What is algorithmic governance?

This article contributes a coherent framework to the rich literature emerging in the field of algorithmic governance while also resolving conflicting understandings. Tracing the history of algorithmic governance to the broad architecture of the universal Turing Machine, the article identifies a common thread of critical concern in the literature on algorithmic governance: the growing institutional capabilities to move contestable issues to a space of reduced negotiability, raising questions of social asymmetry, inequity, and inequality. Within the social context of algorithmic governance, the article highlights three general areas of concern where the social negotiability of processes is threatened: the problem of power (surveillance), discrimination (social bias), and identification (system identity).     

Codes of Contention: Building Regulations in Colonial Bombay, 1870‐1912

This paper investigates the contentious institutionalization of building codes in colonial Bombay. Based on original archival research, the paper demonstrates that building codes were inflected with a discourse of moral regulation that masked the material interests of the state. Resistance to these regulations came from many quarters; conflicts within the state, public opinion expressed in the press, and political strategizing of residents and landowners in the public sphere. The paper argues for greater attention to the historically variable interconnections between power and resistance in specific empirical contexts.