UC Santa Cruz

This dissertation is about the cartographic, architectural, and infrastructural spatial politics that enable drone governance. It shows that drones have distinctly spatial preconditions that tie what happens in the air to the politics of the spaces below. These spaces are charted in terms of a series of — cartographic, architectural, infrastructural spatial politics through which drone spaces are made accommodative of drone use. The supporting research shows that the ways in which drones remake space rely on a suite of spatial preconfigurations tied to political processes of neoliberalization. For related reasons, it further shows that drone governance, both military and humanitarian, is highly contingent on infrastructural assemblages that make space targetable through shifts caused by broad political-economic trends.