ABSTRACT
The introductory chapter outlines the collaborative process, discursive framework, and perspectives that have shaped this book and hold promises for explorations of urbanity in South Asia in future. It paves the way to shift from the preponderance of economic processes, structures, and institutions of globalisation and governance in discussing the question of the urban in South Asia, and instead foreground the significant lived experiences, the intersecting homes, streets, marketplaces, or neighbourhoods as social. The dynamics of the spatial rootedness of urban social life present a weaving of the intimate stories of how people live in cities and how their lives provoke us to look at cities in new ways, which are as much central to the discourse in this chapter as in the whole of the book. It centralises the anchorage of the neighbourhood and neighbourliness, their particularities, and their role in shaping our understanding of urban South Asia. With an urge to decentre the dominant Euro-American discourse of urban social life, with a multi-disciplinary framework, mobilising disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, urban studies and planning, and social history, the chapter highlights the significance of the book that puts together theoretically nuanced and empirically layered chapters referring to the contexts of Sri Lanka, Nepal, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and India, inter alia.
