ABSTRACT

This volume focuses on socio- spatial practices of indigenous communities in India. It explores the interrelation between the built environments and lifeworlds, i.e. practices, patterns, and structures of everyday life. The chapters deal with different ideas and definitions of indigeneity, while also addressing the complex equations between the production and perception of built forms, indigenous technologies, on the one hand, and social, environmental and political contexts, questions of aesthetics, identity, and self-representation on the other.

From Adivasi art and sacred sites to craft villages and nomadic pastoralists in western India, from indigenous bangle makers in urban north India to terracotta crafts people on the south, each chapter focuses on different communities and the contours of their contemporary lifeworlds. The contributions actively attempt to foreground the logic and perspectives of the communities themselves as the epistemological centre of the architectural and material discourses on indigeneity.

This book will be useful for students, teachers, and researchers of architecture, urban design, urban studies, urban development and planning, anthropology, sociology, and museum studies. It will also be of interest to urban planners and designers, policy planners, local government authorities, and professionals engaged in the discipline.

chapter |22 pages

Introduction

Indigenous Architecture in India – Exploring Plural Lifeworlds

chapter 1|24 pages

Studying Bachchom Bayer Ba

The Indigenous Floor Art of Kolhan

chapter 4|17 pages

Decoding a Craft Habitat

Identifying Spatial and Temporal Relationships of the Craft Practices in Nirona, Kachchh 1

chapter |6 pages

Interlude

Exploring Indigeneity and the City

chapter 5|17 pages

Placing indigeneity in the networks of glass-bangle making in Firozabad

Craftsman, community, and socio-spatial networks

chapter 7|16 pages

Terracotta People

Productive Tensions between the Indigenous and the Colonial

chapter 8|13 pages

Dialogue between Carpenters and Masons

Cases from Telangana and Goa

chapter 10|10 pages

Community, Spaces and Environment

Reflections on the Making of a Village Museum