Abstract
In Displacement, Revolution, and the New Urban Condition, Ipsita Chatterjee explores the politics of resettlement and resistance on the banks of the Sabarmati River, in Ahmedabad, India. Through a case study of Sabarmati River Front Development (SRFD) – with ethnographic accounts and interviews from evictees, the yet to be evicted, municipal actors and private developers – Chatterjee argues that displacement is central to urban exploitation. Though accounts of SRFD form the backbone of the text, Chatterjee also brings to the fore a praxis of theory transfer, which seeks to ‘reverse the arrow’ on how theory is consumed and applied: namely, theories generated in the West ‘acquire dynamism and buoyancy as they are ground in settings away from their making’ (p. 13), in turn making them more universally applicable to cities in both the Global South and North.
Over the course of six chapters, Chatterjee weaves together her own readings of new urban politics (NUP) and municipal neoliberalism literature, Marxist theories on estranged labour, theories of gentrification and, finally, Lefebvre’s method of transduction to understand who claims space on the banks of the Sabarmati and in resettlement sites, and their discourses of justification for doing so. Though Chatterjee deploys these theories with considerable skill, the reader is at times left wondering whether the large theoretical focus is necessary; rather than allowing the empirical material ‘speak’, Chatterjee’s use of theory can sometimes weigh down the voices of those she seeks most to highlight.
Chapter 2 (‘New urban politics’) revisits literature on NUP, which has increasingly underscored the entrepreneurial turn of local urban governance strategy, with a shift away from redistributive policies. Chatterjee seeks to align this literature with that of municipal neoliberalism, as she finds that the latter is implicitly linked but rarely given productive space alongside NUP. She applies these two strands of literature to understand how neoliberal governance strategies produce the neoliberal city and vice versa. Examples given include the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation’s (AMC) support of ethno-religious displays (such as the Hindu Ratha Yatra) alongside ‘rational’ planning discourse, and its promise of redistributive politics, despite the overt practice of entrepreneurialism. This ‘splicing’ of discourse and practice demonstrates for Chatterjee the utility in creating a framework that brings into conversation culture, political economy, local governance and ‘existing neoliberalisms’ when analysing urban politics.
In Chapter 3 (‘Accumulation, estrangement, and displacement’), Chatterjee argues for a Marxist theory of displacement, given that ‘placelessness’ in phenomenological literature only seeks to understand the sense of identity lost during displacement. For Chatterjee, the exploitative and destructive effects of displacement are missing in a phenomenological reading – something she seeks to rectify through the Marxist lens of ‘estranged labour’. The SRFD project underscores how the urban poor never had the luxury of place-making, particularly with accusations that those living on the banks of the Sabarmati are ‘illegal’ and thus justifying displacement. Building on the concept of ‘estranged labour’, Chatterjee introduces ‘estranged space’ to better link labour to space and the destruction displacement wreaks on both: more specifically, labour is rooted in a particular space, and once people have been estranged from such spaces, their ability to produce and thereby exist is torn away – and ultimately these spaces are accumulated by others. Chatterjee thus considers how place-making and a sense of attachment to a ‘home’ amongst the urban poor are swallowed by processes and patterns of accumulation.
Having examined displacement in Chapter 3, Chatterjee turns her attention in Chapter 4 (‘Resettlement and territorialization of exploitation’) to examining how the particular forms of exploitation are manifested in space. Using Neil Smith’s theorisation of gentrification as a starting point, Chatterjee introduces what she terms as ‘plebianisation’ to capture the story beyond class displacement. In her exploration of what happens after resettlement, Chatterjee brings in material from the ‘post-gentrification ghettos’ or new neighbourhoods to which many of the residents have already been moved – usually in far-away areas with little connection to employment and with disrupted senses of community. The internal fissures amongst those resettled are revealed here: Hindu and Muslim communities, though having lived side-by-side in micro-neighbourhoods along the Sabarmati, are resistant to co-existing in the resettlement sites. Much of this tension stems from the 2002 communal violence in Gujarat, and the particular fears of the Muslim minority to be in a Hindu-dominated site. For Chatterjee, ‘plebianisation’ ‘enables the unearthing of the local contexts of class, racial, and ethnic exclusion’ (p. 110).
In Chapter 5 (‘Of unruly practices of resistance’), Chatterjee starts with Lefebvre’s ‘right to the city’, arguing that space must be first ‘reconceptualised’ in order to then ‘participate’ and ‘appropriate’ the city. This can be done, she suggests, through the Lefebvrian concept of transduction, or the continuous loop between empirical observation and conceptual framing – such that ‘the “right to the city” is the right to create a new way of urban life materially and conceptually’ (p. 146). She analyses the differing calls to the ‘right to the city’ amongst the heterogeneous communities living on Sabarmati’s banks. For instance, the Sabarmati Nagrik Adhikar Manch (SNAM) utilises Gandhian tactics of nonviolence and compromise to secure resettlement for all, and the right to live amongst one’s own religious community. This stands in contrast to efforts from other groups who participate in rallies and seek support of the media to ensure that they will not be displaced altogether. Chatterjee rightly portrays how transduction is not the same for everyone: divergent strategies and aspirations inform whether a person demands the right to be resettled or the right to not be displaced.
Chapter 6 (‘Reversing the arrow? Theory transfer and theory-building’) serves as the concluding chapter, both summarising the main arguments presented in the preceding chapters, but also returning to the initial efforts of theory transfer. She seeks to bridge the ‘theory and practice divide’ (p. 149) by taking theories and enriching them through the lens of the SFRD.
This is a valuable book that grapples with differing narratives of development, resistance and community present in the SFRD project. Chatterjee’s work is most powerful when she challenges homogenous narratives of resistance and lends a theoretical gaze to the aftermath of resettlement. Her account, though at times dense, also importantly links theory exchange between the Global North and the Global South, demonstrating how the SFRD is not just about a riverfront community in Ahmedabad, but about global urban displacement.