ABSTRACT

This volume examines urban South Asia through the ideas of neighbourhood and neighbourliness. With a focus on the affective socio-spatial and sensorial experiences of non-metropolitan, small and intermediate cities, the chapters in the volume look at neighbourhoods as a key to exploring the textures of urban life. Bringing together scholars from a variety of disciplines including sociology, anthropology, urban studies, planning, and social history, the book highlights urban heterogeneity and contemporary transformations in South Asia. It discusses the linkages between urban lived spaces and social life; memory, migration, and exile; and the city and its society through practices of everyday life in neighbourhoods. With studies from Sri Lanka, Nepal, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and India, the volume addresses a wide range of issues pertaining to urban experiences in their regional specificities and in a broader context of the Global South.

This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of urban sociology, anthropology, urban studies, planning and development, social history, political studies, cultural studies, geography, and South Asian studies. It will also interest practitioners and policymakers, architects, planners, civil society organisations, and thinktanks.

chapter 1|24 pages

Neighbourhoods and neighbourliness in urban South Asia

An introductory outlook

part I|74 pages

Spatial subalternity

chapter 2|15 pages

Becoming urban

Subjectivities and collective lives in Gurgaon's urban villages

chapter 3|17 pages

Neighbourly Nilphamari

Mediated relationships in Bangladesh

chapter 5|19 pages

From growing up in Durbarthok to living in Kathmandu and back

Places and multiple belonging in Nepal

part II|64 pages

Memory, personal experiences, and life history

chapter 6|21 pages

The life and times of Vijaya baji in Panjrapol

A biography of a lived neighbourhood

chapter 7|23 pages

In the neighbourhood of memory

Sensuous space of Banglagarh, Darbhanga

chapter 8|18 pages

Reframing the para?

The “Muslim” neighbourhoods of Kolkata

part III|68 pages

Politics of othering and stigma

chapter 9|19 pages

The Biharis of Orangi Town, Karachi

Experiences of belonging and neighbourliness

chapter 10|22 pages

Invisible refugee neighbourhoods of Lucknow

Redefining the neighbourhood as gu'āṇḍha and gali môhollā

chapter 11|25 pages

Neighbourhood of resilience and hope

The making and re-making of Wanathamulla