Pirate Modernity: Delhi's Media Urbanism

ISBN-13: 9780415409667 / Angielski / Twarda / 2009 / 224 str.

Ravi Sundaram

Opis

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 globalization. Poorer urban populations increasingly inhabit non-legal spheres: unauthorized neighborhoods, 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.
　
This pioneering book suggests cities have to be revisited afresh after proliferating media culture. Pirate Modernity boldly draws from urban and cultural theory to open a new agenda for a world after media urbanism.

Focusing on the culture of piracy in the Indian capital, this book looks at what has happened to the city in the wake of the dissemination of the new media and the ways in which it has, and will, affect urban cultures in an age of globalization.

Beginning with the imagination of order in 1950s Delhi, through to the contemporary transitions to a media urbanism and a pirate culture in the 1990s, Ravi Sundaram shows how Delhi has been transformed from a world of order and national sovereignty to one of continuing urban crisis, new globalization and media expansion. Using detailed field research, archival work and interpretive constellations, this book raises questions about the experience of the post-colonial city after the passing of classic urban visions which will make it a compelling read for anyone working on urbanism, media and cultural studies, and South Asian studies.

Spis treści

Introduction: After Media  1. A City of Order: The Masterplan  2. Media Urbanism  3. The Pirate Kingdom  4. Death and the Accident.  Conclusion: An Information City?

O autorze

Ravi Sundaram