The Politics of Forgetting: Class Politics, State Power and the Restructuring of Urban Space in India
Top Cited Papers
- 1 November 2004
- journal article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Urban Studies
- Vol. 41 (12), 2415-2430
- https://doi.org/10.1080/00420980412331297609
Abstract
Policies of economic liberalisation have been accompanied by discourses on the rise of the new middle class in India. The newness of this Indian middle class is marked by changing consumption practices and lifestyles. The visibility of the urban middle classes sets into motion a politics of forgetting with regard to social groups that are marginalised by India's policies of liberalisation. The politics of forgetting refers to a political-discursive process in which specific marginalised social groups are rendered invisible within the dominant national political culture. Such dynamics unfold through the spatial reconfiguration of class inequalities. Both middle-class groups and the state engage in a politics of forgetting that displaces the poor and working classes from such spaces. The result is the production of an exclusionary form of cultural citizenship which is, in turn, contested by these marginalised socioeconomic groups. The article draws on original qualitative field research conducted in Mumbai (Bombay).Keywords
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