[Reader-list] Another Book Plug ; -) The Meaning of the Local, Politics of Place in Urban India

[Patrice Riemens]

FYI
Hopefully the book is available at a cheaper rate in India...


The Meaning of the Local
Politics of Place in Urban India
Edited by Geert de Neve, Henrike Donner

List Price: £80.00
Routledge
Publication Date: 21/12/2006
Pages: 256


Description

About the Book
By zooming in on urban localities in India and by unpacking the 'meaning of
the local' for those who live in them, the ten papers in this volume
redress a recurrent asymmetry in contemporary debates about globalisation.
In much literature, the global is associated with transnationalism,
dynamism and activity, and the local with static identities and history.

Focusing on a range of locales in India's metropolitan areas and provincial
small towns, the contributions move beyond the assertion that space is
socially constructed to explore the ways in which social and political
relations are themselves spatially and historically contingent. Using
detailed ethnography, the authors highlight the vitality of place-making
in the lives of urban dwellers and the centrality of a 'politics of place'
in the production of power, difference and inequality. The volume
illustrates how urban spaces are increasingly interconnected through wider
social and spatial processes, while local boundaries and group-based
identities are at the same time reconstructed, and often even
consolidated, through the use of 'traditional' idioms and localised
practices.

All contributions relate detailed case studies of everyday activities to a
range of contemporary debates that highlight various spatial aspects of
cultural identities, economic restructuring and political processes in India.

The volume provides an interdisciplinary perspective on urban life in
rapidly changing political and economic environments. It offers a
contribution to policy-orientated debates on urban livelihoods and urban
planning as well as a wealth of ethnographic material for those interested
in the spatial dimensions of urban life in India.