A curation of articles, essays, book reviews and interviews on critical geographical concerns.
Subaltern Frontiers performs the task of insurgent admirably, gleefully puncturing the giddy narratives of Gurgaon as the poster-child of post-liberalization India, and pulling back the curtain to expose the work of variegated human actors who underwrite accumulation, speculation, and habitation in Gurgaon, forming the urban conurbation’s continuing condition of possibility.
This powerful text shows the contradictions of the neoliberal city in India: you can’t have luxury enclaves without urban villages; you can’t have luxury townships without agrarian committees; and you can’t use caste-based territorial assertion as a mode of city-making without the attendant risks of ethno-religious nationalism.
Tom Cowan’s conceptualization of agrarian city-making in and from Haryana not only differentiates Gurgaon from urban development elsewhere in India, but also invites comparison with subaltern frontiers in other world regions, including Southeast Asia.
In solidarity with abolition and anti-racist movements, the following EPD: Society and Space articles on racism, racialization, and policing are free to access through September 2020. We will continue to use our resources to support critical scholarship on these topics.
During the unprecedented crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, the editorial collective at Society & Space has made the decision to 'press pause' on our normal working practices. We believe that to continue as usual right now would be untenable and unethical.