BOOK REVIEWS Successfully Used a Previously Issued (But

BOOK REVIEWS successfully used a previously issued (but

Nikhil Ananad. 2017. Hydraulic City: unexecuted) eviction order as a proof of Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship tenancy to prevent evictions when the in Mumbai, Durham and London: Duke bulldozers came around several years later. University Press. The court accepted the document as proof

Scholarly works on water identifying of address and occupation and stayed the various aspects of its relationship with demolition’ (p. 88). Contrast this incident 1 human and non-humans are in significant with a recent court ruling (February 2020), numbers. They have qualitatively where after submission of 15 documents as influenced our understanding on life and proofs, the court rejected the appeal of a livelihoods as well as the rise and decay of ‘citizen’ to citizenship. Scanning through societies and civilizations over space and the pages of this book replete with such time vis-a-vis water. This book is surely a anecdotes endows us with numerous worthy addition to that repository. Overtly, insights that, when compared with the it provides a detailed analogy of water and emerging realities, reminds us of the its associated paraphernalia in the Indian dialectical relationship between the state city of Mumbai but covertly, through it is and its citizens in India today. field based insights, it allows the readers to Spread over six chapters and interludes, collate and compare how the contents of an Introduction and an insightful Preface, debates in contemporary India changed this book discusses how 3.4 billion litres of abruptly within a short span of time; i.e. water is collected more than a hundred from locating the ‘gaps’ in identifying the kilometres away from the city to be constitutionally accepted rights and transferred and distributed in 110 hydraulic provisions for citizens to a milieu which zones in Mumbai to hydrate 13 million talks less about provisions but questions residents every day — with the help of five fundamentally citizenship itself by casting hundred water engineers and seven aspersions on who is an Indian citizen. thousand laborers of Hydraulic Engineering Citizenship determined solely through Department and ‘a mass of silent others’ documents are an arduous process, where who enable the process (p. 1). one agency of the state verifies documents Chapter 1 (Scarce Cities) provides the as ‘proofs’ issued by another, as if the state context to the study by highlighting the simultaneously doubts and resolves itself dissonance in the process of urbanisation through documentary evidences. In this and urban provisions to its residents in cities regard, there has been a perceptible shift in located in colonial heartlands (London, India today. In a chapter titled Settlement, Paris, etc.) and hinterlands e.g. Bombay there is an interesting observation, how (Mumbai) (p. 35). In the former, even unintended documents were treated as urbanisation catered to ‘the needs of an adequate proof for justifying belongingness expansive urban public’ (p. 35), while in the to a place — of course, after it was accepted later, urban provisioning from its inception by the Court of law. Quoting an incident, was based on ‘a limited domain of liberal the author cites how a housing activist ‘had citizens and remaining subjects’ (pp. 35-6).

This binary has continued in the post- advocating slum erasure to improvement (p. colonial era as well, where the estimated (!) 82) has also been a manifestation in this average of 240 litres of water per person per direction. While the state works hard not to day (p. 38) does not reach 60% of Mumbai’s count and not to know certain populations as population residing in slums and chawls (p. liberal citizens for urban provisioning, the 43). The chapter provides a brilliant insight settlers through extraordinary social and regarding how this approximation of per political work gain access to the same (p. capita requirement is calculated through a 89). A process that suggest the settlers process of ‘enduring scarcity’ (p. 36) and simultaneously ‘live at once in multiple ‘management of silences’ (p. 41). Inability regimes of sovereignty and rationality’ (p. to access water by the villagers of Shahpur 94). taluk in the Thane district, a place where ‘Residents of Mumbai have long been water is collected by controlling five dams governed by the time of water’ (p. 97) and on three rivers and then transferred to the third chapter is thereby titled Time Pe or Mumbai with an assumption of ‘863 million On Time. Scarcities and excesses mark litres of loss in the system per day’ (p. 38), urban living and a common sensical illustrates the cross sectionalities of understanding would be to rationalise both distributive justice (or a lack of it) both the extremes so that regularity of flow is between the agrarian and the urban and maintained. But fieldwork quoted in this within the urban as well. chapter highlights that settlers are not in The second Chapter titled Settlement, a favour of 24 hours of water; rather they term which has been used by Anand instead would prefer limited flows on time but with of slums and chawls, describes how water adequate water pressure. Eight hundred influences the politics in the everyday life valves control the flow and pressure of of settlers in the Jogeshwari and Premnagar water operated by chaviwallas (key people) settlements as well as how politics shapes (p. 101), who decide the temporality of water provisioning in these areas. Moving water availability which in turn determines beyond the duality of civil and political the everyday life of the city dwellers society, the author emphasises the fluidity especially the settlers. The social life in the of urban life and the importance of different settlements and the gendered forms of kinds of relations both formal and informal personhood gets determined by water and in shaping the life of the settlers as its time of supply and thereby instead of hydraulic citizens. Beyond the market and claiming water, anytime, they prefer to have the state, this chapter exhibits ‘the practices it at right time’ (p. 123). of friendship and helping’ which although Where ‘relations, kinship and ‘ambiguous are marked by excess — an friendship’ (p. 133) plays an important role excess that carries the relation forward into instead of universal citizens’ right to public the future’ (p.78). Through several case goods, social work provides an important studies these ambiguous relationships are alibi for establishing contacts with those explained. The transformation, on the part ‘who matter’ for enabling hydraulic of the thought process of the state from citizenship. Social organisations provide

the platform for connecting the ‘people who city, however, is a process where other matter’ and the settlers, so that a mutually water sources gradually became beneficial relationship is generated where unconnected and later disconnected; so was the former enables public provisioning of the case with hydraulic citizenship too, goods and the later sustain them as voters where a large section of the population during elections. Many organisations remain disconnected to its grand water undertaking social work are thereby infrastructure. Chapter 6 titled empowered by ‘infrapower’ (p. 136). Disconnected provides a vivid analysis of Chapter 4 focuses on one social this process of everyday discrimination, organisation named Asha and its office abjection and deprivation in the life and bearer to analyse the interplay of making of the hydraulic citizenship in the infrapolitics in the life of settlers and the metropolis. It is a story of Premnagar, a ‘people who matter’. largely Muslim settlement. The settlement In such a huge and widespread network becomes a lived manifestation of the of collection, storage and distribution of interplay of ‘cultural’ and ‘real’ politics in water, what is the level of leakage in the matters of public provisioning of water and system! Chapter 5 aptly titled as Leaks through it, the creation of the ‘other’ who analyses this aspect both in terms of thereby are perpetually castigated for their reflections of the engineers as well as a ‘suspicious’ origins and ‘questionable’ social process. Anand explains that ‘leaks’ hydraulic practices. are placed in between ‘ignorance and not Nikhil Anand provides the readers a yet known and ‘unknowable’ (p. 162). fascinating collection on, about, and for Determining the quantum of leaks, where water and it is accompanying circular ‘over half of the city’s water meters remain politics of ever-increasing estimations of out of service’ (p. 165) and the scarcity and thus the perennial requirement accompanying ‘politics of estimation’ falls for newer sources and engineering within the ‘gap’ of knowledge and structures to keep a city hydrated. This ignorance associated with the physicality unending circularity, however, falls short in and the sociality of water. This ‘gap’, ushering in an era of social contract, where enabling ‘leak’, ‘allow people to live’ by emancipatory hydraulic citizenship is placing them ‘beyond the accounting guaranteed. regimes’. Notes How was Mumbai able to sustain itself 1https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/ex prior to its present system of water supply? plained-assams-citizenship-test-papers- Wells, springs, wetlands and other sources 6291710/ of ground and surface water hydrated the population until the colonial scheme of Gorky Chakraborty Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata water supply was instated in 1860, where (IDSK) Bombay became ‘urban India’s first [email protected] municipal project’ (p. 35). This transformation of the city into a hydraulic

Michael Batty. 2018. Inventing Future beyond. Particular theoretical attention is Cities. Cambridge: The MIT Press. given to complexity theory, which serves as

Michael Batty’s most recent book, the philosophical foundations of this book ‘Inventing Future Cities’ deserves more and its conclusions. attention from academics, urban planners Challenging rigid and one-dimensional and policy makers than it has been discourses, Batty puts forward the argument accorded. One of the key reasons for this is of how cities of the future are complex that it largely succeeds at informing both the multifaceted living systems that are largely academic field of urban studies and more self-organizing from the ground up, an practice-related concerns surrounding analytical cornerstone of complexity urban governance by state-related theory. This is combined with a view that institutions and their representatives. It is, cities both today and tomorrow are sites of therefore, a testament to Batty’s scholarly time-space compression, where diverse and depth and breadth of knowledge to be able diffused mobility-communication networks to engage these broad domains as a whole. are no longer easily defined along geo- Readers seeking a singular work that spatial boundaries (or as physical artifacts) enables one to reflect on the complex issues that rely on measurements like density and that cities of both the present and future size. As a result, he takes inspiration from encounter will find Batty’s insights Glaeser’s paradox, where ‘proximity valuable. This is partly because Batty becomes more important while the deterrent avoids the all too familiar and simplistic effect of distance is of lesser significance’ approach taken by other writers at to further highlight the qualitative promoting grand narratives that too differences that cities of the future will tend confidently predict the future of cities. towards. He makes his case referencing Instead, he offers a far more realistic and largely from examples in the United intellectually humble perspective, claiming Kingdom and other parts of Europe, that we can never truly know what the showing how post-industrial cities of the future of cities will be like. At best, one can present now require a paradigm shift in only manage how we should ‘think about thinking about the future. As such, it is also cities’, based on past and present important to note that the form of future knowledge. Batty subsequently seeks to cities may no longer necessarily follow their justify this position throughout the rest of original function in a digital age. This is one the book, identifying several arguments and outcome of the advent of technological providing real-life examples on how one advances that signal the emergence of can engage the various possibilities ‘smart cities’, or what Batty labels the ‘sixth surrounding future cities. A key assumption Kondratieff wave’, referring to the former th of his arguments largely rests on the Soviet scholar in the early 20 century who unpredictable nature of the city and the identified periodic economic cycles leading related topic of urban development, as he to ‘waves of innovation’ in society. appeals to a range of perspectives by These are important arguments, as the various scholars from his field and those complexity theory approach suggested by

Batty allows for greater dynamism in either while he does acknowledge the multiplicity scholarly studies of urbanity or policy- of processes and nuances in decision- making. This is opposed to a kind of linear making within cities, such complexity is dogmatism employing a narrow view that often mired in inequalities and power privileges an economy-centric view of city differences that emerge from challenges growth. This often leads to incomplete like digital divides, ethnic enclaves and analyses of urban systems with little regard urban gentrification. Contending social- for environmental, social-cultural or geo- cultural, political and economic forces political constraints and realities. Perhaps further entwine the urban experience of one of the best ways to examine the merits cities and their subsequent transformations. of Batty’s arguments is to situate them in Cities, while the site of disruption, other contexts that he did not raise. The innovation and ambiguity, can be the site of exploitation, conflict and precarity. This is value of such views certainly finds clear because cities are also lived spaces relevance, for example, in the case of inhabited by people driven by competing Singapore, a unique modern-city state in the interests and their attempts at sense-making. heart of Southeast Asia, often heralded as an Batty had an opportunity to contextualize economic miracle and a model for sound his arguments as such, but did not appear to governance. The island-state’s urban devote enough substantial reflection on this, planners and policy-makers have already and virtually glosses over them. The same taken a complexity theory approach to thing can be said about the rather marginal understand and sustain the layered and attention that climate change gets intricate factors leading to its economic throughout the book’s narrative. success and present standards of high Nevertheless, not all this should distract the livability. Set within the broader context of reader from the obvious and significant climate change, this is particularly pertinent contribution of Inventing Future Cities. In in view of Singapore’s high population more ways than one, Batty’s book provides density, limited spatial capital, diverse a continuation of a far older and ongoing ethnic makeup and its rapidly ageing intellectual examination of the connections population. The insights provided by Batty between urbanity and industrialized society facilitate an integrated thinking framework that first began with the emergence of the to navigate research and policy-making in first urbanized cities in human history. It an increasingly digitized, globalized and marks a positive step towards greater culturally diverse world. And as already dialogue between academics, urban-based articulated by Batty, the need to adopt an professionals and policy-makers that will intersecting and interdisciplinary systems enable a more grounded and comprehensive approach is a crucial way forward in dealing understanding about the future of cities. with the unpredictable future of ‘smart’ cities or otherwise. Kevin S.Y. Tan At the same time, one area that Batty Centre for Liveable Cities, Singapore could have elaborated further on was how [email protected] cities, within and between themselves, are seldom homogenous spaces. In other words,

Michael Ian Borer. 2019. Vegas Brews: place, Borer sets his book in a unique place, Craft Beer and the Birth of a Local Scene. Las Vegas. New York: New York University Press. Las Vegas is an urban simulacrum; it

Michael Ian Borer’s Vegas Brews looks at wants you to feel at home but has been how the cultural logics of a city are both simultaneously created to be a place that is created and constrained through the very antithesis of home. Within craft interactions and reputations. In particular, beer, the fight over craft versus crafty beer he looks at how denizens of Las Vegas try (large, macro brands posing products as to create a local space in the midst of what craft beer) looms large, and there is many see as the ideal typical transnational probably no better place to look at the city (i.e. one of constant motion, populated nuances of that fight than the ultimate crafty by non-citizens whose bodies are not bound city — Las Vegas. by typical geographies but by capital). In To rediscover the urban, Borer uses response to the question how amidst a city scenes as his object of study. Studying a city built and run for the tourist class, can by looking at scenes, especially when inhabitants and workers create a sense of looking at culture, allows Borer to locate place, his answer surprisingly, is through both the production and consumption of the interactional potential of the craft beer culture. It allows one to learn the scripts of scene. place and as Borer finds, to locate how Craft beer, and craft in general, has people become re-enchanted with place. In become synonymous with the local; doing so, he invites us on his journeys engaging in craft is a way to experience through Vegas, from craft breweries, to local culture and consume unique goods. bottle swaps, to casinos, to dive bars. In The rise in craft has been at the forefront in each place we meet denizens of the craft the fight against globalization and corporate beer scene who are trying to change local control over a range of products, including culture. foodstuffs. Consuming craft beer is seen as This is not always an easy task. Rather a way to stick it to big beer, support local than ignore the elephant in the room, Borer economies, and regain consumptive control. names it—’Las Vegas Syndrome’. The In many areas in the US, it has also been inauthenticity of Vegas produces a used as a mean to save downtown areas. representational constraint towards The rise in craft breweries and craft achieving an authentic culture. While most beer in general has been phenomenal. The cities would kill for the urban branding and US alone has gone from about 800 craft reputation that Vegas has, it constricts breweries to over 8,000 in the last 20 years. culture. The city is the product of a heavy- There are a number of states in the US that handed, top-down production of culture, alone have more breweries than entire rather than a bottom-up form of urban countries. The US is awash in good beer. culture. Here craft beer becomes a And while many breweries have been both symbolic battle over urban culture. Thus, pilloried and praised for reappropriating Borer’s fellow craft collaborators know

they are fighting a good fight, and that they on leisure’ foster distinction in get to do it with beer. consumption. Thus, many of the This battle is largely waged through participants in the scene are simply interaction. Borer shows how taste is consuming in order to create a difference performed through tasting with others. His between themselves and others. This goes ethnographical pursuit of the meaning of against the ethos of much craft craft beer goes deep into the rituals of consumption, but as others have shown, drinking to show how Vegas gets democracy and distinction are the warp and reimagined through its ‘interactional woof of urban culture. potential’ (p. 91). His craft collaborators In Borer’s more than capable hands, the look forward to getting together to share craft scene becomes in part a resistance to bottles, to socializing new members into the the dominant other in the city; the craft scene, to building up local bottle ‘corporate-driven neon spectacle that most shops, participating in craft beer people outside of Las Vegas associate with conventions, and starting breweries. Borer the city’ (p. 6). Vegas is the most notes that this ‘reappropriation of place’ is inauthentic city imaginable which makes it part of a ‘community found vs community the perfect place to look for authenticity. lost narrative’ where ‘attentive civility’ — Borer’s book is an ingenious attempt to look which is community or interacting with at the negotiations of place-making in the others in an intentional way produces a new city. It is an academic tome to be sure, but kind of community (p. 133). As such, Vegas highly readable to anyone interested in Brews is at the forefront of urban studies, things urban, culture, or just beer. one that focuses on the micro-intentionality Daina Cheyenne Harvey of community members while keeping College of the Holy Cross mezo-level barriers on the horizon. [email protected] Borer does get into the culture of craft.

Here he shows how craft beer drinking is Barbara Heer. 2019. Cities of seen as different than other kinds of Entanglements. Social Life in drinking. Drinkers are often interested in Johannesburg and Maputo Through ‘Interactional accomplishments’, such as Ethnographic Comparison. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag. earning badges for acts of consumption, ticking off certain places in which to This thought provoking but at times consume, and in earning status for imbibing difficult to read book is based on fourteen (or more likely just collecting) whales—the months of fieldwork conducted with the aid rare one-off beer that immediately raises a of three research assistants between 2010 brewery’s (and the collector’s) status. and 2012 in Johannesburg — Alexandra (a While such behaviour is natural in scenes, less affluent/poor area) and Linbro Park (an Borer also sees it as a tragedy of culture (p. élite/affluent area) — and in Maputo — 171). In particular, he sees it as ultimately a Sommerschield II (an élite/affluent area) problem for bottom-up local culture, where and Polana Caniço (a less affluent/poor ‘neoliberalism and capitalist encroachment area) for the author’s doctoral project.

Three aspects guided the research. Firstly, As a result of colonialism and the evolvement of everyday lives in the four apartheid, cities like Johannesburg and neighbourhoods. Secondly, the everyday Maputo came to be seen in terms of binary movement of urban dwellers on paths and categories of difference like Black and routes through the city whereby White, European and Natives (segregation) neighbourhoods were linked with and, in spite of changes that have taken workplaces, spaces of consumption and of place, these binaries still influence how the worship elsewhere in the city. Thirdly, inhabitants try and make sense of their spaces where the lives of people from worlds and how cities are being analysed. adjacent neighbourhoods become Entanglements are shaped by the history of entangled. each city but also by the entanglements The book consists of eight chapters, a between the two cities. postscript (on comparison in anthropology) Using entanglements as a point of and bibliography. The settings are outlined, departure, it is argued, helps to address the histories of the research areas sketched shortcomings in urban anthropology and and concepts such as entanglements, space, urban studies. First, Heer points to what she urban milieus and agency are discussed. calls mosaic thinking in urban research that In both cities the urban areas under focuses on the single neighbourhood. Space study were unequal, and in both cases the is understood to be absolute and cities more affluent neighbourhoods tried to thereby seen as consisting of distinct parts, manage the relations of proximity and each with their own identity and with clear distance between the insiders and those boundaries between them. Entanglements regarded as outsiders, often by erecting show how these different urban worlds are walls and other security measures. not totally disconnected and segregated. However, such measures on the Second, Heer criticises the division between organisation of space are only part of a more an emphasis on location and place-making complex picture, as they reflect the views of and one on networks. Looking at the city the élites while the views of the less affluent through entanglements, she argues, will are ignored. Here, these relations between provide a new understanding of the reality people and spaces, and the attendant of urban life between urban segregation and different views, are defined as mobile, connected lives. Third, ‘[...] ‘entanglements’. These entanglements, scholarship of conviviality in urban spaces mostly recognised by the less powerful, often overemphasises the significance of challenge the élite’s desire for segregation. interactions in publicly owned public Entanglements and encounters are spaces [...]’ (p.30). In her view, analysing complementary terms, where encounters entanglements helps us to understand that refer to instances of engagement across the different spaces of urban life — difference and entanglements involve the suburban homes, religious spaces and social relationships that come about through shopping malls — are linked to each other such encounters. and are seen in relation to each other. The fourth shortcoming relates to the

methodologies of comparisons. Amidst all the urban populations of the two areas the debates about the politics of urban became entangled in spite of apartheid. theorising, epistemologies and typologies Heer explains how neighbourhoods, urban of comparisons, Heer maintains, few dissimilarities and entanglements become practical answers are given as to how reconstructed as material, social and comparison as a qualitative ethnographic imaginary realities. In Maputo, two main method can be used. issues direct the discussion. One concerns There is a spatial dimension to urban the efforts by the élite property owners of entanglements. Three interrelated concepts Sommerschield II to close off their — namely, space, milieus and agency — neighbourhood from Polana Caniço by need to be used in order to understand building a wall across the common access ethnographically and analyse such urban road and turn their neighbourhood into a entanglements. condominium. The wall was later Space can be relative (the spatial demolished by the inhabitants of Polana relationship between objects), relational Caniço. The second concerns a (the space brought about by relationships) gentrification process whereby and absolute (such as a fixed geographical Sommerschield II expanded into Polana space or bounded phenomena). Heer bases Caniço, due to the latter’s closeness to the cities of entanglements on a relational and city centre, beach and malls. relative understanding of space. Social In chapters five and six the realm of space, she writes, ‘[...] is constructed, religion and shopping malls are discussed as negotiated and experienced in the situations urban spaces which may provide the of everyday life through the interplay of possibility of equality, with symmetrical three dimensions, namely, through (1) the relations and the unfolding of sociality and material, (2) the conceived and (3) lived community across boundaries. Heer space.’ (p.32). What needs to be taken into discusses how religious encounters between account is that there is a difference between Indian and African Muslims in Maputo Western and African forms of knowledge brought about mutual stereotypes and production regarding space. prejudices, and how the Christian Urban social milieus (groups of like- churchgoers from Alexandra experienced minded people) found in an urban area are informal micro-segregation. brought about by entanglements through the In African cities, shopping malls are social situations in which people interact important spaces of public life that stand in with one another in everyday life. particular relations to other urban spaces. Therefore, because of people’s agency, They have layers of meanings and different entanglements are fluid, shifting and subject forms. Heer discusses shopping malls as to chance while also being influenced by entangled spaces of heterotopia that involve patterns from the past. multiple logics, an interplay between Chapters two, three and four address the various binaries (public-private, normal- entanglements regarding Alexandra and extraordinary, imagined-real, similar- Linbro Park respectively and examine how dissimilar), and are, therefore, ambivalent

and antithetical. She focuses on the equivalent response. All states are founded following aspects: (1) spatial practices by upon some criteria of legitimacy, the least users, (2) representations of the malls, (3) of which is election to power by a popular encounters in malls, and (4) the relationship vote; yet these elected or selected between the mall and the rest of the urban authorities are not acceptable only by the settings. Due to the nature of interactions legal and judicial process that gives them an and behaviours in the mall, people become overt right to rule. They can be and are more aware of the reality of urban society actually challenged when they fail to deliver and of their social position in it. what the citizens cognitively understand as The mall becomes a place where there their cultural, economic and social rights. is a chance of encounters across social Rights and responsibilities are filtered boundaries linked with domestic work, through a moral screen of evaluation and religion and street life generally. There is judgment that connects the formal and the variation among urban residents and substantive, the legal and the emotional and lifestyles as to whether a mall is regarded as the structural with the constructed reality. a normal place and whether it is part of the Pardo and Prato (p. 8) clarify this aspect as daily routine. the distinction between the normative and In conclusion, the lives of urban empirical dimensions of legitimacy related dwellers are intrinsically entangled, in spite to the social construction of legitimacy; in of the fact that they lead different lives in turn informed by the normative, the adjacent but separate neighbourhoods. subjective, the daily experiences on the ground and the dreams and aspirations of Henk Pauw ordinary citizens. Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, The essays in this volume, skilfully South Africa. [email protected] negotiate the relationship between the theoretical and the empirical as they

Italo Pardo and Giuliana B. Prato (eds). interrogate legitimacy and the finer 2019. Legitimacy: Ethnographic and processes of governance. Several taken-for- Theoretical Insights. New York: Palgrave granted concepts are dissected and analysed Macmillan; Series: Palgrave Studies in to provide a depth of understanding Urban Anthropology. illuminating the varied dimensions and The most significant aspect of this edited levels of empirical reality. For example, volume of thirteen essays and an Prato (p. 37) takes up the concept of introduction is its timeliness. The ‘integrity’ and how it is understood legitimacy of the state, the moral authority differentially by those ruled and those of those in charge of the lives of the masses ruling, while Pardo (p. 62) clarifies the fine has never been under so much scrutiny as moral distinction between collective now. In the present times the ruler is ideally organized protest and that made by a representative of the people and as stated individuals for self-seeking goals, thereby by Pardo authority without legitimacy is bringing out the plurality of ‘being with’ seen as authoritarianism and evokes and ‘being in’ community.

Although all the essays play around the volume, but trust and discharge of central theme of legitimacy, each one of responsibility that evokes a sense of them brings a different historical and legitimacy on the ground. As described in temporal context to the forefront. The the essay on the sinking of a boat in Korea empirical substantiation of the present (Sarfati), the leaders lose trust when they draws meaning and validity from the linear fail to empathise and relate emotionally to and horizontal dimensions of historical and the people, especially at the time of crises political events. An added merit of this and tragedy. volume is the widely dispersed The overall aspiration of this volume is ethnographic material brought together to dissect concepts and philosophical ideas under one cover. Economic downslides and into their multifaceted and multifarious structural adjustments in Greece aspects, levels and significance. Legitimacy (Spyridakis), post-1990 financialization in for example may mean different things to Turkey and the state’s involvement in different people, depending on their legitimization of the financial exploitation location in the power field and their goals by the banking sector (Atalay), upwardly and moral universe. The case of the Viger mobile class formation in Colombia with Square in Montreal (Boucher) illustrates deflection of authority to local communities how a park may have multiple meanings in the urban housing sector (Hurtado- distributed among various stakeholders. Tarazona) are some of the instances that The reason why the rulers and ruled may not indicate how economic liberalization and agree even on formal and legal issues is that the increasing influence of international they often occupy different experiential and economic institutions like the World Bank moral universe since cognitive perceptions are predatory influences on state authority. are shaped by daily life experiences as well The direct relationship between the state as by received history and generational and the people is fast turning into a three- narratives (Andrews, Krase and Krase). way relationship with the state losing its This is a continued conversation that power as compared to corporate entities. Pardo and Prato have been having with their The interplay of local, national and global is readers and the academic world. Over seen in the essays on neighbourhood several volumes and papers, they are relations in Kerala, India (Abraham), in engaged in elaborating on legitimacy as a local urbanization in Kisumu, Kenya specific dimension of urban life and (Koechlin), and in the tensions of national, governance taking off from Weber as the supranational loyalties in Lebanon base. (Mollica). A local political party in Legitimacy of governance is at stake at Lebanon, also doubles up as a semi-military many locations around the world like the organization and gains legitimacy through Black Lives Matter protests erupting trust, thereby invoking Pardo and Prato’s globally and there are threats and challenges discussion on the link between legitimacy to political regimes, striving to keep their and trust. It is not legality, a point raised stronghold in a dynamic and increasingly repeatedly in the various essays in this aware world. The true meaning of

urbanization probably can be seen in this Moderna? Rome, Berdini writes, ‘is awakening, questioning and not taking smothered by missing rules.’ Ultimately, things as they are; in the search for equity, the problem lies in the fact that key figures inclusion, diversity and justice. in municipal structures lack ‘any sense of the public good.’ Subhadra Mitra Channa Urban planning in Rome has never been Delhi University [email protected] a smooth process, and historically its spectacular successes were often marked by

Marco Zumaglini, Lucia Bozzola, violence since its foundation, or under the Roberto Einaudi (eds) 2018. Modern emperor Nero, the papal rulers and Rome: From Napoleon to the Twenty-First Napoleon. Insolera opened his final edition Century. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars of Roma Moderna with an account of Publishing. Napolen’s planning, which entailed humane Rome is not just another urban social reforms along with grand physical agglomeration. For centuries, even improvements. millennia, it defined what a city should be. The real chance for renovation of the Its powerful allure should offer precious ancient papal city came about when Rome lessons to city planners and place-makers, was made capital of a finally united Italy in which is why the supple translation into 1870. Its new role naturally entailed English of Italo Insolera’s classic Roma significant expansion. But this is where the Moderna is such a welcome event paradox mentioned above first appeared. Insolera was an urban planner based in Rome had given a system of law to much of Rome for over fifty years until his death in the civilized world two thousand years 2012. He expanded his first history of how earlier, and continued legislating for the city evolved as capital of united Italy, Christendom ever after. Yet now the city published in 1962, through many editions failed to come up with any effective plan for until the final one in 2011. This translation its own imminent growth. of that edition, Modern Rome, in turn Rome’s history both as seat of the includes much additional information Catholic Church and as a city whose élite provided by the translator-editors, Lucia had long competed in its embellishment Bozzola, Roberto Einaudi and Marco might have led one to expect resistance to Zumaglini, along with Insolera’s the lure of real estate speculation. That was collaborators Vezio De Lucia and Paolo not to be the case. Both the Vatican and the Berdini. land-owning Roman aristocracy vigorously The latter, in his account of the current eluded any restrictions on profiteering. state of ‘spatial management’ in Rome, With the Roman élite and the Vatican makes a disconcerting remark suggesting itself pursuing profit through unregulated the paradoxical challenge underlying the development, Insolera’s account of the fate whole enterprise, one which tempted of urban planning in Rome could make for Insolera himself to wonder if he should not melancholy reading. And yet his tale is a add a question mark to his title: Roma

compelling one, because progress was But after 1870, the presence of a made, even if only in fits and starts. potentially rebellious proletariat in the new After unification, a most successful of capital had been viewed as risky, and outsider, Ernesto Nathan — who had been peasants drawn from the countryside as born in London of Jewish parents and did construction workers found little provision not become an Italian citizen until age 40 — had been made for their housing, which became mayor of Rome in 1907, and consisted at best of hovels. This situation unclasped the aristocracy’s hold on affairs. worsened under Mussolini, whose A city plan was approved, whose ‘technical demolition of entire neighbourhoods and planning precision’, Insolera observes, entailed displacement of tens of thousands was to ‘remain unique throughout the of poor people, whom he sent to distant history of urban planning in Rome.’ After borgate, some of them in malaria-ridden six years as mayor, however, Nathan was countryside. replaced by a Roman prince, Prospero The notion that an old city could be Colonna. improved by destroying pieces of it lingered Benito Mussolini, another outsider, even after World War II. Additional made an impact of a different type. Four demolitions, euphemistically called years before his 1922 rise to power, the ‘thinning’, were in the works. principle that Rome’s historical core should In 1951, to facilitate traffic, the city was be preserved intact had been made official. preparing to raze an extensive historical Yet, Insolera deftly recounts, rational urban area near Piazza di Spagna. But Insolera planning got no more traction during the reports that by now the concept of integral following two decades than before. preservation of Rome’s core had Mussolini’s massive interventions were ‘permeated the cultural mood.’ Here the governed by one criterion: the cult of tireless activity of Insolera’s great friend appearances. The duce had stated that and fellow activist, Antonio Cederna, came ‘Rome must appear wonderful to all peoples into play. Cederna’s passionate press in the world…’ crusade soon aroused public opinion from Insolera’s attention to how urban its torpor, and an effective environmental planning, or its absence, affected the and preservation association, Italia Nostra, humbler classes is evident throughout was founded. The planned demolitions were Modern Rome. In both ancient and papal cancelled. Rome, the poor had been co-opted into the Yet city plans continued to be civic whole by various means, bread and sabotaged, and the early 1960s witnessed circuses under the empire, charity and the triumph of profiteering over planning. religious rites under the popes. The In an assault on Rome’s surviving crown of Napoleonic master plan had been conceived green hills, echoing its destruction of Villa not only in terms of place, but also of Ludovisi eighty years earlier, the Società people, with humane provisions for both Generale Immobiliare — of which the male and female labourers. Vatican was a major shareholder — built a huge Hilton hotel atop Monte Mario in an area intended for parkland. This time,

however, there were consequences. Rome’s of Rome, the Capitoline Hill, and extends mayor lost his seat in the uproar, and the through the imperial forums, reaching the Vatican ceded its dominant financial Circus Maximus and the Baths of Caracalla, interest in the SGI to Michele Sindona, a and then widening on either side of the shady financier who bankrupted the ancient Appian Way to the foot of the Alban company (and in 1999 was poisoned in Hills, giving a clear form to the city midst prison). the otherwise encompassing sprawl. Insolera analyses the shift in the The cultural shift that engendered hope capital’s situation in the 1970s, beginning in Insolera was Rome’s increasing multi- with Pope Paul VI’s affirmation that the ethnicity. The city historically has been shanty dwellers on Rome’s outskirts were extraordinarily open to immigration, with living in ‘as yet private protest’ against ‘the its original inhabitants coming from all over consumer city’s shameless luxury.’ Rome’s and citizenship open even to children of parish priests and Catholic organizations freed slaves (The more sophisticated have followed through with actions to Greeks were astounded at this openness). improve life in the chaotic periphery. Roman emperors often hailed from distant Efforts to expand and protect public provinces, and the Roman church green spaces and to limit motorized traffic welcomed all and sundry by its very nature. continued and often succeeded in the Insolera caught a glimpse of an enriched following decades. But implementation of future in the harmonies created by a multi- city planning, of an overall vision of what a ethnic ensemble, the Piazza Vittorio better Rome might be, was no easier than Orchestra, whose members and music and before. Unauthorized housing continued to instruments come from a picturesque be the norm rather than the exception, and variety of places. progress, such as it was, was entrusted to the In addition to an abundance of preparation of ‘special events’ like the 1990 photographs and maps, along with an soccer World Cup or the 2000 Holy Year excellent index, this meticulous book has a Jubilee. useful glossary of terms of urban planning Urban advances brought about in in Rome, as well as a concise description of function of special events were perforce local and national governmental bodies. fragmentary, and Insolera laments ‘the Barringer Fifield annihilation of planning’ after 1990. He [email protected] nonetheless kept alive a high sense of what might give Romans a better urban experience, despite the haphazard quality of the city’s daily governance. Here, as throughout this generous chronicle, he focuses on both material and cultural improvements. Materially, his ideal for the Rome to come would be the enhancement and enlargement of the wedge of archaeology and greenery that begins at the very centre

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