Events

CHAIRPERSON

Assoc Prof Jiat Hwee Chang, Asia Research Institute, and Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore

PROGRAM

ABSTRACT

In the ever-changing digital economy landscape, the global expansion of digital platforms takes centre stage. This phenomenon is inextricably linked to the complex geopolitical context, notably the ongoing tensions between China and the United States. The outward expansion of Chinese technology companies was quickly circumvented by hawkish policies framed in terms of national security, and more recently, a push to counter the “asymmetric decoupling”. This scenario in China has given rise to two distinct approaches: the structural reform for technological self-reliance in domestic supply chains and, the Going-out scheme leaning towards individual makers and startups. The transnational infrastructure for transborder mobility of platforms is now under reconfiguration, where two currents of flow are co-existing: one of tech corporations, and the other of the bodily movement of makers, coders and startups. The first involves a complex interplay among statist actors, corporate interests, and transnational knowledge bodies. It presents a dynamic ‘cobweb’, where actors influence the other’s trajectory. The second type, in contrast, revolves around the biopower of startups, makers, and coders. It delves into their everyday lives and encounters in host cities, exploring aspects such as mobility, identity and subject-making in the contact zones.

Questions we explore in this panel are: How is the materiality of these transborder infrastructures, in terms of their ontological components and their interconnections? How do we capture the STS interpretation of infrastructure as “relations of things”, where infrastructures and the entities traversing them serve as mutual substrates? Likewise, how does the cross-border mobility of startups pave the path for the mobility of platforms, venture capital, and state effect, and vice versa? How do we understand the role of incubators as constitutive elements of the infrastructure, in particular, not just as nodes that grab moving things from the flow, but as interruptive object spaces that enact, facilitate and discipline mobility?

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

June Wang is Associate Professor in the Department of Public and International Affairs at City University of Hong Kong. Her research lies at the intersection of urban political economy and cultural studies, with special concern for creative/cultural cities and platform urbanism. Her long-term research interest dwells on the Deleuzian (re-)territorialisation of state space, that is, how the intertwined political and economic logics put human and non-human things on the move, resulting in ceaseless re-configuration of economy and population. She has authored over 30 papers in journals such as Planning Theory, EPA, Geoforum, IJURR, South Atlantic Quarterly, Territory Politics Governance, and Urban Geography. She has edited books with Routledge, Edward Elgar, and authored for Urban Database of Oxford University Press; she also edited special issues on EPA, Geoforum, and City, Culture and Society.

Jack Linchuan Qiu is Shaw Foundation Professor of Media Technology at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He has published more than 130 research articles and chapters and 10 books in English and Chinese including Goodbye iSlave: A Manifesto for Digital Abolition (University of Illinois P, 2016), World Factory in the Information Age (Guangxi Normal UP, 2013), Working-Class Network Society (MIT Press, 2009), and co-authored book Mobile Communication and Society (MIT Press, 2005). He is a recipient of the C. Edwin Baker Award for the Advancement of Scholarship on Media, Markets and Democracy, and an elected fellow of the International Communication Association.

Naomi C. Hanakata is Assistant Professor for Urban Planning at the College for Design and Engineering at the National University of Singapore. She is also Co-Founder and Consultant of HANAKATA, a research and planning practice based in Singapore. Her work focuses on the research and development of adaptive planning strategies to deal with uncertainties and dynamic urban futures in urban development and planning. Addressing the challenges of planetary urbanisation and digitalisation in planning practice is central to her work towards equitable urban futures. She has taught at Rice University and ETH Zurich and was educated at ETH, Tokyo University and LSE, and holds a PhD from ETH Zurich. She is also a fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar where she launched a community engagement platform as part of a transformative technology network.

Allen Xiao is Assistant Professor of Geography at the National University of Singapore. As an urban and cultural geographer, he has done ethnographic studies of urban identity and mobility in Africa. One of his current research projects examine identities and subjectivities of African youths who engage in technology-mediated startup businesses.

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed, and instructions on how to participate in this hybrid talk has been sent out to registered attendees. Please write to aritm@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the event.