LAUSR

ABSTRACT Recent research has argued that, rather than viewing the “informality” of settlements as an empirically stable phenomenon that can be readily defined and measured based on legal and institutional criteria, informality should instead be viewed as a sociopolitical construct produced by the state in the interests of territorial control. This paper examines the implications of the increasing accessibility of geospatial data and technology for state framings of informality. We specifically ask how state actors have sought to define the “legitimacy” and “formality” of settlement types in mapping, how these mapping efforts have related to change and continuity in discourses and debates within the state about the idea of informality, and how the political dynamics that inform the production of informality have shifted through interactions with communities. We focus on the case of Jakarta, examining recent efforts to map “irregular” settlements, “slums” and “kampung” through an analysis of spatial data, interviews with bureaucrats, and a review of literature on community-based countermapping. We find that mapping efforts apply diverse definitions of informality, based variously on legal/regulatory, developmental, or morphological criteria. These efforts are shaped by the path-dependent interests of varied state agencies in legitimizing and enabling state territorial control.