Cities
and Citizenship: Interrogating
Urbanism in Contemporary South Asia
CALL
FOR PAPERS
The
history of cities has long favored the West as the center of urbanization, thus
casting the cities of the Global South in the rhetoric of delayed development
and borrowed modernities. Indeed, the postcolonial condition of South Asian
cities has been continually rendered as the shadow of former colonial cities
struggling to cope with inefficiencies of the postcolonial state in managing
urbanization and more recently with pressures of globalization and transnational
forces. In order to move beyond a dialogue which frames the cities of the
developing world as derivative of a Euro-Ameri-centric core we propose an
interrogation of South Asian cities through the theoretical lens of citizenship.
The
evolving definition of citizenship—originally a product of the urban enclave
(as in the medieval bastide or the polis) to a right defined by a larger
national political community—is being recalibrated once again as cities around
the world become the salient units of economic and political change. The notion
of republican citizenship, as premised on an idea of universal liberalism, has
most strenuously been challenged in the urban sphere, be it through the
ghettoization of minorities or the growing enclaves of the wealthy. At the same
time, diverse initiatives and grassroots mobilizations have emerged to counter
old and new urban inequalities and spatial exclusions. Although the re-scripting
of urban space in cities across the world is thus producing new notions of
citizenship, both restrictive and expansive, the modalities through which these
are produced remain contingent upon historical and geographical specificities.
South
Asian cities have recently come center-stage through innovative explorations in
fiction, photography, and documentary film. This one-day symposium will provide
a forum for cross-disciplinary dialogue which brings these perspectives from the
humanities in conversation with those in the social sciences in order to
investigate the urban realm. We encourage submissions that deal with cities in
Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka as a means to expand the discussion
of South Asian urbanism beyond the case-study of India.
We
invite papers that speak to the issues outlined in the following three themes:
I.
Propertied Citizenship and Landscapes of Consumption
Following
market liberalization, South Asian cities have witnessed a rapid integration
into global consumer markets and commodity networks, fostering new and more
aggressive consumption practices. With the re-ordering of urban space in a
global economic context in which cities compete for capital, jobs, and tourists,
property has also become an increasingly significant register through which
elite groups pressure the state to "clean up" cities in order to
privilege their own needs and sensibilities. These shifts are reflected in
new urban phenomena such as the mushrooming of shopping malls and gated
communities and the proliferation of technology parks.
We invite papers which focus on the city as a nexus of global networks,
local vectors of management and reform, and consumption practices.
Following
neo-liberal reforms in recent decades, South Asian cities have played a crucial
role in the rescaling of the state and the decentralization of government
apparatuses. For example, the pressures of globalization on labor coupled with
efforts to ensure a city’s position in the new global economy has led to the
creation of extra-governmental spaces of production, such as Special Economic
Zones. The rise of civil-society movements and non-governmental organizations
has also led to a significant recalibration of urban governmentality.
Notwithstanding these new modalities of governmentality which involve a
constellation of non-state actors, the right to land and resources made by an
individual or community continues to engage the state and political actors at
various scales, often mobilizing informal practices such as squatting and
land-grabbing which involve highly politicized negotiations. We invite papers
that examine the role of the state in the contemporary urban realm and that
speak to various
agents and processes that challenge the managerial sovereignty of the state
therein.
The
diversity within South Asian societies, the historical legacies of colonialism,
and most recently the processes of globalization have continually brought forth
challenges to the modern nation-state and democracy in the region. Many of these
challenges are articulated and played out in the urban arena, through an
assemblage of spatial practices. For example, the occupation of the city through
religious processions, the construction of violent spatial imaginaries that pit
religious groups against each other, and the redefinition of the urban subject
through hegemonic constructions of masculinity or femininity, appropriate the
city as a site of contestation over the nation and the state. We invite papers
that focus on the re-scripting of ethnic, racial, class, and gendered identities
in/through urban space and which explore this through different media such as
art, film, literature, performance and so forth.
Paper
abstracts will be accepted by e-mail at southasiancities@gmail.com through October 15,
2007. Abstracts should be 400-500 words in length and authors should attach the
abstract as a Word document as well as include the text of the abstract in the
body of the message. Please be sure to include the following information in the
e-mail as well: Full name, departmental affiliation, and the title of your
abstract. Accepted authors will receive e-mail notification no later than
November 15, 2007. Accepted authors
will be expected to submit a draft working paper by January 10, 2008.
For
additional information, please contact the symposium coordinators: Romola Sanyal
(romi_s@berkeley.edu)
or Renu Desai (renu_d@berkeley.edu).