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The urban village, agrarian transformation, and rentier capitalism in Gurgaon, India

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  • Cowan, Thomas

Abstract

Gurgaon, India's “millennium city”, is today synonymous with India's embrace of global real estate capital and private sector‐led urban development. This paper asserts that Gurgaon's spectacular urbanisation has been fundamentally underpinned by an uneven process of land acquisition, exemption and agrarian transformation. Shifting away from dispossession‐centred analyses of contemporary urbanisation in India, this paper explores Gurgaon's “urban villages” to consider the uneven integration of agrarian classes into emerging urban real estate markets. Through an examination of differential experiences of land acquisition and agrarian social change among Gurgaon's landowning classes, the paper seeks to trace complex and nonlinear processes of agrarian transformation which make possible landscapes of global accumulation.

Suggested Citation

  • Cowan, Thomas, 2018. "The urban village, agrarian transformation, and rentier capitalism in Gurgaon, India," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 89699, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:89699
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    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/89699/
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Gavin Shatkin, 2014. "Contesting the Indian City: Global Visions and the Politics of the Local," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(1), pages 1-13, January.
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    7. Choithani, Chetan & van Duijne, Robbin Jan & Nijman, Jan, 2021. "Changing livelihoods at India’s rural–urban transition," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    India; accumulation by dispossession; urban studies; agrarian transitions; urban villages; articulation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q15 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Land Ownership and Tenure; Land Reform; Land Use; Irrigation; Agriculture and Environment

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