Geographies of Waiting: Politics, Methods, and Praxis—A Case Study of Indian Railway Stations

Abstract

Waiting is spatial, gendered, and hidden. Drawing on ethnographic field work with cleaners in railway facilities of Hyderabad, India, and building on infrastructure and mobilities studies, I theorize the space-time of waiting. I propose waiting as a multivalent lens through which to view power, space, and labor relations. Second, I argue that waiting is a method offering possibilities for understanding the Sisyphean task of cleaning and uneven, precarious, and diverse urban worlds. Waiting is integral to maintenance work, and pivotal to the production of “clean” infrastructures, yet it remains invisible. Third, I posit waiting as praxis: a mode of field work grappling with place-based realities. Waiting is learning the station. My article considers the social and economic (im)mobilities that underpin the waiting of cleaning workers. I further posit queues as microinfrastructures of waiting. Finally, I argue that waiting, when employed as a method, and as praxis, reveals the uneven urban worlds, relational spaces, and the everydayness of capitalism.