Neighbourhoods in Urban India

In Between Home and the City

Sadan Jha, Dev Nath Pathak, Amiya Kumar Das, Sadan Jha, Dev Nath Pathak, Amiya Kumar Das

• Publisher: Bloomsbury India
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9789390252640
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

'…a brilliant exploration of urbanism between the concept city and the lived city.… The volume focuses on urban life lived between home and the world, institutions and experiences, representations and affects…. Its fascinating range of empirically rich and analytically sophisticated excavations of neighbourhoods make the volume a must-have in the bookshelf on South Asian urban studies.'
- Gyan Prakash, Princeton University
'A must-read for those who wish to study the micro aspects of contemporary urbanity.'
- Sujata Patel, Savitribai Phule Pune University
'This book is a powerful addition to the study of Indian urbanism.'
- Ravi Sundaram, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) In the last couple of decades, the global South, in general, and India, in particular, have witnessed a massive growth of cities. In India, more than one-third of its population lives in cities. However, urban development, growth and expansion are not merely about infrastructures and enlargement of cityscapes. This edited volume focuses on neighbourhoods, their particularities and their role in shaping our understanding of the urban in India. It locates Indian experiences in the larger context of the global South and seeks to decentre the dominant Euro-American discourse of urban social life. Neighbourhoods in Urban India: In Between Home and the City offers an understanding of neighbourhoods as changing socio-spatial units in their specific regional settings by underlining the way value regimes (religiosity and subjectivities) give neighbourhoods their social meanings and stereotypes. It unpacks discourses and knowledge practices, such as planning, architecture and urban discourses of governance. It further discloses the linkages and disjunctures between the social practices of neighbourhoods and the language, logic and experiences of dwelling, housing, urban planning and governance, and focuses on the particularities and heterogeneities of neighbourhoods and neighbourliness.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Maps
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introducing Neighbourhood: Reading the Urban Backward and Forward
• Sadan Jha, Dev Nath Pathak and Amiya Kumar Das
• Part I: Spatial Religiosity and the Making of Neighbourhoods
• 2 Sacred Anchors in Contemporary Neighbourhoods: The Case of Jain Religious Institutions in Ahmedabad
• Gauri Bharat
• 3 In Search of a Neighbourhood among the Kashivasis: An Ethnographic Account of an Ashram in Banaras
• Anakshi Pal
• 4 Gossip and Intra-Denominational Politics in a Christian Neighbourhood in Greater Kolkata: A Sociological Reflection
• Abhijit Dasgupta
• Part II: Dalit Neighbourhoods: Histories, Subjectivities and Contestation
• 5 Locating Dalit Bastis: The Sites of Everyday Silent Resistance and Works from the Late 19th-Century to the Mid-20th-Century United Provinces
• Vijay Kumar
• 6 Making of the ‘New City’: The Overlapping Structures of Caste and Class in Post-Partition Delhi
• Akanksha Kumar
• Part III: Engendering Neighbourhood: Female Neighbours and Contested Subjectivities
• 7 Living Like Friends and Neighbours: Everyday Narratives of the Neighbourhood
• Joyashree Sarma
• 8 Home-ing the World and World-ing the Home: An Understanding of Singlehood, Rental Housing and Neighbourliness
• Rashi Bhargava and Richa Chilana
• 9 Paros and Parosan: Spatial Affectivity and Gendered Neighbourhood in South Asia
• Sadan Jha
• Part IV: A House in a Neighbourhood: Planning, History and Aspirations of Housing
• 10 Government Officer Housing Precincts in Urban Lucknow: A Construction of Urban Exclusivity through Occupation-defined Neighbourhoods
• Sonal Mithal
• 11 Neighbourhoods in Space–Time: A Case of House Prices and Latent Aspirations
• Yugank Goyal and Harini Shah
• 12 Whose Neighbourhood Is It Anyway: A Spatial History of Urban Patna
• Sheema Fatima
• Afterword: ‘Neighbours’ as Neighbourhoods
• AbdouMaliq Simone
• About the Editors and Contributors
• Index