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Dwelling by persistence: an ethnography of everyday practices of footpath dwellers in Mumbai
Get PDFThis thesis examines how urban poor groups persist in environments that are physically dangerous while having no ‘legitimate’ claims over the place in which they dwell. Acknowledging the everyday vulnerabilities that footpath dwellers in Mumbai navigate, my research explores the lived experiences of groups that are dwelling by persistence. By using the term ‘dwell’, I am alluding both to attempts at seeking provisional shelter or even inhabiting a place, as well as to sustained practices of becoming enmeshed within the city’s geography, of using available material and social networks to hold on to place, and developing emotional ties with spaces that retain footpath dwellers’ ties with the city. These practices play themselves out in a city that has long been framed around two distinct narratives: as one of opportunity and of dispossession.
Drawing from literatures on dwelling, home and urban navigations and contestations, I frame my key conceptual framework of dwelling by persistence. It is an embodied experience of existence rooted in place which is enabled through perseverance to retain one’s place. If dwelling entails remaining and creating place in spaces, persistence is about persevering through and sustaining these creations. Based on a year-long ethnography, my empirical chapters explore the three key contributions of my work. One, people foster emotional ties and regard the street as their home in order to endure the larger vulnerabilities of the city. Second, I argue that people navigate official and spatial obstacles to selectively make themselves visible in order to remain in the city. Third, I argue that in the presence of an ambiguous institutional realm, inherent in contradictions, people persist in between multifaceted contestations
Making‐Home From Below: Domesticating Footpath and Resisting “Homelessness” in Mumbai
Get PDFDrawing upon ethnography among footpath dwellers in Mumbai this paper argues that hegemonic ideas and practices of urban inhabitation constrain subaltern visions of home as well as public space. In doing so, it warrants an ontology of urban inhabitation that transcends occupancy politics. It is not just the neoliberal state and property-entrenching capital but also the politics of inclusion that fragments subaltern subjectivities of belonging and dispossession. By highlighting everyday practices, particularly the use of footwear, food preparation and consumption, performance of modesty, and rearing of pets, I articulate two ways in which home is experienced and homelessness is resisted through claims where interlocutors have no spatial legitimacy: by (re)producing spatial and moral boundaries and practising multiple mobilities that enable transient domesticities. This paper thus provides an expanded sense of home that moves beyond the materialities of home making, and binaries of the “private” interior and “public” exterior
Bodies of affect in landscapes of despair
No full textMy thesis examines how marginal groups persist between constant disruptions and tactical negotiations in revanchist urban landscapes. Acknowledging the spatial inequalities of the emerging city, my research explores the everyday precarities of groups existing in “gray spaces”, i.e. those who have neither been fully integrated nor entirely eliminated. Here, 14 year old Deepika, inhabiting a busy street of Mumbai, is seen caring for her infant pet chickens. This is evocative of the affective ties that marginal groups living in precarious conditions in the city nurture. When institutional forces are consistently trying to erase poor people from the urban landscape, I call this, quotidian practices of claiming "home" in "unhomely" spaces
Dwelling by persistence: an ethnography of everyday practices of footpath dwellers in Mumbai
Get PDFThis thesis examines how urban poor groups persist in environments that are physically dangerous while having no ‘legitimate’ claims over the place in which they dwell. Acknowledging the everyday vulnerabilities that footpath dwellers in Mumbai navigate, my research explores the lived experiences of groups that are dwelling by persistence. By using the term ‘dwell’, I am alluding both to attempts at seeking provisional shelter or even inhabiting a place, as well as to sustained practices of becoming enmeshed within the city’s geography, of using available material and social networks to hold on to place, and developing emotional ties with spaces that retain footpath dwellers’ ties with the city. These practices play themselves out in a city that has long been framed around two distinct narratives: as one of opportunity and of dispossession. Drawing from literatures on dwelling, home and urban navigations and contestations, I frame my key conceptual framework of dwelling by persistence. It is an embodied experience of existence rooted in place which is enabled through perseverance to retain one’s place. If dwelling entails remaining and creating place in spaces, persistence is about persevering through and sustaining these creations. Based on a year-long ethnography, my empirical chapters explore the three key contributions of my work. One, people foster emotional ties and regard the street as their home in order to endure the larger vulnerabilities of the city. Second, I argue that people navigate official and spatial obstacles to selectively make themselves visible in order to remain in the city. Third, I argue that in the presence of an ambiguous institutional realm, inherent in contradictions, people persist in between multifaceted contestations
Critical Perspectives on Urban Planning in India: From Colonial Legacies to Inclusive Futures
No full textContemporary urban planning, especially in the Global South, reflects a complex interplay of colonial legacies, neoliberal policies, and the urgent need for more inclusive and just practices. This chapter critically examines the evolution of urban planning in India, tracing its roots from the colonial era to contemporary neoliberal influences. It explores the persistent inequalities and exclusions embedded in urban planning processes, particularly how they impacted marginalised populations like the urban houseless during the pandemic. Despite urban planning's potential to redistribute resources and address inequalities, its implementation often fails to resonate with the socio-economic realities of India's diverse urban landscapes. The COVID-19 pandemic further exposed these fractures, revealing how conventional planning approaches, rooted in Western ideologies, inadequately addressed the vulnerabilities of those living in informal settlements and on the streets. The pandemic response, driven by spatial control and mobility restrictions, disproportionately affected the urban poor, highlighting the limitations of existing planning paradigms. This chapters argues for a reimagining of urban planning that embraces the ‘conflicting rationalities’ of urban life in the Global South. It argues that planning should redress the embedded coloniality and be inclusive through adopting a co-produced ethos – a collaborative approach that engages both state and non-state actors in addressing the complex realities of urbanisation. By focusing on the lived experiences of marginalised groups and the informal sector, this approach can potentially counter the dominant, Northern-centric planning models and contribute to more equitable urban development
Abandon the Slum? Toward an Alternative Recognition of Urban Informal Dwelling
Get PDFThe focus on urban poverty in the Global South has centered on slum-centric discussions of urban marginality to explain the supposed crisis of Third World cities. Evidently, ideological and material eradication of slums is symptomatic of the erasure of urban poverty and is regarded as a developmental panacea to address all urban problems. Notwithstanding the political significance of this term to understand and respond to subaltern urbanism, the Eurocentric gaze of urban scholars and practitioners in using slum, as an analytical and developmental category, has impeded the recognition of varied forms of dwelling practices. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with footpath-dwelling communities in Mumbai, I argue that to understand the diversity of dwelling in the city, attention needs to be extended to what could be called non-slums, spaces that embody a set of practices and negotiations that are spatially distinct from those characterizing places officially labeled as slums and expand beyond density politics. Unlike residents of so-called slums, these groups are often dispersed and numerically weak. It is this spatial organization (or the lack of it) that shapes their everyday politics in making their place within the city. The exposed nature of their habitation makes their everyday living transient and sets forth a form of spatiality that is distinct from dense neighborhoods labeled slums. While slums are being peripheralized through various policy and state interventions, these groups continue to hold on to the urban core and in doing so produce new spatializations of poverty and varied subaltern subjectivities of dispossession and belonging
"But we are here to see the slum": counter-conceptualising 'slums' in Mumbai and beyond
Get PDFIn the Indian context the use of the word 'slum' only appeared in the late 19th century and in vernacular practices the terms used to denote poor people's housing is much more encompassing. Furthermore, slum centric representations of urban marginality, both celebratory and derogatory, fail to capture the vibrancy and variety in Mumbai's urban community, writes Paroj Banerjee
Divided in squatters, united in bias
No full textParoj Banerjee recently conducted an ethnographic exploration into the discrimination against Muslims living in Mumbai’s slums, as part of a wider research project by Centre for Peace Studies, India. Here she summarises her key findings
The crackdowns on universities and the narrowing of “nationalism” in India
No full textRecent months have seen worrying examples of government interference with educational institutions, culminating with the current Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) row. In this comment piece, Paroj Banerjee reflects on how the notion of nationalism is being reinterpreted by the BJP government and its supporters to limit the space for dissent and competing ideologies. On the flip side, she writes that the national and global outcry leave her hopeful that democracy in India can be preserved
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