CSSS is organizing a talk by Dr. Diya Mehra

Centre for the Study of Social Systems

School of Social Sciences

CSSS Colloquium

Diya Mehra

(Assistant Professor, Dept. of Sociology, South Asia University)

Will be presenting a paper on

Jungpura Triptych: Striated Settlements, Neighborhood Activism, and Delhi’s Residential Modernity

Date & Time:

September 4, 2018 (Tuesday), 3.30 pm

Venue:

Abstract: Even as the literature on Delhi’s 20^th century has grown, there is little work focused on the everyday histories of the city, particularly vis-à-vis its neighbourhoods. In response, this paper attempts at the partial reconstruction of the social history of one neighbourhood mainly between the 1920s and 1960s, focussed primarily on its built environment. In this context, it seeks to trace its metamorphoses from an outlying suburban village, to post-Partition resettlement site, and eventually a middle class locality, through a series of archival vignettes. In building its narrative, the paper dwells both on the difficulties of writing such histories, while drawing out two distinct frames of space-making – that of the late colonial period, and the preliminary decades of the postcolonial nation. For the post-Partition period, the paper tracks the process of building homes and neighbourly spaces primarily through the activities of the neighborhood’s welfare association and its members, their aspirations for the newly formed locality, and their negotiations with the ‘socialist/bureaucratic’ state over subsequent decades, both informally at first and later as a formally amalgamated association. The final section of the paper considers the contemporary situation in light of these earlier histories, and as Delhi itself has metamorphized. It reads current changes in the neighborhood and in civic activism, suggesting how new city-wide developments have transformed older, and received social hierarchies, as the city itself emerges as a far more diverse, anonymous, and also unequal, metropolitan region.

Bio: Diya Mehra is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, South Asian University. Trained as a cultural anthropologist, she works mainly on Indian small towns and metropolitan cities, both ethnographically, and in terms of 20^th century histories. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and edited volumes, and has a particular emphasis on urban development, governance and politics.