Space, Planning and Everyday Contestations in Delhi

Space, Planning and Everyday Contestations in Delhi
Author: Surajit Chakravarty
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2016-04-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 8132221540

This insightful volume examines the politics and contestations around urban space in India’s national capital, Delhi. Moving beyond spectacular megaprojects and sites of consumption, this book engages with ordinary space and everyday life. Sites and communities analysed in this volume reveal the processes, relations, and logics through which the city’s grand plans are executed. The contributors argue that urbanization is negotiated and muddled, particularly in the spaces occupied by informal labour, resettled communities, and small-scale investors. The critical analyses in this volume shed light on the disjunctures between planning and ideology, narratives of growth and realities of immobility, and facades of modernity and the spaces and practices produced in its pursuit. The book is organized in four parts – (I) Dis/locating Bodies, (II) Claims at the Urban Frontier, (III) Informalization and Investment, and (IV) Gendered Mobility. The studies report current empirical work from a variety of sites, investigating the dynamics of capital investment, state planning and citizen response in these spaces. These studies, set in ordinary spaces in Delhi, reveal a subliminal disarray of thought and action, stemming from the impetus to make the city attractive to capital, while having to manage marginality and reorganize welfare functions. The volume provides fresh insights into the nature of urban planning and governance in an Indian megacity two decades after the neoliberal shift.

Interdisciplinary Unsettlings of Place and Space

Interdisciplinary Unsettlings of Place and Space
Author: Sarah Pinto
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2019-04-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9811367299

This book brings together researchers from different fields, traditions and perspectives to examine the ways in which place and space might (be) unsettle(d). Researchers from across the humanities and social sciences have been drawn to the study of place and space since the 1970s, and the term ‘unsettled’ has been an occasional but recurring presence in this body of scholarship. Though it has been used to invoke a range of meanings, from the dangerous to the liberating, the term itself has rarely been at the centre of sustained examination. This collection highlights the idea of the unsettled in the scholarly investigation of place and space. The respective chapters offer a dialogue between a diverse and eclectic group of researchers, crossing significant disciplinary and interdisciplinary boundaries in the process. The purpose of the collection is to juxtapose a range of different approaches to, and perspectives on, the unsettling of place and space. In doing so, Interdisciplinary Unsettlings of Place and Space makes an important contribution and offers new insights into how scholarship and research into different fields and practices may help us re-envision place and space.

Migration and Agency in a Globalizing World

Migration and Agency in a Globalizing World
Author: Scarlett Cornelissen
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2018-01-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1137602058

This book – through a collection of case studies covering Southern and East Africa, China, India, Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia – offers insights into the nature of social exchanges between Africa and Asia. In the age of the ‘Rise of the South’, it documents the entanglements and the lived experiences of African and Asian people on the move. Divided into three parts, the authors look at Asians in Africa, Africans in Asia, and the ‘connected histories’ that the two share, which illuminate emerging and historical modalities of Afro-Asian human encounters. Cornelissen and Yoichi show how migrants activate multiple forms of transnational social capital as part of their survival strategies and develop complex relationships with host communities.

AUC 2019

AUC 2019
Author: Le Thi Thu Huong
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 557
Release: 2020-10-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9811556083

This book presents selected articles from the 15th International Asian Urbanization Conference, held in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on November 27-30, 2019. Bringing together researchers and professionals in the area of urban planning and development to better understand the growing need for sustainable urban life, it covers topics such as climate change and urban resilience; inclusive and implementable urban governance; smart and green mobility; transformations in land management; livable and smart cities; integrated planning and development; urban slums and affordable housing; sustainable urban finance; and urban renewal and redevelopment.

Contextualizing Urban Narratives through the Socio-Spatial Dialectic

Contextualizing Urban Narratives through the Socio-Spatial Dialectic
Author: Ankur Konar
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 113
Release: 2024-03-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1036400948

This book examines how urban narratives explore the complexities of city life, including the diversity of its inhabitants, the challenges of urbanization, and the impact of social and economic disparities. They may delve into such topics as crime, poverty, gentrification, and the struggle for identity and belonging in different bustling metropolis settings like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Benaras, Edinburgh and Glasgow. This monograph provides a lens through which authors and storytellers examine and reflect upon the complexities, challenges, and opportunities of urban life. It seeks to reiterate how the discourse of urban narratives refers to the specific language, themes, and ideas that are commonly found in stories set in urban environments, and encompasses the ways in which urban spaces are portrayed, the issues and conflicts that arise within these settings, and the social, cultural, and political commentary that is often embedded in these narratives.

The Right to Be Counted

The Right to Be Counted
Author: Sanjeev Routray
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2022-07-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1503632148

In the last 30 years, Delhi, the capital of India, has displaced over 1.5 million poor people. Resettlement and welfare services are available—but exclusively so, as the city deems much of the population ineligible for civic benefits. The Right to Be Counted examines how Delhi's urban poor, in an effort to gain visibility from the local state, incrementally stake their claims to a house and life in the city. Contributing to debates about the contradictions of state governmentality and the citizenship projects of the poor in Delhi, this book explores social suffering, logistics, and the logic of political mobilizations that emanate from processes of displacement and resettlement. Sanjeev Routray draws upon fieldwork conducted in various low-income neighborhoods throughout the 2010s to describe the process of claims-making as an attempt by the political community of the poor to assert its existence and numerical strength, and demonstrates how this struggle to be counted constitutes the systematic, protracted, and incremental political process by which the poor claim their substantive entitlements and become entrenched in the city. Analyzing various social, political, and economic relationships, as well as kinship networks and solidarity linkages across the political and social spectrum, this book traces the ways the poor work to gain a foothold in Delhi and establish agency for themselves.

Properties of Rent

Properties of Rent
Author: Sushmita Pati
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2022-08-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1009082051

We live in cities whose borders have always been subject to expansion. What does such transformation of rural spaces mean for cities and vice-versa? This book looks at the spatial transformation of villages brought into the Delhi's urban fray in the 1950s. As these villages transform physically; their residents, an agrarian-pastoralist community - the Jats - also transform into dabblers in real estate. A study of two villages - Munirka and Shahpur Jat - both in the heart of bustling urban economies of Delhi, reveal that it is 'rent' that could define this suburbanisation. 'Bhaichara', once a form of land ownership in colonial times, transforms into an affective claim of belonging, and managing urban property in the face of a steady onslaught from the 'city'. Properties of Rent is a study of how vernacular form of capitalism and its various affects shape up in opposition to both state, finance capital and the city in contemporary urban Delhi.

Children and NGOs in India

Children and NGOs in India
Author: Annie McCarthy
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2021-05-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1000394360

This book is an ethnographic exploration of slum children’s participation in NGO programs that centres children’s narratives as key to understanding the lived experience of development in India where 50% of the population is under the age of 25. Weaving theoretical and methodological interventions from anthropology, childhood studies and development studies with children’s own narratives and images, the author foregrounds children’s lifeworlds whilst documenting the extent to which these lifeworlds are shaped by the twin forces of marginalisation and aspiration. The book documents NGO campaigns targeting child marriage, sanitation and hygiene, gendered violence and bullying, and depicts and examines children’s sometimes enthusiastic, sometimes reluctant, and sometimes indifferent approach to narrating and performing development. It assesses the way in which children from four slum communities in New Delhi navigate the multiplicities and contradictions of development by analysing the stories, posters and performances children produce for NGOs. Moreover, the book argues that engagement with children’s narratives and performances provide valuable insights into how development attains meaning, garners consensus, fails, succeeds and circulates in a myriad of unexpected ways which consistently defy any assumptions about ‘underdeveloped’ subjectivities. The first book to interrogate the substance and subjectivities produced in the development of NGO organisations offering extra-curricular programs directed towards more intangible and experiential ends, it will be of interest to researchers working in anthropology, development studies, childhood studies and South Asian studies. The book also speaks to scholars working on issues of poverty, rural-urban migration, gender justice, slums and youth.

Spaces of Participation

Spaces of Participation
Author: Randa Aboubakr
Publisher: American University in Cairo Press
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2021-04-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1649030533

A rich interdisciplinary study of the relationships between space, both physical and virtual, and social and political participation Where do people meet, form relations of trust, and begin debating social and political issues? Where do social movements start? In this fascinating collection, scholars and activists from a wealth of disciplinary backgrounds, including sociology, anthropology, history, and political science, take a fresh look at these questions and the factors leading to political and social change in the Arab world from a spatial perspective. Based on original field work in Egypt, Kuwait, Morocco, and Palestine, Spaces of Participation connects and reconnects social, cultural, and political participation with urban space. It explores timely themes such as formal and informal spaces of participation, alternative spaces of cultural production, space reclamation, and cultural activism, and the reconfiguring of space through different types of contestation. It also covers a range of spaces that include sports clubs, arts centers, and sites of protest and resistance, as well as virtual spaces such as social media platforms, in the process of examining the relationships and tensions between physical and virtual space. Spaces of Participation underlines the temporal and transformative quality of participatory spaces and how they are shaped by their respective political contexts, highlighting different forms of access, control, and contestation. Contributors: Randa Aboubakr, Cairo University, Egypt Hicham Ait-Mansour, Mohamed V University, Rabat, Morocco Fadma Aït Mous, Hassan II University of Casablanca, Morocco Mouloud Amghar, Cadi Ayyad University, Marrakesh, Morocco Yazid Anani, A.M. Qattan Foundation, Ramallah, Palestine Mai Ayyad, Cairo University, Egypt Youness Benmouro, Mohamed V University, Rabat, Morocco Yasmine Berriane, Centre Maurice Halbwachs (CNRS), Paris, France Mokhtar El Harras, Mohamed V University, Rabat, Morocco Ulrike Freitag, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin, Germany Sarah Jurkiewicz, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin, Germany Mona Khalil, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt Azzurra Sarnataro, La Sapienza University of Rome, Italy Renad Shqeirat, Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah, Palestine Dorota Woroniecka-Krzyżanowska, German Historical Institute, Warsaw, Poland