Abstract
Drawing on fieldwork in Bikaner and Thalassery, this chapter discusses the tremendous influence of neighbourhoods in everyday life. Moving away from a focus on social problems and poverty in neighbourhoods, Abraham explores the implications of a proximity that allows for various kinds of face-to-face interactions and a sensorial intimacy. She discusses everyday practices that make up the web of relations that constitute the neighbourhood—social control, social approval, legitimacy and support, with a focus on how gender is produced in everyday neighbourhood life. Abraham argues that the emphasis on caste, class, ethnic or religious identity has been at the cost of other influences such as the neighbourhood, which needs to be taken seriously as a social formation crucial to social life and as an important arena of social and cultural influence.
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- 1.
One exception was Massey’s study (1996) in which he discussed urban concentrations where the poor would be exposed to crime, disease and violence as well as concentrations of affluence which ‘enhance the benefits and privilege of the rich’ (p. 395).
- 2.
I draw on fieldwork carried out at various times and as part of different projects. The fieldwork in Thalassery in North Kerala in south India focused on a particular caste group (the Thiyyas) and its history of matrilineal kinship and inheritance. In Bikaner, the focus was on the gendering of spaces in the town.
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- 5.
The allocation of funding for the development of small and medium-sized towns dates ba ck to 1979–1980 (Scrase et al. 2015). In April 2016, the Modi government announced large investments in urban infrastructure in towns.
- 6.
The Thiyyas are an in-between caste, who suffered untouchability and have been known by their traditional occupation of toddy tapping and coconut tree climbing. Educational and occupational opportunities made accessible through the Basel German Mission and the British, led to the formation of a sizeable elite among the caste during colonial rule. Thiyyas today are classified as ‘Other Backward Classes’ by the state and those with modest incomes are the beneficiaries of positive discrimination in educational institutions and government jobs.
- 7.
Writing about Naples , Italy , Pardo suggests that the proximity in which parents and children live not only contributes to strong bonds among them and between siblings and in laws, but also affects the ‘moral and socio-economic composition of the neighbourhood’ (1996, p. 97)
- 8.
Prior to Sree Narayana Guru’s reforms in the early part of the twentieth century.
- 9.
While the nattu mukhyasthan was a neighbourhood elder from the same caste, in Tamil Nadu during the anti-Brahman movement this changed. Kathleen Gough (1971) describes how by the 1950s it was the headman of the street, and not the headman of the caste, who would witness the exchange of gifts and so on at weddings. This shift was despite the fact that each caste remained endogam ous (Gough 1971, p. 41).
- 10.
Even when a decision had been made, it was presented as though seeking approval. This was one way of showing respect and seeking a person’s involvement.
- 11.
For a visual flavour of both sex segregation in everyday life and the performance of respectability s ee Mukhopadhyay (2007). For a discussion of the play of respectability in the political life of wom en see J. Devika a nd Benita V. Thampi (2010); see als o Phadke (2007) for a discussion of Mumbai.
- 12.
This is a performative ritual form of worship characteristic of the North Kerala region.
- 13.
How the neighbourhoods of Devaloor have been constituted through violence between members of the opposing political parties is the subject of another paper. For a discussion of competing political communities and political violence in North Kerala, see Ruc hi Chaturvedi (2015).
- 14.
A pleasurable sensorial experience in both neighbourhoods was walking around just after noon with the smells of frying fish emanating from houses.
- 15.
This is the Hindi/Urdu word for an urban neighbourhood.
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Of course, not everyone in these neighbourhoods is or has been engaged with these occupations; rather, the names indicate biradiri (extended kin) or jati (caste) groups among Muslims.
- 17.
For example, women spoke about how one of the new suburbs was just an extension of the walled city—a neighbourhood that people had moved into when there was a shor tage of space in the house within the walled city. For women, this meant continuities in veiling regimes.
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In Bikaner older women may be seen sitting outside their houses on the periphery of the neighbourhood square or on a side lane with their heads covered.
- 20.
A more detailed discussion of this can be fou nd in Abraham (2010).
- 21.
Women also observe ghunghat when sitting at the window in the front room, visible to everyone on the road, or on their terrace when again visible to others on their terraces.
- 22.
In-law women were earlier meant to not only veil but also remove and carry their slippers when walking through the chowk (square). Women would also cover themselves with an additional cotton shawl when entering the chowk of their husband’s mohalla. This custom is still followed by older women.
- 23.
This is true for Muslim women as well, who may also use the word ‘gutan’ to describe their experience in the space of their in-laws’ house (sasural)—the place where a woman has to veil, and where she is constrained and subordinated. For example, when I met Ayesha, a Muslim woman in her mid-twenties, at non-governmental organisation in Bikaner a few days after she had joined, I asked her how she was liking it and she replied in Hindi ‘very nice—I feel like I am in my natal home—that I have come out of the suffocation of the house and neighbourhood of my in-laws’.
- 24.
However, widespread migration from the town of Bikaner has altered the quality of neighbourhoods and also the practices of veiling such that a woman who lives outside Bikaner may choose not to veil when she visits Bikaner, or a mother-in-law may tell a visiting daughter-in-law that she need not observe gunghat since ‘no one has remained in the neighbourhood’.
- 25.
Jeffery et al. (2006) w rite about a similar ‘educational environment’ in the North Indian town of Bijnor, in Uttar Pradesh, in which ‘reliable electricity to let children study in the evenings, good tutors to supplement what is learnt at school, as well as the more diffuse effects produced when all the neighbours’ children regularly attend school’ (p. 116).
- 26.
See, for example, Srivastava (2015) for a disc ussion of anxieties in gated communities and of keeping out those perceived as the ‘other’.
- 27.
Donner hig hlights the way neighbourhoods ‘provided a space for coalitions and cooperation across a wider spectrum’ (2011, p. 21) in the context of Maoist politics in West Bengal.
- 28.
Pardo’s (1996) detailed ethnography of the twists and turns of everyday relationships in a neighbourhood in Naples brings out vividly not only everyday conflicts but also uncertainties that characterise neighbourhoods.
- 29.
Borneman’s study (1992) of Ea st and West Berlin chronicles the dramatic changes in the quality of neighbourhoods in East Berlin with the state security or Stazi spying on people.
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Abraham, J. (2018). The Lives of Others: The Production and Influence of Neighbourhood Cultures in Urban India. In: Pardo, I., Prato, G. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Urban Ethnography. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64289-5_6
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