Sanjay Srivastava, Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Institute of Economic Growth, University of Delhi will be visiting the Urban Big Data Centre (UBDC) on Tuesday 21st August to give a seminar covering his research into remote sensing technologies to address how big data influences our understanding of cities and urban inequalities.

This free event is jointly organised by the University of Glasgow's UBDC and the Centre for Sustainable, Healthy and Learning Cities and Neighbourhoods (SHLC) and researchers from both centres will be in attendance to take part in the discussions following the talk.

The seminar will last approximately 1hr including Q&A and there will be some time for informal discussion afterwards. It will take place in UBDC's Conference Room (7 Lilybank Gardens). As space is limited, advance registration via Eventbrite is required.

Further details of the talk below. Please contact keith.maynard@glasgow.ac.uk with any questions.

The Satellites that Ate Delhi: GIS, Big Data and the Politics of Space at the Margins of the Indian City

This presentation investigates discourses and practices of urban governance based upon notions of technologically driven urban futures. More specifically, it explores relationships between official, digitally mapped visions of the city and ‘raw’ maps produced by residents of ‘Unauthorised Localities' (ULs). It focuses on a dispute between residents of a particular UL in Delhi over the accuracy of a satellite map of their locality. The state produces satellite maps in order to develop 'transparent' and 'accurate' urban development policies, particularly in relation shanty town localities. These, however, are contested by the urban poor, thereby revealing complex relations between technology, urbanism, governance, land-markets and marginality. Using the case of an 'inaccurately' mapped street, the presentation seeks to build upon social science approaches in analyzing techno-sanguine discourses of urban governance in the Global South.

Presenter biography

Sanjay Srivastava is Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University North Campus.His publications include Constructing Postcolonial India: National Character and the Doon School (Routledge, 1998), Asia: Cultural Politics in the Global Age (Palgrave, 2001, co-authored), Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes. Sexualities, Masculinities and Culture in South Asia (Sage, 2004, contributing editor), Passionate Modernity, Sexuality, Class and Consumption in India (Routledge, 2007), Sexuality Studies (2013, contributing editor), Entangled Urbanism: Slum, Gated Community and Shopping Mall in Delhi and Gurgaon (OUP, 2015) and Critical Issues in Indian Sociology (Sage, 2018, co-editor). He is currently working on an ethnographic project on urbanism and 'smart cities' in the Global South.

UBDC & SHLC Seminar: The Satellites that Ate Delhi - Prof Sanjay Srivastava