Global flows or rural–urban connections? temporality, public spaces and heterotopias in globalising Mumbai

Abstract

This chapter draws upon studies of and fieldwork from the Indian urban context and its evolution, linking these to larger processes of democratisation, social conflicts and emancipatory struggles. It employs the idea of heterotopia to denote greater agency to class and non-class actors, groups and institutions in the definition of urban visions and in the determination of urban spatio-temporal processes and linked social processes. Various agentive groups and individual actors occupy city spaces, use and develop the city for different sociopolitical and economic purposes. For each of them, the city is an event that occurs (or is made to occur) in the specific evolutionary trajectory of their struggles for mobility and social emancipation, or in their rise to dominance. Focusing on Mumbai, this chapter outlines how the study of multiple temporal dimensions can provide key insights into the spatial, cultural, political and social implications of globalisation in Indian cities. It further addresses rural–urban connections, networks and how these interact and intersect with global flows. It traces how these processes and intersections in turn give shape to the social agency of marginalised groups and classes that are expressed in their uses of public space.