Governing Global Slums: The Biopolitics of Target 11 (Essay‪)‬

Recent literature has focused on the ways in which civil society organizations are contributing to practices of global governance in an era of neo-liberalism. As UN Habitat has pointed out, what has also coincided with the shift to neoliberalism is the proliferation and growth of global slums. As slums have become an increasingly widespread form of human settlement, a global campaign to improve the life of slum dwellers has emerged under the Millennium Development Goals. In this article, I argue that this project can be conceived of as a biopolitical campaign where nongovernmental and community-based organizations are viewed as a kind of panacea for the problem of slums. This view is misguided given the scale of the problem and the apartheid of life chances that has accompanied neoliberalism. KEY WORDS: Governance, neoliberalism, slums, nongovernmental organizations, community-based organizations, biopolitics. Recent literature has focused on the ways in which private authorities in the "third sector" are both reshaping and contributing to practices of global liberal governance and development. (1) In part, this growing research agenda can be attributed to the massive growth and proliferation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and community-based organizations (CBOs) during the last decades of the twentieth century, the diversity of their concerns, and the willingness of other actors to view them as legitimate forms of authority. Although there is debate over the exact reasons for the growth of these organizations, there seems to be a general consensus that their importance in the governance process has coincided with the worldwide neoliberal revolution in economic policy and the privileging of polyarchical forms of democracy. (2) As UN Habitat has pointed out, what has also coincided with the shift to neoliberalism and democracy promotion is the proliferation and growth of global slums. (3)