Southern Theory without a North: City Conceptualization as the Theoretical Metropolis

Abstract

There have been calls to broaden urban theory to incorporate learnings from the Southern or ordinary cities (periphery). These calls are often placed as a counter to the hegemony of the Northern cities (metropolis), which have long been the sites for producing theory. If the metropolis is a concept to describe clustering of power and knowledge, then geographical located-ness of this metropolis in the North is theoretically stifling. Therefore, we need to investigate the formation of metropolises within various cities, to study them in their own right, rather than merely pitching them against the northern cities or theory. Building on the qualitative study of street food sellers, users, and producers, I illustrate, contrasting narratives from Colombo and Delhi. I take the lunch-packet sector in Colombo to develop narratives of the city and read it alongside those of the momos (dumpling) sector in Delhi.Through these everyday urban narratives, I build a set of urban imageries, distinct in both the cities, and compare them with their planning histories via master plans.Using this juxtaposition, I argue that for the city to be rendered outside of the North's knowledge hegemony (i.e. for Southern theory), we need to have an interiorized ontological probing.

Urban political ecology: a critical reconfiguration

“…In reflecting on future directions for urban political ecology we need to consider two intersecting processes in particular: first, the shifting geographies of urbanization; and second, the institutional landscapes within which urban theory itself is evolving. The intellectual terrain of urban political ecology is still heavily marked by what Edgar Pieterse terms the ‘gravitational pull’ of Anglo-American global theory despite the extending empirical reach of new urban and environmental research into the diverse metropolitan landscapes of the global South (see Pieterse, 2013; Palat Narayanan, 2021). Although alternative circuits of environmental knowledge production do exist – consider, for example, the regular book fairs held in Guadalajara and Chennai, for Spanish and Tamil language literatures, respectively – there remain formidable cultural, economic, and institutional barriers towards the dissemination of these works in the global North (see Collyer, 2018).…”

World class from within: Aspiration, connection and brokering in the Colombo real estate market

“…Many academic studies, including several focused on Colombo, have juxtaposed the urban imaginaries of planners and state representatives with the lived practices and experiences of city-dwellers, particularly those engaged in informal labor and marginalized from power (e.g. Elyachar, 2010;Palat Narayanan, 2020a;Palat Narayanan and Veron, 2018;Perera, 2009;Simone, 2004). This article takes a slightly different approach, inspired by Ananya Roy's argument that "informality is not synonymous with poverty" (2009: 82).…”

The scalar politics of difference: Researching consumption and marketing outside the west

“…Embracing ‘multiepistemic literacy’ (Kuokkanen, 2011) and relational ontologies also facilitates the broadening of methodological approaches, and pursuing alternative forms of inquiry that foster a non-hierarchical dialogue between different ways and traditions of being and knowing. Research conducted with a decolonial perspective on topics as diverse as street food (Palat Narayanan, 2021), digital technologies (Newell and Pype, 2021), embodiment (Zaragocin and Caretta, 2021) and wilderness (Vannini and Vannini, 2019) demonstrate various ways of interacting with multiple worlds, and new forms of collaboration that are geared toward studying multiplicities and connections. They also illustrate how knowledge production can be decolonized in practical terms, and guide us toward theorizing not just about the South, but theorizing with and from the South.…”