Includes bibliographical references (pages 299-318) and index.
Contents:
List of figures -- List of tables -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Urban space, technology, and community -- Songs, the city, and the everyday -- Sexuality, scandals, and the urban order -- Battle for the streets: contesting municipal regimes -- Criminality, class, and moral anxieties -- Collective protest and riots -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the author.
Summary:
Departing from approaches that see the city as the unproblematic product of British initiative and disciplining, 'Claiming the city' presents the urban processes shaping Calcutta as contested and partially indigenous. In a crucial intervention the work studies how the colonial urban was not just born out of the ordered institutional spaces inscribed by public parks and squares, sewers and water supplies, roads and tramways, but also the more plebeian imprint of their circumvention by the city's inhabitants - through their use of this civic infrastructure, violence, protest and street demonstrations. In the process the book also traces the ways in which the once proverbial City of Palaces turned by the early twentieth century into a city of endemic unrest and political strife. Ghosh breaks new ground by exploring the history of colonial urbanization from below through a wide range of sources, from street songs and photographs to local histories and memoirs, in addition to the more well-known official archives. In bringing together for the first time both known and unknown histories of the city in imaginative ways, the book weaves a vibrant narrative of everyday life in colonial Calcutta. Scandal, rumour, murder and music help locate energetic lower layers of public sphere in the city that were deeply invested in the urban. By highlighting the tensions of living in a rapidly changing world of technological innovations, social and moral dilemmas, municipal strictures and grinding poverty, the book establishes Calcuttas residents not as passive consumers but rightful claimants to the city.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.