Capitalism, criminality and the state: the origins of illegal urban modernity

Abstract

This essay argues that criminality provides a critical magnifying lens to understand the network of subversive disconnections and disjunctures in postcolonial cities. By connecting the postcolonial city to the discourse on crime, it investigates the specific relations between exploitation, colonisation and the underworld. As crossroads of the different intersections of power determined by colonialism, decolonisation and globalisation (Rashmi Varma, The Postcolonial City and Its Subjects: London, Nairobi, Bombay, London, Routledge, 2011), postcolonial cities expose the many and varied entanglements between the informal economies in the Global North and South, between the legal and the unofficial. Starting with the assumption that colonialism is predicated upon the principles of Western modernity, this essay frames criminal organisations as forces acting in opposition to and in concurrence with the state. Whereas the discourses on criminality are conventionally employed to reinforce processes of 'Othering' and racialisation in fringe locations, they also have the potential to unveil the 'hidden truths' of Western urban modernity. To this end, this essay employs Christ Stopped at Eboli (Carlo Levi, London: Penguin, 1947), a novel that unveils the links between exploitation and illegality. The society portrayed in the text shows the manifestations of an 'unauthorised modernity' (Iain Chambers, Postcolonial Interruptions: Unauthorized Modernity, London and New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017); an alternative view of development that refashions the meaning of what is conventionally regarded as legal and accepted.

Two Dimensions of Existence of the ‘Slum’ in the Global City: A Comparative Case Study of Informal Settlements in Nairobi and Mumbai

“…There is a significant body of literature that points to the visual representation of informal settlements: For instance, Roy argues that the Global city is worlded (Spivak 1985) through the icon of a slum and refers to the Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire (2008) which she depicts as 'poverty pornography' (Roy 2011: 225). There are scholars who research the connection of criminality and informality, such as Ridda, who investigate the specific relations between exploitation, colonisation and the underworld within the connection of the postcolonial city and the discourse on crime (Ridda 2020). A significant body of literature theorises the developmental discourse, such as Murray Li, who interprets the development as 'the will to improve' situated in Foucault's understanding of governmentality (Li 2007: 5).…”