The production of rurality : social and spatial transformations in the Tamil countryside 1915-65

This dissertation advances a critique of the "planetary urbanization" thesis inspired by Henri Lefebvre's writings on capitalist urbanization. Theoretically, it argues that Lefebvrian scholars tend to conflate two distinct meanings of urbanization: a) urbanization understood simply as the territorial expansion of certain kinds of built environment associated with commodity production; and b) urbanization as the reproduction of capitalist modes of production of space on an expanded, planetary scale. Empirically, the dissertation constructs a social history of Tamil Nadu (India) between 1915 and 1965, and seeks to explain how 'rural' spaces were reproduced during a period marked by greater market penetration into the countryside, democratization and regime change, and the reorganization of community relations at multiple scales. The argument is developed in three inter-related but self-contained chapters.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Rao Cavale, Karthik.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Balakrishnan Rajagopal.

• Urban Studies and Planning.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/129866

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/129866