[Reader-list] Fwd: Researching Mumbai Lecture Series: 19 July 2012: Anne Rademacher

[Shilpa Phadke]

*Researching Mumbai Lecture Series*

*Urban Aspirations in Global Cities**  *


> *A collaborative project of *
>


> *Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Max Planck Institute and Partners for
> Urban Knowledge Action & Research
> *
>

invites you to a talk titled

*Layers of power and political thickets: reflections on field strategies in
Kathmandu and Mumbai*

by

*Dr. Anne Rademacher*

Assistant Professor, New York University


*Date:  ** Thursday,  **July 19, 2012*
*Time:* *4.30 p.m.*
*Location: Old conference Room, Main Campus, TISS*

*Abstract:*

Effective urban fieldwork requires methodological strategies that are not
only responsive to social context, but also adaptive to unpredictable, and
sometimes abrupt, changes in political conditions. In this presentation,
I’ll reflect on the challenge of methodological adaptation in two South
Asian urban contexts: Kathmandu between 2001-2009, and Mumbai in the
present. Drawing on past work on the cultural politics of urban river
restoration in Nepal’s capital city and present work among architects
training in, and attempting to practice, sustainable design in Mumbai, I
will describe how two very different field work strategies were devised,
deployed, and, in the Mumbai case, continue to evolve in response to a
changing political context.



*About Anne Radmarcher:*

*Anne Rademacher is Assistant Professor in the Programs in Environmental
Studies and Metropolitan Studies in the Department of Social and Cultural
Analysis at New York University. Her work e**xplores the political and
cultural dimensions of sustainability in cities. Through ethnographic
analyses of urban environmental change, she studies how place-based
affinities, contested histories, and ideologies of belonging develop in
struggles over the form, content, and quality of urban environments.
Rademacher’s central interest is urban ecology – its scientific contours, **its
application across cultural and political contexts, and its interconnection
with social change. She is the author of “Reigning the River: Urban
Ecologies and Political Transformation in Kathmandu” (2011), and Co-editor,
with K. Sivaramakrishnan, of the forthcoming (2012) volume, “Ecologies of
Urbanism in India.” *


 "*Urban Aspirations in Global Cities*" is an international collaborative
project in which researchers from Tata Institute of Social Sciences,
Mumbai, Max Planck Institute (MPI), Germany and Partners for Urban
Knowledge Action and Research (PUKAR), Mumbai, are working together. The
project aims to compare post-colonial mega-cities in Asia, including
Mumbai, Singapore and Shanghai, and understand how the urban community of
rapidly growing mega-cities impacts the development of urban aspirations.

The* Researching Mumbai Lecture Series* aims to foster a conversation about
the contexts of researching the city of Mumbai, the complex engagements
with the field, and to enable critical reflections on questions of
methodology.