Contoured Urbanism: People, Property and Infrastructures in the Indian Himalayas

Abstract

The broad success of development initiatives and ensuing material prosperity in rural areas of the Indian Himalayas have seen an increasing number of families route their increased surpluses to nearby urban areas in search of speculative footholds. Yet, the region continues to be viewed as essentially rural by policy and academic literatures. This article critiques this association by focusing on social-spatial change in the town of Banjar in the Kullu district of Himachal Pradesh. We turn our attention to the stories of property and infrastructures that connect households, contractors, workers and materials, as well as the collectives that emerge or are reconfigured alongside these built environments. The article shows how upward mobility is accompanied by new susceptibilities, how an unlikely and understudied set of agents drives urban change in the absence of formal planning and how inherited hierarchies are being renegotiated through everyday practices to produce what we call 'contoured urbanism', or the uneven but geographically situated form of urbanisation in parts of the Himalayan region. The article makes the case for critical urban research as a productive entry point into debates on regional futures.

Forest figures of the past (and present): Consequences on the future of settling with/in forests of the Garhwal Himalayas, India

“…While the larger mobilisation of people, properties, material entanglements and infrastructure are being studied in the western Himalayas (Negi et al, 2016;Negi, 2023), this study highlights the importance of morphological modification and local adaptation linked to 'settling with/in forests'. By developing a "thick description", this research concludes that Garhwal's contemporary forests will continue to transform due to the dynamic interactions between the State's forest policies and non-state practices.…”

Class, Caste, Gender, and the Materiality of Cement Houses in India

“…Its successful implementation of land reform legislations has ensured that Dalit communities are more prosperous than their counterparts in the neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana (Negi et al. 2016). Compared to these states, HP also scores better on gender parity, with a female literacy rate of 76%.…”

Dislocating Urban Theory: Learning with Food‐Vending Practices in Colombo and Delhi

“…from the locations off the map of urban studies (Comaroff and Comaroff 2012;Connell 2011). This two-pronged dislocation of urban theory has had multiple interventions, from adjusting metropolitan concepts to make it applicable in the periphery (Houssay-Holzschuch and Th ebault 2017; Lemanski 2014), to reading the periphery in comparison to each other (or with the metropolis) towards developing newer theoretical understandings (Palat Narayanan 2020b; S€ oderstr€ om 2014); from reading the urban beyond the boundaries of the city (Brenner and Schmid 2014;Negi et al 2016), to reading the urban beyond the boundaries of the disciplines (Jazeel 2018;Patel 2006).…”

“…The work on metropolitan hegemony of knowledge has also been under investigation in various domains for some time now and by many scholars who may not use the term Southern Theory. To glimpse the diversity of the Southern position, we should keep in mind that the themes outlined above have been under investigation in science and technology studies (Nanda 2015;Nandy 1988), philosophy (Alatas 2000;Mbembe 2021), literature (Ramanujan 1994), language (Babu 2017), food studies (Ray 2016), and disciplinary critiques (Scola et al 2020), to name a few. Therefore the term Southern Theory in general as well as in urban studies should be read in the context of its diverse origins, developments, and positions.…”