Masculinity, Consumerism and the Post-National Indian City
Streets, Neighbourhoods, Home

Masculine cultures define urban cultures and are defined by them. A multidisciplinary analysis that explores urbanism, masculine anxieties and gender relations.

Sanjay Srivastava (Author)

9781009179867, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 January 2023

210 pages
23.6 x 16.1 x 1.8 cm, 0.41 kg

'Reflecting his long-term engagement with India's metropolitan modernities, Srivastava's monograph explores from multiple-and at times, unexpected-perspectives the making and re-making of masculine subjectivities in the context of the fast-changing urban environment of New Delhi and its sprawling peripheries. Here, the materiality of urban spaces is both a stage upon which masculinities are evoked and performed, and the 'structuring structure' for their unfolding. On the strength of fascinating ethnographic case studies and vignettes, the author introduces novel analytics-expressed by the notions of post-national condition and moral consumption-to capture the emergence of political subjectivities, economic practices and aesthetics which have undergirded the rise of aggressive Hindutva politics within different urban social bodies, as well as the (re)gendering and (re)caste-ing of (private and public) urban spaces, often leading to violent assertions of (upper-caste/middle-class) masculinities. This book makes compelling reading and sets an exciting new agenda for understanding contemporary Indian urbanism.' Filippo Osella, University of Sussex

Imagining the city as a series of interconnected spaces, the book explores how several such connections – between the home and the street, family and public spaces, religious and non-religious contexts, for example – relate to the topic of masculinity. How do men – elite, subaltern, consumers, 'heads' of the family, members of 'Hindu fundamentalist' organisations, readers of pulp fiction and 'footpath pornography', those who admire the 'strong' political leader – move between these spaces, define them and are defined by them? Urbanisation in India is a vibrant site of an extraordinary cultural, social and economic churn, a context of both the consolidation of masculine identities as well as anxieties regarding their place in the city. The book suggests that sustained and in-depth engagements with specific historical and social contexts avoids tendencies to imagine cities as nodes of comparison that frequently generates universal models of urbanism.

List of Figures
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction: Masculinity, Modernity, Urbanity
2. Nationalism, Masculinity and the City
3. Dislocated Masculinities and the Unofficial City
4. Thrilling Affects: Sexuality, Masculinity, the City and 'Indian Traditions' in the Contemporary Hindi 'Detective' Novel
5. Fragmentary Pleasures: Masculinity, Urban Spaces and the Commodity Politics of 'Religious Fundamentalists'
6. Technotopias: Masculinity, Women, the City and the Post-national Condition
7. Conclusion: Masculine Body Politics
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Sociology [JHB], Sociology & anthropology [JH], Urban communities [JFSG]