Authors
Rajarshi Dasgupta
Publication date
2020
Journal
Anvesak
Volume
49
Issue
January-December 2019, 1-2
Pages
287-302
Publisher
Sardar Patel Institute of Economic and Social Research
Description
The paper describes how new geographies of capitalist accumulation are spatially fixed by looking at Dhaka. It discusses how land conversion, infrastructure, displacements, and dispossessions produce new urban spaces, subjects and social formations. The ethnographic research prioritises agrarian spaces and relations as new points of entry to the urban question. Our case studies detail the transformation of Mohammadpur and Bosila–two new neighbourhoods in the western periphery of Dhaka. In a rapidly changing landscape of property and assets, they announce new towns in the middle of green paddy fields and water bodies. We underscore the contradictory territorialisation of urban frontiers and the messy entanglement of agrarian and urban spaces in South Asia. The paper concludes with underscoring parallels highlighted by a set of recent studies of other cities, like New Delhi, Karachi, Kathmandu, Mumbai, and Kolkata. Drawing on them, we make a case for a methodological dialogue between urban and agrarian studies for grasping the specific nature of urbanisation in South Asia.
Total citations
2022202313
Scholar articles
R Dasgupta - Pathways for Changing Rural Landscape, 2019