The Planning Moment: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1531506631 ISBN 13: 9781531506636

Publisher: Fordham University Press, 2024

Synopsis

Empires and their aftermaths were massive planning institutions; in the past two hundred years, the natural and social sciences emerged―at least in part―as modes of knowledge production for imperial planning. Yet these connections are frequently under-emphasized in the history of science and its corollary fields.
The Planning Moment explores the myriad ways plans and planning practices pervade recent global history. The book is built around twenty-seven brief case studies that explore the centrality of planning in colonial and postcolonial environments, relationships, and contexts, through a range of disciplines: the history of science, science and technology studies, colonial and postcolonial studies, urban studies, and the history of knowledge.
If colonialism made certain landscapes, populations, and institutions legible while obscuring others, The Planning Moment reveals the frequently disruptive and violent processes of erasure in imperial planning by examining how “common sense” was produced and how the intransigence of planning persists long after decolonization. In recognizing the resistance and subversion that often met colonial plans, the book makes visible a range of strategies and techniques by which planning was modified and reappropriated, and by which decolonial futures might be imagined.
Contributors: Itty Abraham, Benjamin Allen, Sarah Blacker, Emily Brownell, Lino Camprubí, John DiMoia, Mona Fawaz, Lilly Irani, Chihyung Jeon, Robert Kett, Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach, Karen McAllister, Laura Mitchell, Gregg Mitman, Aaron Moore (†), Nada Moumtaz, Tahani Nadim, Anindita Nag, Raúl Necochea López, Tamar Novick, Benjamin Peters, Juno Salazar Parreñas, Martina Schlünder, Sarah Van Beurden, Helen Verran, Ana Carolina Vimieiro Gomes, Alexandra Widmer, and Alden Young

About this title

About the Authors

Sarah Blacker is a Sessional Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Science at York University, Toronto.

Emily Brownell is a Senior Lecturer in Environmental History at the University of Edinburgh.

Anindita Nag is Associate Professor and the Associate Dean of International Affairs at the Jindal School of Art and Architecture, New Delhi.

Martina Schlünder is a Research Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and a visiting associate professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Center for Technology, Innovation, and Culture at the University of Oslo.

Sarah Van Beurden is Associate Professor History and African American and African Studies at the Ohio State University.

From the Back Cover

"The Planning Moment provides a much-needed revision to the notion of a homogenous modernity and to top-down accounts of state planning. In recognizing the contested and often multiple futures that emerged from the disjuncture between plan and action, the book charts fresh directions past impasses that mark contemporary technophilia and technophobia."--Orit Halpern, author of Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason since 1945

"This deeply interdisciplinary and transregional book emerges from anthropology, history, Science and Technology Studies, museum studies, and sociology, with essays spanning every continent. While each essay tells a highly localized story, together they help us reimagine imperial designs, postcolonial responses, and Cold War exigencies."--Jini Kim Watson, author of Cold War Reckonings: Authoritarianism and the Genres of Decolonization

Empires and their aftermaths were massive planning institutions. Over the last two centuries, colonial and postcolonial planning has shaped both the world we know and the disciplines through which we know it. Through twenty-seven case studies, The Planning Moment explores the centrality of planning to colonial and postcolonial worlds, through a range of disciplines: the history of science, science and technology studies, colonial and postcolonial studies, urban studies, and the history of knowledge.

If colonialism made certain landscapes, populations, and institutions legible while obscuring others, The Planning Moment reveals the frequently disruptive and violent processes of erasure in imperial planning by examining how "common sense" was produced and how the intransigence of planning persists long after decolonization. In recognizing the resistance and subversion that often met colonial plans, the book makes visible a range of strategies and techniques by which planning was modified and reappropriated, and by which decolonial futures might be imagined.

Sarah Blacker is Sessional Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Science at York University. Emily Brownell is Senior Lecturer in Environmental History at the University of Edinburgh. Anindita Nag is Professor at the Jindal School of Art and Architecture, Jindal Global University. Martina Schlünder is a Research Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Sarah van Beurden is Associate Professor of History and African American and African Studies at the Ohio State University. Helen Verran is University Professorial Fellow in the Northern Institute at Charles Darwin University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1531506631
• ISBN 13: 9781531506636
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336
• Editor: Blacker Sarah, Brownell Emily, Nag Anindita, Schlünder Martina, Van Beurden Sarah