Event
The Social and Cultural Life of Information Workshop: Discussions
The Social and Cultural Life of Information workshop was held in Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, on November 14-16 2013. It brought together a select group of media scholars, historians, anthropologists and geographers for an intensive three days workshop, and aimed at bringing together research on colonial and postcolonial information infrastructures, with a strong South Asian component.
Here are the recordings of discussions that followed the presentations at the workshop:
Day One
Technological Inertia: The Politics of Privacy and the Failure of Anglo-American Biometric Registration
Keith Breckenridge, University of Witwatersand
Discussant: Radhika Singha, Jawaharlal Nehru University
De-Duplicating India: On the Promise of Immateriality
Lawrence Cohen, University of California, Berkeley
Discussant: Lawrence Liang, Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore
Of Identity, Platform, and ‘New’ Information Infrastructures of Governance: Situating the Aadhaar Project within the History of Electronic Governance in India
Sumandro Chattapadhyay, The Sarai Programme, CSDS
Discussant: Nayanika Mathur, University of Cambridge
Day Two
Speech Marks: Early Modern Information Geographies
Miles Ogborn, Queen Mary, University of London
Discussant: Ravi S. Vasudevan, The Sarai Programme, CSDS
How to Spell Mohammedan? Note on Circulation, Standardisation & the Documentary Production of Empire
Brian Larkin, Barnard College, Columbia University
Discussant: Miles Ogborn, Queen Mary, University of London
Punished by Surveillance: Legal Codification and Police Modernisation in Colonial India 1861-1923
Radhika Singha, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Discussant: Keith Breckenridge, University of Witwatersand
Day Two (Continued)
Man-eaters of the Indian Himalaya: Identifying, Naming, and Hunting Big Cats in Uttarakhand
Nayanika Mathur, University of Cambridge
Discussant: Awadhendra Sharan, CSDS
Data’s Discordances: The Political Life of Medical Information in Maputo, Mozambique
Ramah McKay, University of Minnesota
Discussant: Sarada Balagopalan, CSDS
‘One Hearth, One Home, One Family’: Materiality and Affect in Urban Poor Enumeration
Tarangini Sriraman, Centre de Sciences Humaines
Discussant: Ramah McKay, University of Minnesota
Day Three
Information, Transparency, and the New Urban Turn
Ravi Sundaram, The Sarai Programme, CSDS
Discussant: Lawrence Cohen, University of California, Berkeley
Occupied and Possessed Cities: Territoriality, Information, and Techno-Managerial Politics
Solomon Benjamin, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras
Discussant: Sumandro Chattapadhyay, The Sarai Programme, CSDS
Cinematic Information in the Colonial Archive, 1940-1946
Ravi S. Vasudevan, The Sarai Programme, CSDS
Discussant: Brian Larkin, Barnard College, Columbia University
Of Hidden Cameras and Hidden Truths: Law and Visual Evidence in an Era of Digital Uncertainty
Lawrence Liang, Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore
Discussant: Ravi Sundaram, The Sarai Programme, CSDS