Date of Award

4-8-2013

Document Type

Thesis

First Advisor

Advisor: Dr. Mona Bhan

Second Advisor

Convener: Dr. Beth Benadix

Third Advisor

Reader: Dr. Glen Kuecker

Abstract

Humanity is faced with an impending urban crisis, as the urban population is expected to move far beyond the rural in coming decades. With unprecedented rates of urbanization and sprawl, we find proliferations of informal communities such as slums and shantytowns. UNHCR estimates a population of 3 billion slum dwellers – a third of humanity – by 2050 (UNHCR). Much of this sprawl will take place in the Global South in mid-sized urban spaces, rather than present-day megalopolises. It is important for academia to engage with processes of urbanization, understanding how systems of power, culture, and production shape urban landscapes that ultimately have to accommodate billions of people. Chennai, a mid-sized coastal city in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, has experienced high rates of urbanization in recent years. In light of India’s push to develop urban centers into ‘global cities,’ the Tamil Nadu government has embraced the rhetoric of environmentalism and modernization. This has translated into urban policies and practices focused on the eradication of slums, the resettlement of slum dwellers, and opening space for centers of commerce and production. Following Walter Benjamin’s claim that the city is not a monolithic entity but rather composed of multiple “cities within the city” (Gilloch 193) that exist in different spatio-temporal configurations, this working project analyzes how the city of Chennai comes to manifest itself in ways that are fragmented, contradictory, and in constant conflict with each other. In this regard, the very form of the written work resists the assumption that the city can be understood as a logical, totally knowable entity. The form of this work follows Benjamin’s notion of the fragmented city by presenting fragmented essays on the topic of slum resettlement in Chennai. In this sense, the form this project takes resists notions of a linear progression in analysis and interpretation. Beyond this initial disclaimer, there is no designated order in how the work can be read. Matching the form of the city, this form of presentation also parallels the nature of the fieldwork conducted in the city itself, which occurred sporadically during summers and winter terms over the course of three years. Using the phenomenon of slum resettlement as the subject of analysis, this project aims to make piecemeal steps in understanding the complex interplay between ideology, materiality, political economy, and geography in the configuration of particular human-environmental realities for the urban poor. This undertaking is constantly self-critical and implicitly questions the distinction between the academic and the activist, speaking on the researcher’s active role within the context of that which is studied and therefore making no claim to objectivity in analytical approach. The project is dedicated to a constant engagement with implicit questions of how the researcher could best navigate issues of justice and equity in a time of great transition, poverty, and crisis in light of a transitional period in the urban – and ultimately human – condition. Moving dynamically from the embodied with the theoretical, the emotional and the empirical, this project speaks to an ongoing personal struggle regarding the form and function of today’s scholarship, transcending the scope of the Honor Scholar thesis. In this regard, this project is an experimental one that is both creative and analytical in its approach to understanding the city. Research for this project commenced in 2010 with field research taking place in the slum resettlement housing project known as Kannagi Nagar during Winter Term. Since then, fieldwork has occurred during Winter Terms and the summer of 2012 on a Howes Grant. My relationship with residents of Kannagi Nagar was established during the summer of 2009 while working as a volunteer science teacher, counselor, and writer for the HOPE Foundation Nursery & Primary School, based out of an unfinished construction site in Kannagi Nagar. Fieldwork consisted of ethnographic methods, participant observation, archival analysis, and mapping. The development and implementation of the research was conducted in close coordination with community members using community-based participatory methods. Finally, the term ‘project’ rather than ‘thesis’ has been used intentionally to describe the written work. This is because the intellectual project is not limited in scope to the collection of essays that make up this document. With the incapability of ever understanding any city in its entirety, this collection of fragmented essays serves as a model by which to engage with larger questions that transcend the scope of the formalized pedagogical framework of the Honor Scholar program and may very well only be partially answered after a lifetime of work. As students of Hip Hop have recited since the movement’s inception to remind themselves of their role in promoting a paradigm of revolution — we don’t stop.

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