, as well as the politico-economic foundations and temporalities of digitization projects.

Key notes will be held by Jean-Christoph Plantin (Tech Giants and Subsea Cables: Reprogramming the Spatiality and Temporality of a Global Infrastructure) and Sanjay Srivastava (Mussavis, Satellite Mapping, Statist Entrepreneurialism and the Aspirations of a ‘Criminal Caste’: The Social Life of Digital Technologies at the Rural-Urban Frontier in Gurugram, India).

The two key notes on Thursday and Friday will be open to the public and available on Zoom. You can join by clicking the button below. For more info check out the poster!

Biographical Notes

Keynote Speakers

Jean-Christoph Plantin (LSE, London)

Jean-Christophe is Associate Professor at the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. His research investigates the increasingly infrastructural role that digital platforms play in society.

In his first book, Participatory Mapping: New Data, New Cartography, (Wiley, 2014) he detailed the use of web-based mapping platforms by non-experts to participate in socio-technical debates, focusing on radiation mapping initiatives after March 11th 2011 in Fukushima, Japan. Following his postdoctoral research, he studied invisible labor in knowledge infrastructures, such as processing work in data archives, and the platformization of research data repositories. He is currently writing a monograph on how large tech companies shape our global communication infrastructure (through projects such as data centers, satellites, or undersea cables). He is also co-editing the SAGE Handbook for Data & Society (with Amelia Acker, Tommaso Venturini, and Antonia Walford).

Before joining the LSE in 2015, he was Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan (Department of Communication & School of Information). He holds a PhD in Communication & Information Studies from the Université de Technologie de Compiègne, France, and MAs from the Université Paris 8, France, and from the European Graduate School, Switzerland. He has held Visiting Fellowships at Northwestern University, Fudan University, Sciences Po, and Microsoft Research New England (Social Media Collective).

His work has been published in leading Media & Communications and Science & Technology Studies journals, including Media, Culture & Society, New Media & Society, Big Data & Society, Chinese Journal of Communication, International Journal of Communication, European Journal of Communication, and Sciences, Technology & Human Values. His research has been funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the European Regional Development Fund, LSE and the University of Michigan.

Sanjay Srivastava (SOAS, London)

Sanjay is an anthropologist and British Academy Global Professor. His research is primarily focused on South Asia and spans across themes of urbanism and urban cultures, consumer cultures, the new-middle classes, masculinities, and new cultures of work. He is currently involved in several individual and collaborative research projects. These include ‘Imagined Futures: Technology, Urban Planning and their Subjects at the Margins of an Indian Megapolis’; ‘Gendered Violence and Urban Transformations in India and South Africa’; ‘Religion and the City in India’; and ‘Learning from Small Cities: Governing Imagined Futures and the Dynamic of Change in India’s “Smart” Urban Age’. An interest in ethnographic film has led to collaborations with film-maker David MacDougall on ‘The Doon School Chronicles’ and ‘Kotla Walks. Performing Locality’ with Simon Wilmot.

His key publications include Masculinity and the Post-National Indian City. Neighbourhoods, Streets, Home and Consumerism (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2022); Entangled Urbanism. Slum, Gated Community and Shopping Mall in Delhi and Gurgaon (OUP, 2015); Passionate Modernity. Sexuality, Class and Consumption in India (Routledge, 2007); and Constructing Post-Colonial India. National Character and the Doon (Routledge, 1998). He also writes for the print and electronic media.

Between 2012 and 2016, he was co-editor of the journal Contributions to Indian Sociology and currently serves on the editorial board of a number of journals and book series. These include American Ethnologist; Contributions to Indian Sociology; Culture, Society and Masculinities; Identities. Global Studies in Culture and Power; ‘Exploring Urban Change in South Asia’ (Springer); ‘Metamorphoses of the Political: India and the Global South’ (Cambridge University Press and ICAS:MP); and ‘Debating the Political in Contemporary India and the Global South’ (CUP and ICAS:MP)

He has also worked with government bodies and international NGOs and provided academic analysis for gender-related policy making. He was co-author of a report for the Indian government on gendered violence and women’s safety on university campuses (The Saksham Report, 2013); Member of the Advisory Board, ‘Building Safe and Inclusive Cities for Women’, UN Women and Jagori; and author of ‘Masculinities and Power in the Asia-Pacific’ section of UNDPs Asia and the Pacific Human Development Report (2010). He continues to be associated with several groups that work at the interface of gender and policy, these include the Centre for Health and Social Justice (Delhi), SUTRA (Himachal Pradesh, India) and MenEngage Global.

Organizers

Srividya Balasubramanian (SFB 1199)

Srividya is a Graduate student at University of Leipzig’s Department of Anthropology working on the topic of large scale, state-led digitization projects in rural India. In her dissertation, she is investigating the socio-structural implications of building a comprehensive digital governance structure in India, focusing on new state-citizen contact points or kiosks where such services are made available for those living in rural and remote locations.

She holds an MA in Anthropology from Leipzig University where she researched on the practical implications of financial inclusion policies on the lives of the urban poor in Delhi. She has held teaching and assistantship positions in Leipzig (2017, 2019) and Halle (2019).

Sreya Dutta Chowdhury (SFB 1199)

Edwin Amani Ambeso (SFB 1199)

Jan Moritz Dolinga (SFB 1199)