Reading Variegated Dispossession in an Asian Megacity

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper reads multiple shades of dispossession in an Asian megacity. The multiple dispositions talk of dispossession as an instrument that limits the autonomy and the self-sufficiency in material and non-material dimensions. In that endeavor we emphasize taking a broader picture of dispossession while pursuing critical urban theory. Through unpacking four ethnographies in Kolkata, the essay looks into dispossession, and in that process displacement and accumulation, from multiple vantage points while stressing on urban as a process that lies at the cross-section of the global capitalist development. The essay intertwines it with postcolonial reading - assemblage and worlding as they enable nuanced and contextual reading of urban emergence, negotiations, and negations. The methodology through an extended ethnography arrives at a point that dispossession is a broader concept holding intense meanings that need to be read beyond abstraction and through quintessentially nuanced postcolonial urban studies.