Verticalized slums, governmentality and pandemic governance: A critical hermeneutical analysis of governance practices in a selected urban high-rise in Colombo, Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT

During the Colombo Regeneration Project since 2010, thousands of inhabitants of the underserved settlements in Sri Lanka's capital were forcibly displaced and involuntarily relocated into high-rises, planned and constructed at the government's discretion. These high-rises turned the previously horizontal slums into vertical ones, creating new socio-economic and political problems for the relocated communities. In March 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the government decided to lock down some of these high-rises to reduce the risk of community spread due to the increasing number of infected inhabitants. Within such a context, this research investigates how the built environment of these high-rises aided the government to monitor/supervise and control the movement of inhabitants during the lockdown period in a particularly opaque way. Methodologically, the research follows post-positivist thought. Empirical data were collected through in-depth qualitative interviews with relocated dwellers to gain the insiders' perceptions about their experienced reality. Using Michel Foucault's concept of panopticism, this paper argues that the government has been able to govern the movement of the inhabitants through structural surveillance and a specific form of 'institutionalized network' that further strengthened the processes of observation and examination of individuals and social groups. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023. All rights reseverd.