Doctoral Dissertation Research: Financialization and Urban Development

University Of California-Irvine, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

As financial activities become ubiquitous worldwide, global inequality is simultaneously rising, and it is crucial for both policy-makers and the public at large to understand the effects of financialization across different domains of social life. Half of the global population lives in cities, making it particularly important to consider the world's major urban areas, where a majority of residents face struggles over housing. According to UN-Habitat estimates, approximately 330 million urban households worldwide lack access to affordable housing. Within the next six years, 1.6 billion people will be housing insecure. This research, which trains an anthropology graduate student in methods of scientifically rigorous and empirical data collection and analysis, is designed to illuminate the social, political, and technical arrangements driving global urban transformation and related crises of housing around the world. The study will help policy-makers, researchers, and the general public better understand the relationship between finance and urban development, thus facilitating the design of more equitable urban governance strategies and outcomes. Tariq Rahman, under the supervision of Dr. Sylvia Nam of the University of California, Irvine, proposes to study the financialization of land as a phenomenon that is transforming finance and cities alike. Lahore, Pakistan, located in the agriculturally-rich Punjab province, is one of the fastest growing cities in the world. This project will investigate how the social meanings associated with land shape financial activity and how the financialization of land, in turn, shapes urban space and life. Research will be conducted in a real estate developer's office where plots of land are sold, an online mobile chat group where diasporic investors share information related to projects, and inner-city Lahore where the government is attempting to replace traditional land revenue officials with a new digital database. Utilizing interviews, participant observation, and archival sources, this study will examine how developers, investors, bureaucrats, local residents, and other stakeholders understand and experience changing notions of value, knowledge, and governance in relation to the financialization of land. This research will contribute to theoretical and empirical debates about finance, bureaucracy, and cities from a range of disciplines, including anthropology, history, urban studies, media studies, and legal studies. Findings from this study will provide insight into the cultural histories and norms that shape processes of financialization, the merging of new e-governance technologies with local ways of life, and the role of diasporic populations in the world's economies and cities. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.