For decades, academic literature has critically engaged with the state as a complex, permeable, and ever-changing apparatus. Major examples include theorisations on state building (Fukuyama, 2004), state sovereignty (North & Weingast, 1989), state surveillance (Scott, 1998), the state as a provider of welfare and services (Briggs et al., 1961), colonialism and the state (Gopal, 2019), human behaviour and bureaucratic culture (Du Gay, 2005), among many others. Concurrently, scholars from a wide range of disciplines have shed light on the limitations and challenges of studying the state. For example, Neil Brenner (1999) has compellingly argued for the need to transcend state-centric modes of analysis and consider how local governance rescales the state, whereas Mazzucato (2011) has drawn attention to the emergence of a new kind of ‘entrepreneurial state’ focussed on innovation and enterprise.. Yet in recent years, the rise of digital technology – as represented by artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, cloud computing, big data, edge computing and 5G – has not only led a new round of economic and industrial transformation, but also fundamentally transformed state governance. Indeed, advanced capitalist states have increasingly used digital technologies to deliver state services and restructure public sector institutions (see Datta, 2023; Maguire & Ross Winthereik, 2021; Peng, 2022; Schou & Hjelholt, 2018; Thomas, 2012; West, 2005). Studies of egovernance (Chatterji, 2018) and smart cities capture some of the state transformations brought about by digitalisation (Datta, 2019). However, while digitalisation has had profound institutional as well as political consequences, the forms of statehood and governance to which the use of digital technologies give rise remain largely undertheorised.
The ‘Digitalising State’ Symposium strives to look into the confluence of digitalisation and the state (in all its manifestations) from a critical perspective. We take the digitalising state in the global south not just as an extension of the developmental, neoliberal or entrepreneurial state, rather it represents a fundamental reorganisation of state institutions, information infrastructures and metropolitan peripheries through and for digitalisation (Datta 2023). The digitalising state then needs to be examined in its own right, alongside critical studies of urbanisation, digitalisation, infrastructure and informational politics as it unveils the challenges of the digital age. With a particular focus on the Global South, this two-day event aims to serve as a space for interdisciplinary conversations on the transformative effects of digitalisation on governance, public administration, and planning, including the impacts on communities and livelihoods. As such, the symposium organisers invite participants to contribute their knowledge and insights on digitalisation as an emerging powerful force that has come to revolutionise the way governments operate, interact with citizens, and transform spatio-temporal certainties.
The programme is organised along four thematic lines:
Encountering the 'digitalising state'
Spatio-temporalities of the 'digitalising state'
Genealogies of the 'digitalising state'
Data politics in the 'digitalising state'
KEYNOTES
Dr. John Harrison, Loughborough University
Title: Planning Regional Futures: What role should digitalisation and digital planning play?
Manu Luksch, Royal College of Arts
Title: Moonwalking into the Future
Dr. Stefania Milan, University of Amsterdam
Title: Big data from the South(s): Beyond data universalism