In the Shadow of the Mill
Workers' Neighbourhoods in Ahmedabad, 1920s to 2000s

Presents a historical ethnography of two workers' neighbourhoods in Ahmedabad, a city in Western India.

Rukmini Barua (Author)

9781108838115, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 10 November 2022

300 pages
23.6 x 16 x 2.3 cm, 0.55 kg

This book traces the socio–spatial transformation of Ahmedabad's worker neighbourhoods over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries - during which the city witnessed dramatic and disturbing transformations. It follows the multiple histories of Ahmedabad's labour landscapes from the times when the city acquired prominence as an important site of Gandhian political activity and as a key centre of the textile industry, through the decades of industrial collapse and periods of sectarian violence in the recent years. Taking the working-class neighbourhood as a scale of social practice, the question of urban change is examined along two axes of investigation: the transformation of local political configurations and forms of political mediation and the shifts in the social geography of the neighbourhood as reflected in the changing regimes of property.

List of Figures
List of Tables
Introduction
1. Setting the stage: A brief political history of Ahmedabad, 1920s to 2000s
Part I. Incarnations of the Political Intermediary: 2. The TLA and dadagiri: Mediation in the mill neighbourhoods
3. The underground economy, the state and the political intermediary
4. Civil society, 'social work' and political mediation
Part II. Property and Precarity: 5. Chawls without chimneys
6. Violence, law and 'Ghettoisation'
7. Security and tenancy at the margins of the city
Conclusion
Glossary
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Local history [WQH], Urban economics [KCU], Political economy [KCP], Political structure & processes [JPH], Politics & government [JP], Sociology [JHB]