THE CITY IN SOUTH ASIA
SAST-002-401/ANTH-107-401/URBS-122-401
FALL 2014, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
TUES./THURS. 10:30-12:00 MUSE 330
PROFESSOR: E. GABRIEL DATTATREYAN
With one-fifth of the world’s population, South Asia and its urban centers are playing an increasingly important role in recent global economic transformations resulting in fundamental changes within both the subcontinent and the larger world. While drawing primarily on ethnographic studies of South Asian urban spaces in the context of historical change, this course also incorporates research and insights on the urban drawn from urban studies, architecture, political science, history, fiction and narrative documentary film, to explore the complex webs of socil, political and economic relationships that work to shape the cities of South Asia. During the course we will discuss how what has over the last 20 years been termed globalization, spurs new dynamics in South Asia’s cities such as the formation of a ‘new’ urban middle class, the rise of consumption and consumer culture, the shifting and changing ethnic, cultural, religious, gendered and linguistic identities within the city, and tensions that ensue as a result. We will situate a discussion regarding the changing cultural practices in South Asian cities by touching upon how ongoing changes to the built environment, continued in-migration, and the political formations they both engender work to create arrangements of state, private, and political institutions that are particular to the cities we study.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
To gain new understandings of the complex diversity that makes up South Asia through a close study of a range of urban built environments that span several nation states that comprise the region.
To develop the analytical tools necessary to think carefully about the roles cities simultaneously play in global and local contexts.
To engage with ethnographic, sociological, and historical ‘data’ as a means to interpret, assess, draw conclusions, and generate incisive questions regarding the mass mediatized representations of cultural contexts outside the United States.
To engage with multimodal tools — text, images, and video — to create artifacts that demonstrate an analytic engagement with course material.
FALL 2014, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
TUES./THURS. 10:30-12:00 MUSE 330
PROFESSOR: E. GABRIEL DATTATREYAN
With one-fifth of the world’s population, South Asia and its urban centers are playing an increasingly important role in recent global economic transformations resulting in fundamental changes within both the subcontinent and the larger world. While drawing primarily on ethnographic studies of South Asian urban spaces in the context of historical change, this course also incorporates research and insights on the urban drawn from urban studies, architecture, political science, history, fiction and narrative documentary film, to explore the complex webs of socil, political and economic relationships that work to shape the cities of South Asia. During the course we will discuss how what has over the last 20 years been termed globalization, spurs new dynamics in South Asia’s cities such as the formation of a ‘new’ urban middle class, the rise of consumption and consumer culture, the shifting and changing ethnic, cultural, religious, gendered and linguistic identities within the city, and tensions that ensue as a result. We will situate a discussion regarding the changing cultural practices in South Asian cities by touching upon how ongoing changes to the built environment, continued in-migration, and the political formations they both engender work to create arrangements of state, private, and political institutions that are particular to the cities we study.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
To gain new understandings of the complex diversity that makes up South Asia through a close study of a range of urban built environments that span several nation states that comprise the region.
To develop the analytical tools necessary to think carefully about the roles cities simultaneously play in global and local contexts.
To engage with ethnographic, sociological, and historical ‘data’ as a means to interpret, assess, draw conclusions, and generate incisive questions regarding the mass mediatized representations of cultural contexts outside the United States.
To engage with multimodal tools — text, images, and video — to create artifacts that demonstrate an analytic engagement with course material.
