ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I want to extend Appadurai’s valuable insights into the relationship between media, migration and imagination in the constitution of modern subjectivity. My aim is to show how the outcome of these inter-related phenomena is – with the help of other agencies and processes – currently influencing material developments in the architecture and suburban spaces of some of India’s most rapidly developing cities, particularly Bangalore and New Delhi. However, I shall also take issue with Appadurai; not only does the nation state continue to be a major player in contributing to social change but it is critical to the construction of what he calls the ‘diasporic public sphere’.
