The Meaning of the Local: Politics of Place in Urban India

by de Neve; Geert

• ISBN13: 9781844721146
• ISBN10: 1844721140
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-05-15
• Publisher: UCL Press

Summary

This book examines the meaning of locality in urban India through studies of social, spatial and historical associations between peoples and places. By focusing on specific localities, it unpacks the meaning of the local in a variety of urban contexts. Moving beyond the assertion that space is socially constructed, it explores the way in which social and political relations are spatially and historically contingent. Through a focus on metropolitan areas as well as small towns, detailed ethnographies highlight the vitality of place-making in the lives of city dwellers and the centrality of a 'politics of the local' in the production of power, difference and inequality. The book demonstrates how urban space is increasingly interconnected while local boundaries and group-based identities are reconstructed, and often consolidated, through the use of 'traditional' idioms and localised practices. Book jacket.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. vii
Notes on contributors	p. viii
Acknowledgements	p. xi
Space, place and globalisation: revisiting the urban neighbourhood in India	p. 1
Economic liberalisation, class restructuring and social space in provincial south India	p. 21
'Establishing territory': the spatial bases and practices of the DPI	p. 44
Local governance: politics and neighbourhood activism in Calcutta	p. 68
Temples and charity: the neighbourhood styles of the Komati and Beeri Chettiar merchants of Madras City	p. 89
Parhai ka mahaul? An educational environment in Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh	p. 116
The politics of gender, class and community in a central Calcutta neighbourhood	p. 141
Anonymous encounters: class categorisation and social distancing in public places	p. 159
Conformity and contestation: social heterogeneity in south Indian settlements	p. 182
The rituals of rehabilitation: rebuilding an urban neighbourhood after the Gujarat earthquake of 2001	p. 206
Index	p. 232
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