Overview

The Moving City is a rich and intimate account of urban transformation told through the story of Delhi's Metro, a massive infrastructure project reshaping the city's social and urban landscapes. Presented as a series of ethnographic vignettes, Rashmi Sadana introduces the feel and form of the Metro and lets readers experience the city, scene by scene, stop by stop, as if they, too, have come along for the ride. It is a book that lays bare the radical possibilities and concretized inequalities of the Metro, how people live with and through the built environment, a story of women and men on the move, the nature of Indian aspiration, and what it takes morally and materially to sustain urban life. Through exquisite prose, Sadana transports the reader into a city shaped by its metro and those who depend on it, offering a revealing and unique perspective on Delhi unlike any other.

Full Product Details

9780520383968

Table of Contents

Reviews

The Moving City is an important contribution to the growing literature on urban infrastructure. It is evocative and shows us the variegated ways in which mobility is mediated by aspirations, fears, exclusions and political negotiations. * Contributions to Indian Sociology * The vignettes captured by the author, constituting in effect a collection of ukiyo-e, 'pictures of the floating world,' is a delightful and interesting twist on ethnographic writing and representation. . . Sadana's book offers a very special approach to the study of urban infrastructure and demonstrates how these little floating scenes of everyday life can tell us something about big and complex social issues. * Asian Anthropology *

"""The Moving City is an important contribution to the growing literature on urban infrastructure. It is evocative and shows us the variegated ways in which mobility is mediated by aspirations, fears, exclusions and political negotiations."" * Contributions to Indian Sociology * ""The vignettes captured by the author, constituting in effect a collection of ukiyo-e, ‘pictures of the floating world,’  is a delightful and interesting twist on ethnographic writing and representation. . . Sadana’s book offers a very special approach to the study of urban infrastructure and demonstrates how these little floating scenes of everyday life can tell us something about big and complex social issues."" * Asian Anthropology * ""The strength of this book lies in what it has to offer as a method of encountering urban spaces. . . .This ethnography would be a welcome addition to courses in urban anthropology, anthropologies of gender, class, South Asia, and ethnographic method."" * Anthropological Quarterly * ""Vivid and rich with detail. . . .Sadana…emphasizes the uniqueness of the Delhi Metro by centering the voices of the many people who make up its daily life."" * Metropolitics * ""[A] beautifully crafted account of how life in Delhi becomes narrated through the Metro as it joins and cuts across disparate urban spaces."" * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute * ""A radical work that throws open established modes of Indian anthropological writing."" * Biblio: A Review of Books * ""The moving city is a vivid snapshot of Delhi in times of infrastructural change, suitable for courses on infrastructure, urbanism, and ethnographic storytelling more broadly.""   * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *"

"""The Moving City is an important contribution to the growing literature on urban infrastructure. It is evocative and shows us the variegated ways in which mobility is mediated by aspirations, fears, exclusions and political negotiations."" * Contributions to Indian Sociology * ""The vignettes captured by the author, constituting in effect a collection of ukiyo-e, ‘pictures of the floating world,’  is a delightful and interesting twist on ethnographic writing and representation. . . Sadana’s book offers a very special approach to the study of urban infrastructure and demonstrates how these little floating scenes of everyday life can tell us something about big and complex social issues."" * Asian Anthropology * ""The strength of this book lies in what it has to offer as a method of encountering urban spaces. . . .This ethnography would be a welcome addition to courses in urban anthropology, anthropologies of gender, class, South Asia, and ethnographic method."" * Anthropological Quarterly * ""Vivid and rich with detail. . . .Sadana…emphasizes the uniqueness of the Delhi Metro by centering the voices of the many people who make up its daily life."" * Metropolitics * ""[A] beautifully crafted account of how life in Delhi becomes narrated through the Metro as it joins and cuts across disparate urban spaces."" * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute * ""A radical work that throws open established modes of Indian anthropological writing."" * Biblio: A Review of Books *"

Author Information

Rashmi Sadana is Associate Professor of Anthropology at George Mason University and author of English Heart, Hindi Heartland: The Political Life of Literature in India.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available