Spatialization of Calculability, Financialization of Space: A Study of the Kolkata Port

Abstract

This chapter seeks to understand logistical governance from two specific yet interconnected perspectives, that is, the spatialization of calculability and the financialization of space. The Kolkata (erstwhile Calcutta) Port is a site where these two perspectives collide and communicate with each other and give birth to a particular form of logistical governance. This form of governance requires negotiations with, and navigations through, a network of institutional apparatuses which produce the material basis of calculations and speculations that envisage the connections between infrastructure and logistics. I show that logistical governance in the Kolkata Port rests on the particularities of correspondence between institutional apparatuses like the Kolkata Port Trust (the semi-autonomous management authority which runs the port) and specific regimes of calculability and speculation.