[Reader-list] [Announcements] Pirate Modernity: Book Discussion

[Mitoo Das]

We invite you to a book discussion of Ravi Sundaram's

*Pirate Modernity: Delhi's Media Urbanism,
Routledge, London and Delhi. 2010

*
*Venue: *CSDS, Seminar Room*
Location: *29 Rajpur Road*
Date:*Wednesday, March 10th, 2010.*
Time: *5pm*
*
*Discussants
*Lawrence Liang
Awadhendra Sharan*
*Nivedita Menon

*Refreshments will follow the discussion*
---
Using Delhi's contemporary history as a site for reflection, Pirate 
Modernity moves from a detailed discussion of the technocratic design of 
the city by US planners in the 1950s, to the massive expansions after 
1977, culminating in the urban crisis of the 1990s. As a practice, 
pirate modernity is an illicit form of urban globalisation in cities 
where low cost technologies are accessed by residents. Urban populations 
increasingly inhabit non-legal spheres: unauthorized neighbourhoods, 
squatter camps and bypass legal technological infrastructures (media, 
electricity). This pirate culture produces a significant enabling 
resource for subaltern populations unable to enter the legal city. 
Equally, this is an unstable world, bringing subaltern populations into 
the harsh glare of permanent technological visibility, and attacks by 
urban elites, courts and visceral media industries. The book examines 
contemporary Delhi from some of these sites: the unmaking of the citys 
modernist planning design, new technological urban networks that bypass 
states and corporations, and the tragic experience of the road accident 
terrifyingly enhanced by technological culture. Pirate Modernity moves 
between past and present, along with debates in Asia, Africa and Latin 
America on urbanism, media culture, and everyday life.

The book suggests cities have to be revisited afresh after proliferating 
media culture.


*To order the South Asia edition, visit the Scholars without Borders 
on-line bookstore:
*
http://www.scholarswithoutborders.in/item_show.php?code_no=CUL107&ID=undefined&calcStr 
=

*The book is also available in bookstores in India. The international 
paperback is due this summer.
--*
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