Sadan Jha - Neighbourhoods in Urban India: In Between Home and the City

Neighbourhoods in Urban India

Neighbourhoods in Urban India

In between Home and the City

Edited by

Sadan Jha

Dev Nath Pathak

Amiya Kumar Das

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First published in India 2021

This edition published 2021

Copyright Sadan Jha, Dev Nath Pathak, Amiya Kumar Das, 2021

Sadan Jha, Dev Nath Pathak, Amiya Kumar Das have asserted their right under the Indian Copyright Act to be identified as the Editors of this work

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ISBN: PB: 978-93-90252-62-6; eBook: 978-93-90252-64-0
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Early Reviews

Neighbourhoods in Urban India is a brilliant exploration of urbanism between the concept city and the lived city. With a multidisciplinary approach, the volume focuses on urban life lived between home and the world, institutions and experiences, representations and affects. While the theoretically sharp introduction alone is worth the price of the book, 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, Professor of History, Princeton University, and the author of Mumbai Fables (2010)

A welcome addition to the literature of urban studies, this book on neighbourhoods opens up a new dimension to comprehend urban India. A must-read for those who wish to study the micro aspects of contemporary urbanity.

Sujata Patel, Distinguished Professor, Department of Sociology, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Maharashtra

The neighbourhood has been a much referenced but significantly understudied component of Indian urbanism. This important collection by a new generation of scholars thankfully fills this gap, bringing together philosophical debates, ethnographic enquiries and histories of planning. We enter the debates on memory and history, time and space, regional, national and global movements of planning. The arguments flow from research conducted in cities and towns across IndiaAhmedabad, Delhi, Banaras, Lucknow, Kolkata, Darbhangaand much more. This book is a powerful addition to the study of Indian urbanism.

Ravi Sundaram, Senior Fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi

Contents

The making of this book entails various levels of preparation and participation. Connecting three temporally separated levels was, perhaps, one of the foregone conclusions: the advent of a research idea vis--vis neighbourhood, a formal meeting as part of manifold activities and the diverse possibility in future. While we cant confidently acknowledge the activities in future, we shall try to briefly name everything that has passed by.

The engagement with the idea of neighbourhoods in contemporary urban India began as an intellectual journey with emotional investment. Some of us from various disciplinary backgrounds from across India came along to start a collaborative research project. This involved scholars such as Sonal Mithal (architect, curator and faculty member at CEPT University, Ahmedabad), Gauri Bharat (Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, CEPT University, Ahmedabad), Aparajita De (Department of Geography, University of Delhi), Garima Dhabhai (Department of Political Science, Presidency University, Kolkata, West Bengal), Himadri Chatterjee (Department of Political Science, KNU, Asansol, West Bengal), Amiya Kumar Das (sociologist, Tezpur Central University, Assam), Dev Nath Pathak (sociologist, South Asian University, Delhi) and Sadan Jha (historian, Centre for Social Studies, Surat). We all came from different directions, are located at different places and have had different disciplinary groundings. Yet, we all shared common interests as far as the intrigue of the neighbourhood is concerned. In one way or another, we all are passionate about discussing city life in order to explore the relatively less explored in the context of India. Originally a research plan, the endeavour received another imperative: to formally meet and discuss. We were indeed contemplating meeting at various destinations at various stages of our engagement with the neighbourhood question, and we thought the first meeting could be a stepping stone in that direction.