This book explores the unique trajectory of urbanization in South Asia, from the earliest beginnings of civilization to the present-day mega cities, the life in the cities with its associated issues of inequality, struggle, management of scarce resources, migration and the informal sector of the economy. Contributions from renowned scholars, this book provides fresh insights into the continuity of ancient urban civilizations and their influence on modern cities, making it an essential resource for understanding the regions unique urban landscape. It is a great resource book for students and researchers specializing in urbanism in South Asia, urban history, and urban ethnography, particularly urban anthropology.
Part I. The Past.
Chapter
1. Development of Urban Harappan Civilization
and New Discoveries (D.P. Sharma).
Chapter
2. Urbanisation in Early
Historical Odisha: A Longue Duree Perspective (Kishore Basha).
Chapter
3.
Early Urban Centres of Lower Ganga Plain (Durga Basu).
Chapter
4.
Urbanization of Saptamatrika Belief, Art and Worship in Karnataka, South
India (Jayalakshmi Yegnaswamy).
Chapter
5. The Pre-Industrial and
Orthogenetic City: The Illustrative Case of Delhi (Subhadra Mitra Channa).-
Part II. The Present.
Chapter
6. Indigenous Women and Tourism in CHT
(Chittagong Hill Tracts) (Farhana Alam).
Chapter
7. The Post-Pandemic
Predicament of Female Skilled Workers in the Textile Zone in India
(Annapoorna Devi Pandey).
Chapter
8. Precariat Migrant Daily Labourers in
Indian Cities (Lancy Lobo).
Chapter
9. Empowering the Invisible: A Case of
Domestic Workers in Delhi (Sada).
Chapter
10. Twenty-Seven Missed Calls
(Sakshi Joshi).
Chapter
11. The Poverty of Health in Urban Slums: The
Chronic Crisis of living in a Dhaka Slum (Sabina Faiz Rashid).
Chapter
12.
Mixed Blessings: Marriage, Mobility and the Precarious Promise of Digital
Romance among Young Women in the Urban Slums of Dhaka, Bangla Desh (Selima
Sara Kabir).
Chapter
13. The Urban Middle Class Consciousness: Paid Work,
Aspirations and Family among the Women from the Global South (Gunjan Arora).-
Chapter
14. Livelihood Struggle of Ear Cleaners in the Urban Sphere: A Case
Study of Singhiwala Community with Reflections on the Lives of DNT in Delhi
(Deepshikha Agarwal).
Chapter
15. Dancescape of Delhi: Presence and
Re-Cognition (Urmimala Sarkar).
Chapter
16. Urban Mind and Bengali Theatre:
Urbanization in Bengal through the Lens of the Theatre (Gouranga Dandapat).
Part III. The Future.
Chapter
17. Of Liminality and Identity of the Built-In
City: Rajarhat in West Bengal (Suman Nath).
Subhadra Channa is a retired professor of anthropology from Delhi University. Her areas of research interest are in gender, cosmology, inequality and marginalization, identity and urban studies. Her publications include Gender in South Asia (Cambridge University Press), The Inner and Outer Selves (Oxford University Press), Life as a Dalit (Ed, Sage), Religious Pluralism in India (Ed, Routledge), The Dhobis of Delhi: An Urban Ethnography from the Margins (Oxford University Press) and Sacred Landscapes (ed, Routledge). She has twelve books and more than eighty papers to her credit. She was the senior vice president of the IUAES and is at present the co-editor of Reviews in Anthropology. Her awards include two Fulbright teaching fellowships, Charles Wallace and several visiting professorships, as well as the Distinguished Teacher Award from Delhi University.
