Expectant Urbanism Time, Space and Rhythm in A

EXPECTANT URBANISM TIME, SPACE AND RHYTHM IN A SMALLER SOUTH INDIAN CITY by Ian M. Cook Submitted to Central European University Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisors: Professor Daniel Monterescu CEU eTD Collection Professor Vlad Naumescu Budapest, Hungary 2015 Statement I hereby state that the thesis contains no material accepted for any other degrees in any other institutions. The thesis contains no materials previously written and/or published by another person, except where appropriate acknowledgment is made in the form of bibliographical reference. Budapest, November, 2015 CEU eTD Collection Abstract Even more intense than India's ongoing urbanisation is the expectancy surrounding it. Freed from exploitative colonial rule and failed 'socialist' development, it is loudly proclaimed that India is having an 'urban awakening' that coincides with its 'unbound' and 'shining' 'arrival to the global stage'. This expectancy is keenly felt in Mangaluru (formerly Mangalore) – a city of around half a million people in coastal south Karnataka – a city framed as small, but with metropolitan ambitions. This dissertation analyses how Mangaluru's culture of expectancy structures and destructures everyday urban life. Starting from a movement and experience based understanding of the urban, and drawing on 18 months ethnographic research amongst housing brokers, moving street vendors and auto rickshaw drivers, the dissertation interrogates the interplay between the city's regularities and irregularities through the analytical lens of rhythm. Expectancy not only engenders violent land grabs, slum clearances and the creation of exclusive residential enclaves, but also myriad individual and collective aspirations in, with, and through the city – future wants for which people engage in often hard routinised labour in the present. The relationship between regularity and irregularity reveals the mechanisms, possibilities and contradictions of Mangaluru's expectant urbanism. Groups such as brokers, vendors and drivers are cast as disorderly, irregular or 'out of step', and yet their backstage routines are the rhythmic edifice upon which the comforts of others are predicated. Moreover, whilst the upkeep of regular patterns can enable urban inhabitants to turn irregularities that come their way from volatilities into possibilities, these same regularities – strengthened by the myth of widespread upward mobility – keep such groups forever displaced from the city of the future. Navigating the city in a way that finds and maintains regularity is increasingly difficult. India's CEU eTD Collection ongoing urbanisation is re-timing and re-spacing the city though the process of expansion, concentration and differentiation. This feeds into and from dominant social imaginaries of smooth flow, accelerated progress and friction-free consumption, and makes the city's rhythmic modes increasingly asynchronous, incoherent and omnidirectional. In order to navigate within the expectant city, brokers, vendors and rickshaw drivers employ various rhythmic strategies including street level conducting (linking, mediating and synchronising others' rhythmic modes), anticipation (creating future temporal depth and belonging), and rhythmic dissonance (injecting tension through refusing dominant norms). The dissertation not only contributes to our understanding of smaller cities during India's urban moment, but, in advancing a culturally-rooted diachronic and synchronic analysis of everyday urban life, it extends urban studies' increasingly sophisticated spatial and historical analyses of cities, by bringing these works into dialogue with the anthropology of time, ultimately offering a rhythmic re-conceptualisation of the urban. CEU eTD Collection Acknowledgements This piece of research was incoherent, asynchronous and omnidirectional and would have remained that way if it were not for the invaluable support, advice and admonishments of many wonderful people. First of all I would like thank my supervisor, mentor and guide, Daniel Monterescu, for his unwavering enthusiasm, for pushing me to rethink everything and for saving me from myself. I am also greatly indebted for the supervision of Vlad Naumescu, for being an inspiring exemplar, for the delicate care with which he read the work and for his continued endeavours that will allow me to realise the visual aspects of this project. I also greatly benefited from the supervision, advice and critical insights of Judit Bodnár, whose keen eye kept the project on track. The research design was greatly improved by the critical input of Thomas Blom Hansen and Sujata Patel at the proposal stage. Sujata Patel also kindly arranged for me to be a visiting scholar at the Department of Sociology at the University of Hyderabad and facilitated some of the most crucial practical aspects of the research. In Hyderabad I would also like to thank Shivarama Padikkal, who put me in contact with all the right people at the University of Mangalore. Namely Chinnappa Gowda, then serving as University of Mangalore Registrar, and retired professor Surendra Rao, both of whom offered me endless advice and support on my research, put their own exhaustive knowledge at my disposal, and also found me somewhere to live! At St. Aloysius College I am greatly indebted to Swebert D’Silva, Denis Fernandes, Laxmi, George A. Rodrigues, Richard Pais and Vishanz Pinto; at the Karnataka Theological College archives I was adeptly aided by Benet Ammanna; at Roshni Nilaya School of Social Work, Rita Noronha offered critical insights; whilst at College of Fisheries, Ramachandra Bhatta was a constant source of help and inspiration. Not only is Mangaluru a city renowned for its learning, but its scholars are truly open, friendly and cooperative; I was immensely lucky to have been able to benefit from their ongoing work. CEU eTD Collection Prathiksha D'Souza is now a primary school teacher in Mangaluru, and a wonderful one too I am sure, because, before having the pleasure of teaching children, she honed her patience and explanatory skills by endlessly explicating the intricacies of world to a confused anthropologist. Much more than a research assistant, she became a research guide and, i more importantly, a close friend. Seetharam Bhat's love of language and love of teaching opened Kannada up to me like nothing else could. Not many people are lucky enough to have language teacher with 1000 moons of experience! I would like to thank him for his friendship, dedication and patience. I was humbled to be mridangam student of Yogeesha Sharma Ballapadavu – he is a wonderful guru, friend and musician, even though I remained (and remain) a bad drummer. Bharathi and Bhaskara were wonderful hosts, whose warmth I deeply miss. My thoughts of Mangaluru will always be bound up with them and their wonderful daughter Mini. The most important people who made this dissertation possible are those whom I cannot properly name. These are the people whom with I spent the most wonderful times, who made me laugh, and who populate the following pages – Alan, Anif, Anwar, Arun, Ashok, Ashraf, Babu, Baldev, Bhoja, Chandra, Chandrika, Charlie, Cyril, Deekayya, Eylumai, Flora, Ganesh, Gilbert, Guru Raj, Haresh, Hariprasad, Inira, Ivan, Kumar, Kabeer, Kante, Kishore, Krishna, Mr. Kumblekar, Kuttur, Laatha, Leslie, Lokesh, Manju, Maxim, Mithun, Morvagan, Natesh, Neelakanta, Olivia, Padma, Pavithra, Prakash, Pranesh, Mr. Prabhu, Radhika, Raj, Rajiv, Raju, Ramesh, Ramu, Richard, Royston, Sachin, Saleem, Saleen, Santosh, Sanu, Sapa, Sharif, Sunil, Thimmo, Vidya, Vijay, Wilfie and Yatish – my deepest thanks. During the writing up stage I benefited from a wonderfully productive stay at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. I greatly benefited from the discussions, comments, feedback and debate both during my stay and after with Paolo Gruppuso, Marc Higgin, Tim Ingold, Anna Kuprian, Alex Oehler, Annemiek Prins, Lou Senior and Jo Vergunst. The department moves to a very different beat to that of my home department in CEU, and the rhythmic dissonance it created in my mind forced me to rethink many of my assumptions. I have presented chapters, parts of chapters and discarded chapters at many conferences and workshops. Sometimes it is the ingenious comment of a participant or CEU eTD Collection audience member that can open up writing in new ways. With this in mind I would like to thank – for organising sessions, acting as discussant or commenting at various occasions on different parts of the text – Mukulika Banerjee, Sarah Besky, Jamie Cross, Ayona Datta, Henrike Donner, Ajay Gandhi, Luke Heslop, Manpreet Janeja, Geert De Neve, Sandy Robertson, Llerena Searle, Raphael Susewind and Aurélie Varrel. Many other people have given important feedback on the research at various stages. This dissertation would have been poorer without the critical insights of Marek Canek, Steven Clayton, Deniz Ali Kaptan, Trevor Hagen, David Hamilton, Jakob Hurrle, Alexandra Ghit, Neema Kudva, Manu Mireanu, Tom Rooney, Srilata Sircar and Ruth Lorimer. The Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Central European University has been a fantastic home for the last seven years. I have made many terrific friends and met some truly outstanding scholars. I could not have wished for a better place to pursue a PhD. For their comments at workshops and colloquia and for their deep and generous readings of various

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