Speculative urbanism constructing entrepreneurial subjects in India

My dissertation examines how current governances in cities of India are involved in engineering a new politics, i.e. the sculpting of civic subjects. This agenda, to sculpt civic subjects by entrepreneurializing spaces, is relatively new. I chronicle that beneath this political maneuver to re-energize cities lies a strategic rationale to alter the socio-spatial character of the city, to reshape demographics. I reveal that at the core of this neoliberal project lie two relational processes: first, a material drive to acquire land from villages situated in the peripheries of cities; second, a discursive drive to construct narratives of “entrepreneurial” and “global” cities that deploy new subject positions. The results suggest that sculpting new civic subjects represents a meaningful extension of neoliberalism’s tentacles to the most everyday corners of local social life. This neoliberal project moves beyond the economic realm to seize and re-work the most liminal of grounded settings: the local habitus.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Geography

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2019

Author dc:creator

• Tripathy, Priyam

Contributors dc:contributor

• Wilson, David
• Jefferson, Brian Jordan
• Miraftab, Faranak
• Birkenholtz, Trevor

• Speculative Urbanization, Delhi, Global South, Subject-making, Neoliberal Governances

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2018, Priyam Tripathy

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/102799

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/102799