9 results on '"Palat Narayanan, Nipesh"'
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2. How many Kirulapana Canals are there in Colombo? Reading everyday imageries and imaginations using southern theory.
- Author
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Palat Narayanan, Nipesh and Cornea, Natasha
- Abstract
Urban imaginations, imageries and conceptualizations are always plural and illustrate the formation of knowledge hegemonies. In this article, we engage with the problematic of reading infrastructures with a southern theory lens. We explore multiple imaginations, imageries and conceptualizations of the Kirulapana Canal in Colombo via everyday practices. Analysing the geographical imaginations of the state officials and residents, we illustrate (i) how varied imageries draws from the same hegemonic register, and (ii) how this process reinforces and correspondingly in-turn constructs hegemonic imageries. Using these illustrations, this article will broaden the southern theory discussions via analysing the everyday formation of the metropolis (concentration of knowledge and power) and knowledge hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
3. In/formal urbanism: cases drawn from Delhi
- Author
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Palat Narayanan, Nipesh
- Abstract
This thesis attempts to critically engage with urbanization processes through the lens of informality. That is, urban informality as an enduring concept that defines, describes, and delineates urban development. Using case studies from Delhi, it theorizes informality as a practice and seeks to understand its complex social and power dynamics. The research, based on secondary archival and primary qualitative data, shows the role of informality in the production of space, the everyday politics and reasoning of those who are involved in such practices. This thesis develops on how urban informality forms a critical lens in understanding the urbanization process in India rather than understanding informality via the urbanization process. It is broken down into three components, each of which yields a different scale to the analysis. The first component explores the discursive construction of slums in the Indian parliamentary debates. The slum is a contested settlement category, which provides a very specific illustration of urban informality’s contested notions. This section analyses the debates related to slums from the upper house (Rajya Sabha) of the Indian Parliament over a period of 61 years from 1953 until 2014. Using a Foucauldian framework of governmentality and biopolitics, this part outlines the historical progression of the debates, the rationale around conceptualization of slums, and how they transformed into actions via policy and/or legislation. This section analyses the discursive transformation of the notion of slums from a political subject to a technical object and in the process, how the state makes itself indispensable to deal with urban informality. The second component investigates the role of urban informality in producing the city. It takes the informal dumpling (momos) manufacturing-and-selling sector in Delhi’s Chirag Dilli settlement as a case study. Building on a Lefebvrian conceptualization of space, it illustrates how this particular informal cottage industry contributes to the social production of the city as well as of the physical settlement in which it is located. The results show, first, how the built form of the inhabited settlement gets co-produced with newer living patterns and building typologies. Second, they demonstrate the contribution of Abstract informality to the production of the city. Thus, taking an alternate narrative to the state or the conflict with the state being the primary agent in the production of the city. The third component of the research aims to understand how informality is being produced, and why the same actors oscillate between formal and informal practices. In this regard, a study of water supply management and solid waste management in and around the slum settlement of Jagdamba Camp is taken as a case study. This part of the thesis theorizes informality as a practice using Bourdieu and demonstrates through the case study that the production of informality is a highly varied and nuanced process. It takes the urban infrastructure as a medium to understand social and political aspects of the society. The results argue that informality as a practice is not completely dependent on the habitus of the actors, but on the rules of the field in which these actors operate. This opens the analytical possibility to understand how and why the same actors practice both formality and informality in different fields. The three components are the core chapters of this thesis-by-article. They come together in understanding the urbanization process via informality rather than using formal urbanization to understand informality. The first part outlines the larger historical development of informality resulting in various state legislations. The following two components outline how the people cope, adapt, and influence these legislations resulting in a distinct urbanization process. The overall results are framed using perspectives from southern theory and show how informal practices are universal, but these practices get differentially connoted and acted upon.
- Published
- 2018
4. World-class as a provincial construct: Historicizing planning in Colombo and Delhi.
- Author
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Palat Narayanan, Nipesh
- Subjects
URBAN planning ,PROVINCES - Abstract
South Asia's bourgeoning agglomerations are argued to derive their imageries from the abstracted northern notions of the urban, partially captured by the umbrella phrase – world-class. This article unpacks the notion of world-class using planning exercises in Colombo and Delhi. I argue that world-class cannot be seen in isolation to read the violence of urbanization, but when planning is historicized, visions like world-class present themselves as a subsequent logical step. Therefore, for any radical opposition to exclusionary planning, we need to look at the possibility of an epistemological rupture in the planning discourse rather than to critique the notion of world-class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2020
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
5. The Delhi Bias: knowledge hegemony of India's slum governance.
- Author
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Palat Narayanan, Nipesh
- Subjects
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SLUMS , *HEGEMONY , *MEGALOPOLIS , *SOUTH Asians , *POWER (Social sciences) - Abstract
Slum eradication has been a concern in South Asian cities since the colonial times. Legislation and policies are being framed both out of national desires and international strategies. However, very little is being studied on how these legislation and policies come into being, specifically geography's influence in their formulation. The article analyses parliamentary debates from India (Rajya Sabha, 1953–2014), and outlines the process of historical, political, and institutional dominance of Delhi. It shows that the slum legislation and policies in India are formulated by abstracting cases from the Delhi slums. This knowledge hegemony of Delhi is discussed within the growing consideration towards urban theory's southern shift, which puts the Southern cities (megacities) as underdogs. The paper argues that at a regional level, these megacities exert the same hegemony that the southern theory wants to avoid. The results argue towards broadening the southern theory and ordinary city discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2020
- Full Text
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6. Aesthetics, Ideology and the 'Slum'
- Author
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Palat Narayanan, Nipesh
- Published
- 2015
7. The production of informality and everyday politics.
- Author
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Palat Narayanan, Nipesh
- Subjects
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PRACTICE theory (Social sciences) , *URBAN planning & politics , *SOLID waste management , *DRINKING water , *URBAN poor ,URBAN ecology (Sociology) - Abstract
Urban informality is a complex phenomenon and recent literature points towards the need to develop a new theoretical framework to analyse and interpret empirical observations. This paper uses Bourdieu's practice theory to conceptualize informality as a set of practices, analysing two case studies from Jagdamba Camp, Delhi (India), and its surrounding neighbourhoods. The first case centres on practices around a community-managed water supply system and the second on practices around solid waste management. The case studies, based on data collected through qualitative fieldwork in 2015 and 2016, point to multifaceted interactions between formal and informal practices that result in manifestations of in/formal practices in the locality's everyday politics. The paper argues that informality is not linked to particular people or places in an essentialist way, but dependent on the field in which these actors operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2019
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
8. Informal production of the city: Momos, migrants, and an urban village in Delhi.
- Author
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Palat Narayanan, Nipesh and Véron, René
- Subjects
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URBAN growth , *HOUSING , *DUMPLINGS , *URBAN morphology - Abstract
This paper attempts to understand the production of the city through informality. In particular, informal practices related to the momo (dumpling) industry, concentrated in the “urban village” of Chirag Dilli, are analysed in their dialectic relationship with formal planning and legislation in Delhi. We use a Lefebvrian framework that views city-making as an interaction of formal representations in the form of master plans, etc., informal and formal spatial practices (including momo production and living patterns) and representational (imagined) spaces related to neighbourhoods and the city. Drawing on primary qualitative data, we examine how informality informed the formal planning. The uneven application of state legislation, in turn, fostered particular informal practices (such as momo manufacturing) and the emergence of a distinct urban morphology and of new cohabitation practices. The informal momo industry also altered the representational associations made with both the Chirag Dilli neighbourhood and the city of Delhi. The paper shows how informal practices constantly interact with formal frameworks to co-produce urban space and consequently the city. We argue that informal practices are not necessarily in conflict with formal planning or subverting it, but that they play a central role in their own right for the production of space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2018
- Full Text
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9. Surrounds surrounding the South.
- Author
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Palat Narayanan, Nipesh
- Published
- 2023
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
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