IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ijurrs/v38y2014i6p2292-2308.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Postcolonial City and its Displaced Poor: Rethinking ‘Political Society’ in Delhi

Author

Listed:
  • Sanjeev Routray

Abstract

Partha Chatterjee has produced a compelling analysis of political modernity in India. This article evaluates the significance of his conceptualization of ‘political society’ for understanding political practices in Delhi by looking at three issues: the relevance of proof of identification documents and various enumeration-related practices for proving citizenship; a court case concerning the resettlement of a particular population in Delhi; and the role of popular intermediaries from the community in channeling the political energies of poor people. I argue that Chatterjee's theoretical contribution allows for a contextual analysis of the specificity of political experience in India if we treat his schematic formulation heuristically, by focusing on its analytical strengths rather than ideal prescriptive standpoints. His ideas about the enforcement of bourgeois norms, subaltern collective practices, and hegemonic liberal state institutions allow us to go beyond a culturalist analysis of political society. In particular, they help us understand how the experience of democracy reflects the locational disadvantages of various groups. Further, while state institutions, including the judiciary system, protect the interests of dominant groups, they also respond to various forms of exclusion. My empirical findings corroborate Chatterjee's arguments concerning political society while also raising critical points for rethinking his theoretical framework.

Suggested Citation

  • Sanjeev Routray, 2014. "The Postcolonial City and its Displaced Poor: Rethinking ‘Political Society’ in Delhi," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(6), pages 2292-2308, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:38:y:2014:i:6:p:2292-2308
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/1468-2427.12192
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Véronique D.N. Dupont, 2011. "The Dream of Delhi as a Global City," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(3), pages 533-554, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Devra Waldman, 2022. "AIMING FOR THE ‘GREEN’: (Post)Colonial and Aesthetic Politics in the Design of a Purified Gated Environment," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(2), pages 235-252, March.
    2. Natasha Cornea, 2020. "Territorialising control in urban West Bengal: Social clubs and everyday governance in the spaces between state and party," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 38(2), pages 312-328, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Veronica Crossa, 2016. "Reading for difference on the street: De-homogenising street vending in Mexico City," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(2), pages 287-301, February.
    2. Henrike Donner, 2015. "‘Daughters are Just Like Sons Now’," Journal of South Asian Development, , vol. 10(3), pages 318-344, December.
    3. Seth Schindler, 2014. "Producing and contesting the formal/informal divide: Regulating street hawking in Delhi, India," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 51(12), pages 2596-2612, September.
    4. Marshall, Fiona & Dolley, Jonathan, 2019. "Transformative innovation in peri-urban Asia," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(4), pages 983-992.
    5. Glyn Williams & Umesh Omanakuttan & J Devika & N Jagajeevan, 2019. "Planning a ‘slum free' Trivandrum: Housing upgrade and the rescaling of urban governance in India," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 37(2), pages 256-276, March.
    6. Devra Waldman, 2022. "AIMING FOR THE ‘GREEN’: (Post)Colonial and Aesthetic Politics in the Design of a Purified Gated Environment," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(2), pages 235-252, March.
    7. Duncan McDuie-Ra, 2013. "Beyond the ‘Exclusionary City’: North-east Migrants in Neo-liberal Delhi," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(8), pages 1625-1640, June.
    8. Herrera, Veronica, 2019. "Reconciling global aspirations and local realities: Challenges facing the Sustainable Development Goals for water and sanitation," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 106-117.
    9. Sue-Ching Jou & Eric Clark & Hsiao-Wei Chen, 2016. "Gentrification and revanchist urbanism in Taipei?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(3), pages 560-576, February.
    10. Rama Devi & Sawmya Ray, 2021. "Negotiating Exclusion and Precarity: Marginalised Urban Youth, Education, and Employment in Delhi," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 64(4), pages 923-941, December.
    11. Tara Saharan & Karin Pfeffer & Isa Baud, 2018. "Urban Livelihoods in Slums of Chennai: Developing a Relational Understanding," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 30(2), pages 276-296, April.
    12. Lorena Munoz, 2018. "“Recovering†public space and race: Afro-Colombian street vendors in Bogotá, Colombia," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 36(4), pages 573-588, June.
    13. Fulong Wu, 2020. "Scripting Indian and Chinese urban spatial transformation: Adding new narratives to gentrification and suburbanisation research," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 38(6), pages 980-997, September.
    14. Raffael Beier, 2020. "The world-class city comes by tramway: Reframing Casablanca’s urban peripheries through public transport," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(9), pages 1827-1844, July.
    15. Kristian Hoelscher & Rumi Aijaz, 2016. "Challenges and opportunities in an urbanising India," International Area Studies Review, Center for International Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, vol. 19(1), pages 3-11, March.
    16. Chidambaram, Soundarya, 2020. "How do institutions and infrastructure affect mobilization around public toilets vs. piped water? Examining intra-slum patterns of collective action in Delhi, India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    17. Yucel Can Severcan, 2018. "Changing places, changing childhoods: Regeneration and children’s use of place in Istanbul," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(10), pages 2179-2196, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:38:y:2014:i:6:p:2292-2308. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0309-1317 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.