Thursday, February 8, 12:30 PM, Harold Gabel presents: echnocrats of Transport: How Anti-Politics, Expertise, and the World Bank Shaped CODATU in the 1980s

Please join us for our next meeting of the Money, Markets and Governance workshop, which will be held in a joint session with the Urban Workshop (please note the different
time and location) – next Thursday, February 8th, at 12:30 – 2 PM in Campus North Residential Commons, Room 154 (see detailed instructions below).

Please note that there will not be a session next week on Tuesday (Feb. 6th) afternoon.

Harold Gabel

MAPSS Graduate (History), University of Chicago

Technocrats of Transport: How Anti-Politics, Expertise, and the World Bank Shaped CODATU in the 1980s

Discussant: Alejandra Azuero Quijano
PhD student, Anthropology, University of Chicago

Abstract: Since its founding in 1980, L’Association Conférences sur Développment et l’Aménagement des Transports Urbains dans les Pays en Développment (CODATU) has held biannual conferences on urban transport policy in developing nations. From its first meeting in 1981 and throughout the 1980s, much of the discourse within the organization reacted to two policy papers published by the World Bank, the first in 1975 and the second in 1986. What emerged was a debate in transnational urban transport policy between neoliberal “expertise” advanced by the World Bank and the more socially-oriented aspirations of Third World cities. This paper analyzes some of the more peculiar aspects of the World Bank’s neoliberal view of urban transport policy and considers how expertise may or may not be separated from the political.

* Campus North Residential Commons are located at the Corner of 55th and University Ave. (5500 S. University Ave.). Classroom 154 is located just south of Dollop, parallel to University Ave. The entry is accessible from the courtyard.

For accessibility concerns or any other questions, please contact the workshop coordinator at yanivr {at} uchicago {dot} edu

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