ABSTRACT
Arguing against a static and constricting view of place, Doreen Massey writes: ‘what gives a place its specifi city is not some long internalized history but the fact that it is constructed out of a particular constellation of social relations, meeting and weaving together at a particular locus’ (1994: 154). This chapter attempts to describe some women’s diverse and creative place-making strategies within a particular ethnographic setting in provincial North India. I seek to evoke what Massey calls ‘constellations’ of social relations among female neighbors, attending to their meetings and weavings, while keeping in mind that constellations may appear fi xed in the sky, but are actually moving patterns created in the viewer’s mind.
