Architecture of low-income widow housing: 'spatial opportunities' in Madipur, West Delhi

This article is based on a study of Madipur widow colony in west Delhi, built as part of the UN International Year of Shelter for the Homeless in 1987. Designed to accommodate widows from squatter settlements in Delhi, very few of the original houses now survive and very few of the original owners remain. The spatial stories of the participants suggest how and why and under what circumstances a State's visions of empowerment as translated into utopian architectural projects are transformed by the people who inhabit them. They illustrate how a particular set of `spatial opportunities' built into the widow colony are manipulated and seized upon by the participants to produce an uneven geography of architecture and empowerment. This article thus extends the important work on critical geographies of architecture to the architecture of low-income housing in the global South

Samudayik Shakti: working-class feminism and social organisation in Subhash Camp, New Delhi

This article illustrates the intersections between architecture and agency in Subhash Camp, a squatter settlement in New Delhi, by ‘situating activism in place’. It highlights the significance of place in social action by examining the architecture of everyday places- the house, the street and the square - as the sites of both individual transformations and collective consciousness. Through observations of the activities of and interviews with members of Samudayik Shakti, a women’s organisation and a men’s panchayat, this article highlights a number of related processes in Subhash Camp: how different women experienced different places through everyday spatial practices; how the spatial practices in these places were shaped by different social structures at different scales, from the family to the state; how the architecture of these places was significant both as sites of control and of emancipation of women’s bodies; and how this dynamic contributed to the making of social action in Subhash Camp

Examining the changing status and role of middle class Assamese women :lessons from the lives of university students

PhD ThesisPostcolonial India is a complex and paradoxical mix of traditional practices and ultra modernity. This tension is especially apparent, and holds particular significance, with respect to women’s changing status and role. Driving this research is a concern to examine the impact that structural reforms and neoliberalism are having on women’s everyday experience of autonomy at home, in their careers and family life, and in the journeys they make from home to work through public spaces. This thesis focuses on the specific case of Assam, located in the north-eastern region of India and, within it, a sub-population of young, middle class, Assamese women. The research draws on in-depth interviews and focus groups, in triangulation with a standardised questionnaire, conducted with a sample of students pursuing higher education in five different state-funded co-educational institutions of Assam namely Cotton College, Gauhati Medical College, Assam Engineering College, Gauhati University and Bajali College which have long histories of privilege and prestige. This research is designed to look for evidence of improved status in an extreme context where the liberating benefits of education and career salience are most likely to be found. A key contribution of this thesis flows from the contradictions and complexities of the everyday practices that underpin the changing status and role of young, middle class Assamese women. The narrative analysis reveals contradictory processes underpinning women’s changing status in Assam; on one hand it shows higher education to be liberating for those who can afford access, in as much as it offers increased autonomy and exposure to international media and ‘cosmopolitan’ egalitarian ideals; on the other hand, women who seek fulfilling jobs and careers outside the home find their freedom of movement severely restricted in public by sexual harassment and at home they face continuing pressure to maintain labourintensive standards of cooking and childcare. This coincides with tensions arising from ‘new femininities’ whereby, for many within Assamese society, the participation of women in higher education and their increased visibility in paid employment is symbolic of the advancing threat of globalisation as is the proliferation of ‘immodest’ (western) modes of dress; loss of extended family welfare; and an erosion of cultural practices and religious beliefs. The research, which is an empirical contribution to existing knowledge, examines the ways that incomplete gender transformations are embedded in Assamese society. Generally it is perceived that Indian women’s subordination is explained with reference to a biological ‘naturalisation’ of sex roles or dominant patriarchal structures in state, market and family relations. This thesis challenges these perceived notions of traditional explanations by pointing to a trend of ‘Third Wave’ feminism circumscribed by plural ‘new femininities’ and ‘girl power’. At the same time the research engages with the critique of tradition identified by Hobsbawm (1983) as a variable rather than a fixed or static concept. It demonstrates that Assamese women are effectively experiencing a (re)traditionalising of their domestic roles with increased ‘Indianness’ in the social (re)production of daily life. Thus, the research also contributes to the theoretical literature on postcolonial feminism by following Mohanty’s (1987, 1988; 1991b) critique of the universality of ethnocentricism in Anglo-American scholarship and its presumptions that women of the so called Third World accept traditions passively. Evidence of the (re)production of a mix of ultra modern and perceived notion of traditional practices is presented with respect to competing spheres of daily life; including relationships with parents/in-laws and spouse, childcare, norms of domestic labour and personal goals associated with education and career. The manifestation of this process is locally specific and highly uneven and contradictory.Overseas Research Scholarship (ORS) : International Research Scholarship (IRS)

‘We have always been here’: Busking, urban space and economy of Montreal

This dissertation follows the buskers in Montreal to garner from them an understanding of the city’s economy, culture and urban space, and their entanglements. It is a historical and geographical study that examines the position of the itinerant entertainer or musician in the political economy of the city. Both history and place are explored from the vantage point of this itinerant figure; and spaces frequented by buskers in the present or in the past are foregrounded in tracing urban transformations effecting the city since the 1960s. An oral history project, it engages with memories of busking and formal and informal archives to address the lived experiences of buskers in the contemporary city; transformations in spaces of busking and their position with relation to the city’s economy; contestations over urban public space; and the neoliberal entanglements of Montreal’s economy. Buskers' life histories are privileged in exploring concepts such as flexible, immaterial and precarious labour. The thesis, therefore, decenters the creative class in examining the entrepreneurial and self-regulated worker and the nature of labour intermediaries within the neoliberal economy. It shines a light on the role of surveillance and politics of access that are deepening social divides in this new economy. It also compares the historical representation of street musicians and performers to their own perceptions of busking. In doing so, it not only challenges the distinctions between work and leisure, but also between economic and cultural or social domains. The thesis foregrounds a temporal and spatial claim on the city by buskers. It is an argument for their place and practice in urban space and economy. Implicit is also a critique of urban planning and policies that are producing a sense of displacement among the economically and socially marginalised. Experiences of surveillance and power, institutionalisation of culture, and professionalization of public art within the cultural economy make visible the exclusionary landscapes of the postindustrial city. Finally, in centering informality and informal spaces of work and sociality through buskers, the thesis unsettles dominant narratives of Montreal to challenge a dichotomous framing of the world

Nurturing resistance : agency and activism of women tea plantation workers in a gendered space

This thesis offers an analysis of labour relations and social space in the tea gardens of north-east India. Existing literature provides us with an understanding of how the plantations operate as economic spaces, but in so doing they treat workers as undifferentiated economic beings defined only by their class identity. Space, however, has to be animated to be meaningful. Through participant observation and semi-structured interviews I explore the plantations as actual lived spaces where people are bound by and resist constraints. Multiple intersecting identities play out within these social spaces making them ethnic, religious, and caste spaces in addition to being gendered. Focusing on these intersectional identities, I demonstrate how region, ethnicity, party affiliation, caste, religion are played out and how they are invoked at certain points by the women workers. The articulations of identity not only determine a sense of belonging or non-belonging to a space but also how one belongs. Within the physical sites of the plantation, I examine how the women perceive these spaces and how, in moving between ideas of home/world, public/private, these very binaries are negated. The strict sexual division of labour primarily in the workplace but also in the household and villages inscribe the physical sites with certain gendered meanings and performances. The women negotiate these in their everyday lives and shape these spaces even as they are shaped by them. Conditioned by gender norms and the resultant hierarchy their narratives can be read as stories of deprivation and misery, but looking deeper their agency can also be uncovered. The lives of my research participants show how the social spaces within which they operate are not static; in spite of spatial controls there are the many minute acts of resistance through which the women work the existing restraints to their least disadvantage. Focussing on the minute acts of insubordination, deceit and even confrontation I elucidate how the women made use of the relations of subordination to pave spaces of resistance and sometimes even of autonomy. Furthermore, not all acts of agency are minute or unspectacular. I map instances of highly visible, volatile and aggressive protests apparently challenging the accepted social codes within which they function. In expressing themselves, the women use the available political repertories of protest in forms of strikes, blockades, street plays, etc. Through these instances of activism they appropriate and become visible in the public realm and challenge the accepted ways in which social spaces and norms play out. Despite their articulate nature, these protests usually seek to address immediate demands and do not escalate into social movements. Also while volatile in action, the protests seek legitimacy within the accepted gender codes that operate in their everyday life in the plantation