The Meaning of the Local: Politics of Place in Urban India
Geert De Neve, "The Meaning of the Local: Politics of Place in Urban India"
Publisher: Routledge | 2006-12-15 | ISBN 1844721140 | PDF | 238 pages | 1.6 MB
Publisher: Routledge | 2006-12-15 | ISBN 1844721140 | PDF | 238 pages | 1.6 MB
This book examines the meaning of locality in urban India through studies of social, spatial and historical associations between peoples and places. By focusing on specific localities, it unpacks the meaning of the local in a variety of urban contexts in India. Moving beyond the assertion that space is socially constructed, it explores the ways in which social and political relations are spatially and historically contingent through a focus on metropolitan areas as well as small towns. Using detailed ethnography, it highlights the vitality of place-making in the lives of urban dwellers and the centrality of a ‘politics of the local’ in the production of power, difference and inequality. The book demonstrates how urban spaces are increasingly interconnected while local boundaries and group-based identities are reconstructed, and often consolidated, through the use of ‘traditional’ idioms and localised practices.