Convener: Jason Mosley
Speaker: Smith Ouma (Manchester)
Northeast Africa Forum
University of Oxford | African Studies Centre | MT 2024
The political economy of land data assemblages in informal settlements
Mathare & Kwa Bullo, Kenya
Smith Ouma (Manchester)
27 November 2024 | 4:00pm UK time
African Studies Centre | 13 Bevington Rd, Oxford
*Hybrid event: Register online*
https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/0dac609a-1082-476a-b463-32eaa9b7d3f9@cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91
Debates on data assemblages have extensively accounted for their technical nature. A growing amount of literature has employed a political economy analysis to deconstruct the “black boxes” of data assemblages with the view to unpacking the choices and rationalities that inform prevailing data systems. They have treated assemblages as processes through which orders of knowledge and orders of value are fundamentally inscribed in ways that are sometimes both materially and epistemically violent. In this study, we employ data assemblage as an analytical framework to understand the specific arrangements of power and authority influencing the data imaginaries and property logics currently being enacted across two informal settlements in Nairobi and Mombasa, Kenya. We draw on in-depth interviews with actors situated at different locations in the development of the Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM), a ‘pro-poor land rights recording system’ to understand its underlying political economy and how its imaginaries are translated into the concrete in Mathare and Kwa Bullo informal settlements. This approach enables us to showcase the imaginaries that are advanced in the STDM assemblages by its advocates and the on-the-ground politics that feature in its experimentation. From this analysis, the study demonstrates the limits of data imaginaries and alternative property rationalities that are introduced in the absence of clear commitments to land redistribution by the state. This invites us to explore possibilities of more insurgent data practices which build on the creative elements within social movements to not only expand the epistemic control of data by residents located in the informational peripheries but to also advance their political projects of recognition.
Dr Smith Ouma is a Research Fellow at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester. His research examines the institutions and actors that play key roles in shaping the outlook of our cities – and identifies the instances where, and the reasons why, these actors come together to explore solutions to urban challenges, and the interventions they devise to tackle the identified challenges.
