Mapping India's Capitalism Old and New Regions

by Basile, Elisabetta; Harriss-White, Barbara; Lutringer, Christine

• ISBN13: 9781137536334
• ISBN10: 1137536330
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-09-16
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

India's capitalist transformation has been spatially uneven. This multi-disciplinary edited collection introduces a new agenda involving interrelated processes at multiple scales. Combining several analytical approaches, the contributors identify socio-spatial regularities – some contiguous with state boundaries, some transcending states and some contained within them - while providing evidence about the spatial unevenness of India's capitalist development. The contributions develop wide-ranging themes and concepts: agrarian structures and agro-ecological regions, labour and markets, caste and gender, consumption, urban governance and access to urban space, the dynamics of knowledge production and of political mobilization. By doing so, the authors generate a new 'geography', making a major contribution to debates on capitalist development in contemporary India.

Author Biography

Elisabetta Basile is Professor of Development Economics at the University of Rome 'La Sapienza', Italy. With a background in the political economy of development, her main research interests are capital accumulation, growth and change, both in Europe and in South Asia. She is co-convener of the EADI Working Group on Europe-Asia.

Barbara Harriss-White is Emeritus Professor of Development Studies at Oxford University, UK. Her research approach is grounded in fieldwork and political economy. Since 1969 she has been studying and teaching India, focusing on rural development, informal capitalism, many aspects of deprivation and relevant policy processes. She won the Edgar Graham Prize for Rural Commercial Capital (2008) and has published the influential India Working (2003).

Christine Lutringer is Researcher and Lecturer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. She is also co-convenor of the EADI Working Group on Europe-Asia. Her research focuses on agricultural and food policies, environmental governance and social movements in India.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Space and Capitalist Change in Contemporary India; Elisabetta Basile, Barbara Harriss-White and Christine Lutringer
1. Mapping Regions of Agrarian Capitalism in India; Deepak K Mishra and Barbara Harriss-White
2. Mapping Agro-Ecological Zones in India; Kunal Sen and Richard Palmer-Jones
3. Uneven Capitalist Development and Peasant Mobilisations: Perspectives from Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh; Christine Lutringer
4 Regions and Capitalist Transition in India: Arunachal Pradesh in a Comparative Perspective; Deepak K Mishra
5 Mapping the World of Women's Work in India; Saraswati Raju
6. A Spatial Analysis of the Incorporation of Dalits into the Indian Business Economy; Kaushal Kishore Vidyarthee
7. Constructing Spatialised Knowledge on Urban Poverty: (Multiple) Dimensions, Mapping Spaces and Claim-Making in Urban Governance; ISA Baud
8. Reciprocity as Regulation. Exploring Methodologies in Urban Design for the Informal Economy of the Historic Pete, Bengaluru, India; Champaka Rajagopal
9. Mapping the Territories of Luxury: Spatial and Symbolic Reassertions of Inequality in Indian Cities; Isabelle Milbert