Everyday Tech: In Search of Mundane Tactics

Abstract

In this chapter Saskia Sassen, discusses tales of how technology (re)articulates political-economic relations but also requires a 'mundane' sensibility. In this chapter she does so building on personal memory, interdisciplinary view of IR and curious facts, highlighting serious matters of inequality and power. Engaged here in conversation with Michele Acuto, Sassen calls for empirical engagement 'on the ground' and continuous conceptual (r)evolution and self-examination. In particular, building on her scholarship on markets, cities and spatial appropriation, she offers as reminder that, when it comes to the role of technology in international relations theory and practice, no example is too mundane to matter.