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
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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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