Comparing Cities The Middle East and South Asia

by Ali, Kamran Asdar; Rieker, Martina

• ISBN13: 9780195474985
• ISBN10: 0195474988
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-01-18
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This book highlights the changing social dynamics in Middle Eastern and South Asian cities. The comparative framework builds on a shared history of the colonial encounter, modernity, nationalism and urbanity and is further deepened by the larger framework of Muslim culture that influences social life in both spaces. The various chapters rethink the gendered dimension of public spaces and investigate the relationship between the popular and the political in these regions. They also take into account how larger structural changes in South Asia/ Middle East have impacted the practices and experiences of people. This focus addresses the lack of social histories that explore urban life-worlds in an era of de-industrialization and major structural changes that are available for many cities in other regions of the world. Hence, It provides an interdisciplinary analysis that informs us about how transnational flows of ideas and resources shape certain responses to deprivation and marginality, yet also encourage political passivity and inaction. Raising such questions in a comparative context is essential to refocus research agendas and to inspire new studies. The volume is unique as, for the first time, it puts the field of urban studies within the two regions in a dialogue with each other and with similar efforts across the globe.

Author Biography

Kamran Asdar Ali is Associate Professor of Anthropology, Middle East Studies and Asian Studies at the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author of Planning the Family in Egypt: New Bodies, New Selves, and has also published several articles on issues of health and gender in Egypt and on Pakistani politics and popular culture. His recent work has been on ethnic, class, and gender issues in Pakistan.
Martina Rieker is Director of the Institute for Gender and Women's Studies at the American University in Cairo and has published articles on the politics of heritage in the Middle East, and is currently working on a project on gender, poverty, and urbanism in the global south.
Both of the authors are editors of Gendering Urban Space in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa, and also coordinate the Shehr Network on Comparative Urban Landscapes.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. vii
Introduction	p. ix
Citing Cities
No Man's Land: A Visual Essay (Mumbai)	p. 3
Narrating Urban Pasts/Presents
City of Riffraff: Crowds, Public Space, and New Urban Sensibilities in War-Time Jerusalem, 1917–1921	p. 23
Men and Their 'Problems': Notes on Contemporary Karachi	p. 49
The Body Politic: Gender and the Practice of Power in the City (Bangalore)	p. 65
The Actualities of Everyday Life
Decolonizing Diyarbakir: Culture, Identity and the Struggle to Appropriate Urban Space	p. 97
Re-visiting 'Everyday Life': The Experience of Delhi's Media Urbanism	p. 130
Ghostly Sufis and Ornamental Shadows: Spectral Visualities in Karachi's Public Sphere	p. 159
Urban Governmentalities
The State and the Production of Illegal Housing: Public Practices in Hayy el Sellom, Beirut-Lebanon	p. 197
Spaces of Work/Sites of Danger: Environment and Urban Landscape in Modern Delhi	p. 221
Signs of Sovereignty (Chennai)	p. 250
A Landscape of Recovery: The Polysemy of Spaces/Places in Downtown Beirut	p. 274
Postscript
A Postscript from Kolkata: An Equal Right to the City	p. 305
Contributors	p. 325
Index	p. 329
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