Security and the city: Post-colonial accumulation, securitization, and urban development in Kolkata

Research output: Contributions to collected editions/worksChapterpeer-review

Authors

The chapter explores the interconnected issues of accumulation, securitization, and governmentality in the context of transformation of the city of Kolkata into a ‘world-class’ metropolis. In both academic and common languages, securitization has rapidly embraced a wider meaning; this includes the increasing emphasis on security in the political debate and the growth of a global security apparatus. In this chapter, the author discusses securitization in relation to what have recently been described as ‘operations of capital’, which include the functions of extraction, logistics, and finance that are crucial in understanding how global capital works. The author investigates the security industry and urban changes in Kolkata and explores urban securitization as a global capitalistic process. Based on interviews with the relevant actors, both in the security industry including workers, managers, and advisors, and in the urban transformation sector that included developers, residents, and local authorities, and archival research and discourse analysis of relevant documents, the author argues that securitization, besides supporting and complementing the processes of accumulation over cities, constitutes a space of intense accumulation itself. But simultaneously, it becomes crucial for governance of a contradictory and contended urban space. The market- oriented interventions on the city have allowed for an impressive growth of the security business. Yet, the process of securitization has exceeded the pattern of urban development. It has become a powerful industry, as well as a strategy for management of at least two principal effects of accumulation: dispossession and disruption.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAccumulation in Post-Colonial Capitalism
EditorsIman Kumar Mitra, Ranabir Samaddar, Samita Sen
Number of pages18
Place of PublicationSingapore
PublisherSpringer Singapore
Publication date01.01.2016
Pages75-92
ISBN (print)978-981-10-1036-1, 978-981-10-9312-8
ISBN (electronic)978-981-10-1037-8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.01.2016
Externally publishedYes

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Do investors value the inclusion in sustainability indices? - Evidence from an event study based on the FTSE4Good Europe Index
  2. The Importance of Business Continuity for Making Business: The Case of Design Kitchen
  3. Evaluation of Magnesium Die-Casting Alloys for Elevated Temperature Applications
  4. Compensation-related institutional investor activism.
  5. Foreign Ownership and the Extensive Margins of Exports
  6. Co-Creation im Kultursektor
  7. Irritation des Alltäglichen
  8. Development and application of a simultaneous SPE-method for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), alkylated PAHs, heterocyclic PAHs (NSO-HET) and phenols in aqueous samples from German Rivers and the North Sea
  9. Charting the Emerging Financial Services Ecosystem of Fintechs and Banks
  10. Open participation network and school health programs - Review of the BLK experiment OPUS (1997-2000) for health promotion
  11. Umsatzsteigerung durch Nachhaltigkeit
  12. Crises in education and social change, 1780-2000
  13. Reframing Business Sustainability Decision-Making with Value-Focussed Thinking
  14. Eilenriede und Zooviertel
  15. Pitfalls and potential of institutional change: Rain-index insurance and the sustainability of rangeland management
  16. Gender-specific perspectives of mangrove ecosystem services
  17. EMA-Links
  18. Die Bewertung des Informationssystems einer Unternehmung
  19. Integrating stakeholder theory and sustainability accounting
  20. Tri‐trophic interaction networks along a tree diversity gradient of BEF‐China
  21. So macht man Karriere
  22. A strategic model of European gas supply (GASMOD)
  23. Transdisciplinary case studies as a means of sustainability learning
  24. Maternal smoking and offspring inattention and hyperactivity
  25. Kumulation von Querschnitten