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Properties of Rent: Community, Capital and Politics in Globalising Delhi
19 March 2024, 12:30 pm–2:00 pm
Watch here the online conversation with Dr Sushmita Pati, Assistant Professor in Political Science, National Law School of India University, Bangalore, for a discussion on her book 'Properties of Rent: Community, Capital and Politics in Globalising Delhi'.
This event is free.
Event Information
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- All
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- Yes
Cost
- Free
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IIPP Comms
About this talk:
Properties of Rent is a study of urban transformation in cities of the global south at the cusp of political economy and urbanism. This book looks at the spatial transformation of villages brought into Delhi's urban fray in the 1950s. As these villages transform physically, their residents, an agrarian-pastoralist community - the Jats - also transform into dabblers in real estate. A study of two villages - Munirka and Shahpur Jat - both in the heart of the bustling urban economies of Delhi reveals that it is 'rent' that could define this suburbanisation.
Properties of Rent is a study of how vernacular forms of capitalism shape up in opposition to both the state, finance capital and the city in contemporary urban Delhi.
Meet the panel:
- Speaker: Dr Sushmita Pati | Assistant Professor in Political Science, National Law School of India University, Bangalore
- Discussant: Dr Mariam Zaqout | Postdoctoral Researcher (Economics of Water) at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP)
- Discussant: Rahul Jain | UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) alumnus
- Chair: Beatriz Vasconcellos | Research Fellow at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP)
- Convenor: Dr Cecilia Rikap | Head of Research and Associate Professor in Economics at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP)
About the Speakers
Dr Sushmita Pati
Assistant Professor at National Law School of Inda University
Her book Properties of Rent looks at the spatial transformation of villages brought into the Delhi's urban fray in the 1950s. As these villages transform physically; their residents, an agrarian-pastoralist community - the Jats - also transform into dabblers in real estate. A study of two villages - Munirka and Shahpur Jat - both in the heart of bustling urban economies of Delhi, reveal that it is 'rent' that could define this suburbanisation. 'Bhaichara', once a form of land ownership in colonial times, transforms into an affective claim of belonging, and managing urban property in the face of a steady onslaught from the 'city'. Properties of Rent is a study of how vernacular form of capitalism and its various affects shape up in opposition to both state, finance capital and the city in contemporary urban Delhi.
Dr Cecilia Rikap
Head of Research and Associate Professor in Economics at UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose
Cecilia’s research is rooted in the international political economy of science and technology and the economics of innovation. She currently studies the rising concentration of intangible assets leading to the emergence of intellectual monopolies, among others from digital and pharma industries, the distribution of intellectual (including data) rents, resulting geopolitical tensions and the effects of knowledge assetization on the knowledge commons and development. She has published two books on these topics. 1) “Capitalism, Power and Innovation: Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism uncovered” (Routledge), recently won the EAEPE Joan Robinson Prize Competition. 2) “The Digital Innovation Race: Conceptualizing the Emerging New World Order” (Palgrave), co-authored with B.A.K. Lundvall, focuses on the artificial intelligence race and clashes of power between the US and Chinese Big Tech, the US state and the Chinese states. Her recent work includes corporate planning of global production and innovation systems driven by intellectual monopolization and how these leading corporations, in particular tech giants, are developing state-like features, thus reshaping core and peripheral states.
Beatriz Vasconcellos
Research Fellow at UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP)
Prior to joining IIPP, Beatriz worked with the private and public sectors at the local and national levels to co-develop and implement innovative governance approaches. She has accumulated experience in the design and facilitation of long-term capacity-building programs and policy design and delivery.
Beatriz holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration and International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School, where she won the Raymond Vernon Award for Outstanding Commitment to International Development. She is a Lemann Foundation and a Person of The Year fellow.
Outside of work, Beatriz likes to write fiction stories and letters to friends, go on long hikes, meet friends for beers, and spend time with her family. She is very proud of her hometown Rio de Janeiro and loves touring her friends around. More about Beatriz Vasconcellos
Mariam Zaqout
Postdoctoral Researcher (Economics of Water) at UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP)
Research summary
Mariam joined the IIPP in January 2023 to support the work of Professor Mariana Mazzucato as a co-chair for the Global Commission on the Economics of Water. Mariam researches the current water innovation in technology and governance both in the Global South and North to assess opportunities and challenges to scaling them in different contexts and apply the IIPP new economic thinking, such as market and innovation shaping in different contexts.
Before joining IIPP, Mariam was a PhD researcher at the University of Leeds at the School of Civil Engineering and the School of Politics and International Studies. Mariam's PhD thesis focused on the political economy of sanitation services and specifically the incentives of sanitation stakeholders to fund/allocate resources across the various sanitation services. The thesis examines public services literature and how the economic and institutional characteristics of these services influence the incentives of the involved stakeholders to fund them. Her PhD covered different service arrangements and contexts, including International Development Banks in Bangladesh, Social enterprise in Kenya, State service provision in South Africa and External aid in Palestine. Before moving to England in 2017 to pursue her master's degree studies at the University of Leeds, Mariam worked in environmental and urban studies consulting in the Gaza Strip, Palestine.
Mariam is also involved in livelihoods research and in particular, sanitation workers' wellbeing in South Asia; her research was featured in the first assessment report produced by the World Bank and the International Labour Organisation to advocate the rights of sanitation workers in the Global South. Mariam is currently a co-principal investigator for sanitation workers' livelihoods research project led by the Centre for Water Supply and Waste Management - International Training Network - Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology and Practical Action Bangladesh. The project takes on a participatory research approach by collaborating with sanitation workers as co-researchers to assess opportunities and barriers of current organisations to improve the wellbeing and sustainability of their livelihoods.
Rahul Jain
Alumnus at UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP)
