Architexturez South Asia
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“When the ground opened”: Responsibility for harms and rights violations in disasters – Insights from Sierra Leone
No full textSo-called “natural” disasters are often characterized by major human rights abuses, yet responsibility and accountability for such violations have attracted relatively limited attention in research and practice. Instead, these events and survivors’ suffering are often dismissed as “acts of God” or tragic misfortunes. Through analysis of an under-examined disaster—the 2017 mudslide in Freetown, Sierra Leone—this article probes survivors’ perspectives on responsibility for disasters, and suffering and violations accompanying them. While survivors in this case often attribute responsibility to God or other supernatural forces, they also understand the state and other earthly actors as sharing different forms and degrees of responsibility for the disaster and its harmful consequences. Indeed, seeing the mudslide as an “act of God” does not absolve the state from its obligation to protect citizens from harms associated with disasters and subsequent response efforts. Survivors’ perspectives provide significant insight into the challenge of advancing accountability in disaster contexts.</p
Of Market Vendors and Waste Collectors: Labour, Informality, and Aesthetics in the Era of World-Class City Making
No full textA growing literature demonstrates the significance of aesthetics within processes of world-class city making, as decisions about who gets to live and work in the city are increasingly made on the basis of codes of appearance. However, less attention has been paid to how such codes are (re)produced and (re)directed by informal workers and their organisations in everyday practice. Drawing upon a multisided ethnography in Kampala and Delhi, this paper explores the ways in which market vendors and waste collectors have responded to the proliferation of three aesthetic technologies: the identity card, the uniform, and the code of conduct. We show that workers have appropriated these technologies in creative ways in order to defend their livelihoods against the threat of displacement. However, this act of appropriation has come at the cost of the exclusion of the more vulnerable workers, who now find their activities policed not only by the state but also by a range of non-state organisations. These findings contribute to debates on labour organisation and world-class city making by demonstrating the ways in which aesthetic rationalities emerge through an encounter with the tactics of everyday life.</p
The archaeology of complexity and cosmopolitanism in medieval Ethiopia: an introduction
No full textArchaeology increasingly attests the complex and cosmopolitan nature of societies in medieval Ethiopia (c. seventh to early eighteenth centuries AD). Without negating the existence of relations of dominance and periods of isolation, key emergent themes of such research are pluralism and interaction. Four religious traditions are relevant to this theme: Islam, Judaism, Christianity and Indigenous religions. This article introduces a special section of contributions on medieval Ethiopia and sets the scheme by highlighting the temporality of cosmopolitanism as episodic rather than continuous. The following articles address varied aspects of this cosmopolitanism, identifying issues of general relevance for studies of the archaeology of religion, as well as the need for further research in Ethiopia.</p
Chiefs, land professionals and hybrid planning in Tamale and Techiman, Ghana: Implications for sustainable urban development
No full textA dual land administration system in Ghana necessitates the adoption of hybrid and locally adaptive planning practices. However, whilst the scholarly discourse on hybrid planning is burgeoning, its implications for sustainable urban development are limited. Using qualitative case studies of data collected from interviews and focus group discussions with key stakeholders in Tamale and Techiman, this paper highlights the implications of hybrid planning for sustainable urban development. Although in tune with current proposals for collaborative land use planning, hybrid planning practices in peri-urban areas are dominated by land-owning chiefs who finance land use planning activities, leading to a negotiated planning and land delivery system. This engenders urban sustainability challenges, including tenure insecurities, land speculation and urban sprawl and hinders the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goal 11. Thus, urban planners must re-examine current planning practices and leverage the New Urban Agenda to explore innovative ways of ensuring sustainable urban expansion.</p
Convocaton Address delivered at the Faculty of Architecture, CEPT University on 23<sup>rd</sup> January
No full textA macrohistorical geography of rural drinking water institutions in India
No full textIndia has a long history of policies that aim to improve rural drinking water services, through various combinations of state support and decentralization that face deeply rooted institutional challenges. These include debates about: the duty of the state to provide rural drinking water supply; tension over the role of central, state, and local governments; and frequent changes in policy and senior public officials that disrupt long-term implementation. Some water governance theorists have described policy-making in this context as a pragmatic process of bricolage, that is, of piecing together practical opportunities for improvement where possible. This paper takes a macrohistorical geographic approach to these institutional problems, with an emphasis on northern India. It shows that ancient sources dating back to the Arthashastra have underscored the role of the state in developing water supplies for the people. Subsequent regimes have advocated various combinations of centralized and local responsibility to fulfill drinking water needs. We show that frequent rotation of senior public officials was actually systematized in the sixteenth century Mughal empire. Changing roles of India’s five levels of center, state, district, block, and village government have a half-millennium-long history, evolving through the dramatically different Mughal, Maratha, colonial, and post-colonial contexts. Devolution policies were frequently changed in the colonial period. Independence in 1947 and a constitutional amendment in 1993 increased emphasis on devolution to Panchayati Raj Institutions at district, block, and village levels, but without resolving the functional and structural relations among them. This macrohistorical geographic perspective on water institutions offers insights into current issues and prospects for drinking water reform in India.</p
Lipid residues in pottery from the Indus Civilisation in northwest India
No full textThis paper presents novel insights into the archaeology of food in ancient South Asia by using lipid residue analysis to investigate what kinds of foodstuffs were used in ceramic vessels by populations of the Indus Civilisation in northwest India. It examines how vessels were used in urban and rural Indus settlements during the Mature Harappan period (c.2600/2500–1900 BC), the relationship between vessels and the products within them, and identifies whether changes in vessel use occurred from the Mature Harappan to Late Harappan periods, particularly during climatic instability after 4.2 ka BP (c.2100 BC). Despite low lipid concentrations, which highlight challenges with conducting residue analysis in arid, seasonally-wet and alkaline environments, 71% of the vessels yielded appreciable quantities of lipid. Lipid profiles revealed the use of animal fats in vessels, and contradictory to faunal evidence, a dominance of non-ruminant fats, with limited evidence of dairy processing. The absence of local modern reference fats makes this dataset challenging to interpret, and it is possible that plant products or mixtures of plant and animal products have led to ambiguous fatty acid-specific isotopic values. At the same time, it appears that urban and rural populations processed similar types of products in vessels, with limited evidence for change in vessel use from the urban to the post-urban period. This study is a systematic investigation into pot lipid residues from multiple sites, demonstrating the potential of the method for examining ancient Indus foodways and the need for the development of further research in ancient organic residues in South Asia.
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Thinking through Urban Obsolescence: Tinkering, Repair and the Politics of <em>Joona</em> in Bombay/Mumbai's Taxi Trade
No full textIn this article I use the lens of Bombay/Mumbai's taxi trade from the early twentieth century to the present to examine how obsolescence becomes ingrained in the political and public imagination, and how this can illuminate the contradictory experiences of time in changing cities. Based on a labor-centric approach to transport infrastructure, I ask what happens when particular technologies and linear understandings of progress rooted in obsolescence pass over or attempt to erase certain urban subjects. How are these temporal contradictions manifested, and what kinds of political and value claims emerge as a result? Further, how do people actively produce other time-spaces using alternative temporal claims to challenge progress-oriented development narratives? How, in other words, does obsolescence resist becoming obsolete? Finally, I examine the role that materiality and physical objects such as cars play in mediating these temporal relationships.</p