Urban Consciousness Research Articles

Fragments Shored Against Ruins: Defragmenting India through the Gathering Storm

Travel between territories which exists contemporaneously is baffling in a psychogeographical sense. What had previously been considered as movement through indifferent space seems to be movement through time, into the future or into the past. The spatial assemblages within which these figures travel each have their own temporality, a rhythm that is produced and maintained by the processes that produce and maintain the human and nonhuman elements of the territory. Therefore travel narrative manifests itself as a narrative of space and difference and consequently travel writing as a format reflects an incessant surge of new concepts, new ways of seeing and being.. In this context, I argue that such an attempt is made by Harish Nambiar in his Defragmenting India: Riding a Bullet through the Gathering Storm, a travelogue narrative of a motorbike trip of the author and his friend across various states. Written in the dramatic backdrop of the 2002 Godhra riots, it provides an account of the various fault lines of Indian society quivering in the temblors that the communal riots of Gujarat sent across the nation. The book maps the urban consciousness of India by juxtaposing lives, issues and situations of educated and the uneducated, craftsman and conservationist, teacher and businessman, daughters and drunks from small towns and non-metro cities of India. It thus succeeds in capturing the undercurrents that flow through the life of a nation, community, city, families and individuals, simultaneously cutting across narrow divisive borders.

Türkiye Cumhuriyeti'nin 100. Yılında Bir Öğretmen Yetiştirme Modeli Olarak Köy Enstitülerinin Modernleşmeye İlişkin Özellikleri

The village institutes project is an educational initiative that emerged as a rural development project in the history of the Republic. When we look at the education programmes implemented, it is seen that although the aim was to train teachers for the villages, artistic and cultural education constituted an important part of the programme. From this point of view, it can be said that the village institutes aimed to transform villages into places where modern individuals who follow the Republican revolutions live and have urban characteristics. The acceleration of migration from villages to cities and the increase in internal migration with industrialisation coincide with the period of the closure of the village institutes. Although various educational and sociological studies have been conducted on the founding and early periods of the Republic, research on the modern human type that the village institutes wanted to raise is limited in the literature. The aim of this study is to evaluate the educational programme and practices in the village institutes in the context of creating modern human beings and to examine the experiences of the students in their villages in the example of Çifteler Village Institute. The article is designed as a document-based research. The steps of the document analysis method were analysed. The studies obtained as a result of the search among postgraduate theses and academic articles on village institutes were subjected to content analysis. In addition, the letters written by the teachers graduated from Çifteler Village Institute to the school administration were also analysed in the context of the desired human type. It was observed that the education given in the village institutes had many artistic and cultural practices aiming to teach village life as well as urban consciousness, and that the education given included elements that would contribute positively to the awareness of living together. In the letters written by the graduates to the directorate of Çifteler Village Institute, it was concluded that they could not be happy in the village where they were working and that they could not reach the environments where they could exhibit the new behaviours they had acquired at school.

Carto-City to Surface-City: un-mapping and re-mapping the urban emotion of missing

ABSTRACT Drawing on a fascination with Denis Cosgrove’s term ‘Carto-City’ that encompasses the concept that ‘Urban space and cartographic space are inseparable’ [Cosgrove, D. (2006). Carto-City. In J. Abrams, & P. Hall (Eds.), Else/where: Mapping New cartographies of networks and territories (pp. 148–157). University of Minnesota], this essay applies the idea to a conceptualisation of ‘city’ as urbaness – as a connected state of mind or urban emotion. Through a visual methodology of ‘unmapping’ and ‘re-mapping’ of Carto-City as Surface-City, this artistic research practice aims to contribute to how we understand and map the connected cartographies of contemporary urban consciousness. Cosgroves “seeing, imagining and representing” (2008) is re-interpreted to map a specific emotion within urbaness emerging out of the restricted transience of a world-wide pandemic – the emotion of missing. As physical city spaces across the world stood still, digital connection expanded creating a focused space for critical reflection on how interconnected layers of urban emotion might be mapped. My response to this, Surface-City, is grounded in my ongoing body of research into urban consciousness and its mapping through academic writing and visual practice.

Challenging the Islamic City Paradigm: A Trial for Ottoman Urban Spaces through the Lens of Collective Action Theory

This article focuses on collective actions in Ottoman cities to respond to the Weberian notion of the Islamic city, suggesting Islamic city dwellers’ incapability to act collectively. For this purpose, the study scrutinizes the collective appeals made by city dwellers to Ottoman courts, employing Charles Tilly’s theory of collective action. By conducting an extensive literature review of the Islamic city paradigm and analyzing court records, this article argues that Ottoman city dwellers possessed urban consciousness and engaged in collective actions for the betterment of their living environment, challenging the belief that such actions were absent in Muslim societies. Studies on this topic so far have neither employed a comprehensive theoretical approach nor have they
 considered the place dimension. Furthermore, this article suggests that essential indicators of Ottoman cities’ urban culture are joint decision-making, apprehension of urban problems, organizational capacity, and collective actions.

Female Urban Consciousness and Fosforlu Cevriye as a Flaneuse Novel

Bu makale, Suat Derviş’in, Fosforlu Cevriye (1968) romanında, kadın bedeninin kentle diyaloğundan ortaya çıkan bir yazı estetiği kullanarak, bir modern edebiyat kahramanı olan flanör/flanöz figürüne alternatif bir bakış açısı yarattığını ve bu sayede Türk edebiyatının modern/modernlik imgeleminde gerek biçim gerekse içerik açısından önemli bir yer tuttuğunu göstermeyi amaçlamaktadır. Derviş, bu romanında, bir flanöz figürü olarak Fosforlu Cevriye karakterini; Charles Baudelaire’in ve Walter Benjamin’in, modernite üzerine yazdıkları metinlerde değindikleri şekilde, kentin kıyısında ve eşiğin ötesinde yürüyen bir kadın olarak tasarlar. Fakat modern edebiyatta kendini yineleyen, kentte yürüyen ayrıcalıklı beyaz erkek formülünden farklı olarak Cevriye, sokak çocuğu, seks işçisi ve kadın olarak kentte var olan ve kentin gerçek bilgisine sahip olan alternatif bir flanöz figürüdür. Karakterin deneyimleri, anıları ve arzularıyla biçim alan roman mekanlarının her biri alternatif kent haritalarına dönüşür. Modern kentin heterojenliğinin ve bireyin tesadüflerle örülü gündelik hayatının romandaki izdüşümü olan bu öznel haritalar kentsel belleğin de harcını oluşturur. Dişil kent bilincinin, merkezi kaydırılmış görme-görülme biçimleri sunduğu romanda, geçirgen ve özgün bir kadın olarak kentte görünür olabilen Fosforlu Cevriye karakteri metnin sınırlarını aşarak dile, kültüre ve hafızaya yerleşir.

The effect of participation in urban space on urban consciousness: The case of Denizli city

Kentlilik bilinci, kentte yaşayan bireylerin, kentle özdeşleşmesi, kendini kente ait hissetmesi, kente karşı sorumluluk duyması, kentle ilgili kararlara aktif katılım göstermesidir. Katılım, kentlilik bilincinin önemli unsurlarındır. Katılımın gerçekleşebilmesi için kentlinin kentsel mekânı kullanabilmesi, kentin içinde olması gerekir. Kentin önemli aktörü olan kentlinin aktif katılım gerçekleştirebilmesi, kentlilik bilincine sahip olmasıyla mümkündür. Kentlilik bilinci yüksek bireylerin varlığı aktif katılımın gerçekleşmesinde; katılım ise insanların yaşadıkları kentlere sahip çıkması ve kentlerin korunmasında, sürdürülebilirliğinde, kentlilik bilincinin gelişiminde/oluşumunda önemli katkı sağlamaktadır. Bu çalışma, Denizli İli Pamukkale ve Merkezefendi İlçeleri sınırlarında yaşayan 18 yaş ve üzeri bireylerin, kentsel mekândaki katılım davranışları ile kentlilik bilinci arasındaki farkı ölçmek amacıyla gerçekleştirilmiştir. Saha araştırması kapsamında 1100 anket gerçekleştirilmiştir. Verilerin analizinde tek yönlü varyans analizi ve post-hoc testi kullanılmıştır. Araştırma sonuçlarına göre; katılım ile kentlilik bilinci ve bileşenleri arasında anlamlı fark olduğu ortaya çıkmıştır.

Establishing Urban Revitalization and Regional Development Strategies with Consideration of Urban Stakeholders Based on the ISA-NRM Approach

Urban revitalization has already become the main goal for urban managers. However, various stakeholders may have different perspectives on urban revitalization. Therefore, how urban managers understand various stakeholders’ urban revitalization needs and determine urban sustainable development strategies has become a significant challenge. This study defines four driving aspects of urban revitalization (infrastructure construction, living environment, trade and investment, and urban consciousness). It analyzes the status of importance and satisfaction for various stakeholders (residents, sojourners, travelers) for urban revitalization using the ISA (importance satisfaction analysis) approach. The study also adopted the NRM (network relation map) approach to evaluate the network relation structure based on the DEMATEL (Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory) approach. This study integrates the ISA and NRM approaches and proposes using the ISA-NRM approach to assess the acceptance strategies and common suitable paths for various stakeholders. The proposed model can aid urban managers in understanding the various stakeholders’ perspectives for urban sustainable development strategies and determine the urban revitalization paths based on diverse perspectives of groups of stakeholders.

Forms of conceiving the city of the XX century: space, substance or environment?

In the XX century, the city became a problem and challenge to a new, developing urban design consciousness. At first, rational approaches to the city promised bright prospects, which can still be felt today in the graphics of Le Corbusier or L. Hilberseimer. However, only the Renaissance could afford conceiving the city in only one perspective. The XX century needs comprehensive technologies, but the most advanced system of calculation, regulation and control should be based on something that generates the very idea of the city. Fruitless technologies taken as tools need to be boosted by creative, inspiring, although nonstrict, ideas. The nature and metamorphoses of such ideas are discussed in the article.

Overtourism in Istanbul: an interpretative study of non-governmental organizational views

ABSTRACT Although increases in tourist arrivals and crowding are the most clearly perceived indicators of overtourism, it is necessary to identify the different political, legal, economic, and cultural phenomena that determine the perception of overtourism in cities. This study aims to identify critical steps for similar destinations to solve the problem of overtourism by exemplifying which critical factors are associated with the perception of overtourism in Istanbul. A case study design was chosen within the scope of the qualitative method. Data were obtained via semi-structured interviews and subjected to content analysis. Interviews were conducted with representatives of NGOs operating in Istanbul. The findings revealed three main themes regarding the perception of overtourism: indicators of the current situation, indicators of overtourism, and indicators of reaction. While the tourist profile and regional agglomeration stand out as the problems of current tourism, public space, housing, and gentrification, policies without governance are emphasized as overtourism problems. Development in urbanization, urban culture, and urban consciousness are key reactions recommended. Unlike many other destinations, it has been determined that the phenomenon of overtourism in Istanbul is perceived and questioned not by the number of tourists but by the criticism of the policies implemented.

Spatializing the Musicking Of an Expressive Urban Imagination: A Trans-Cultural Evaluation of the Early-Modern Rock Music of Bengal

The technological reproduction of the imaginary has always reflected a polarization in urban consciousness, considering the city as the urban ‘body’—which retains a space for contemporary imaginations. Rock music of the American 60s radiates exactly such urban consciousness by constantly experimenting with lyrics, sounds, images and celebrations, which continually harmonize with the changing industrial and technocratic city structures. This paper explores a progressive cultural synthesis between the American and the early-modern rock music of Bengal. The city of Kolkata in West Bengal has always been repleted with a vibrant ‘representational space’ with a high rate of western-music consumption since the late 1970s, thus reflecting western urban ethos into the Indian urban imagination through modern Bengali rock music. Lefebvre (1974) suggests that the potential for genuine social change is possible only through the city as practised rather than the city as planned; on this note, this paper analyzes how the Indian urban imagination negotiated with the everyday urban experience of distant musical and cultural behaviours through ‘musicking’ by producing a musically reflective space where thought, feelings and different moods are crafted and performed. Further, how, in the age of technical reproduction, rock music produces a ‘counter-space’ by projecting urban ethos, which acts as an exegetic tool for the symptomatic reading of any expressive culture, and makes the city claim its spatial identity.

Proposal for an application from the perspective of neighborhood to urban security in Turkey: the neighborhood information system

Mahalle, kent yaşamının en önemli unsurları arasındadır. Bir yerleşim mekânı olmanın yanında; toplumsal yaşamın düzenlenmesi, dayanışmanın güçlenmesi, kentsel güvenlik ve hemşehrilik bilincinin artması gibi olgular yönünden de büyük önem taşımaktadır. Diğer taraftan kentleşmenin hızlı ve düzensiz işleyen seyri, komşuluk ilişkilerinin zayıflaması gibi durumlar; kentsel güvenlik anlayışı ve kentlilik bilinci gibi kenti yaşanabilir kılan bileşenlere zarar vermektedir. Neticede kent yaşamında toplum sağlığından kent ekonomisine kadar birçok alanda olumsuz durumlar yaşanabilmektedir. Kent sakinlerinin yaşamlarını sürdürürken kendilerini güvende hissetmeleri şeklinde ifade edilebilecek olan “kentsel güvenlik” anlayışınım mahallelerin işlevselliğiyle orantılı olduğu söylenebilir. Bu bakımdan mahallelerin işlevinin arttırılması için de kent sakinlerinin ilgisinin mahalleye yönlendirilmesi önemlidir. Bu çalışmada Türkiye’de mahallelerin geçmişten bugüne sürecine değinilerek kentsel güvenlik açısından anlamı tartışılmaya çalışılmıştır. Bu bağlamda mahallelerin Osmanlı döneminden Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’ne sürecinin ele alınması ve kentsel güvenliğe yönelik muhtemel katkılarının değerlendirilmesi amaçlanmıştır. Çalışmanın son bölümünde mahallelerin işlevlerinin artırılması ve hemşehrilerin hayatlarının kolaylaştırılması amacıyla teknoloji tabanlı olarak tasarlanan “Mahalle Bilgi Sistemi” uygulamasına yönelik temel öngörüler sunulmuştur. Bu bağlamda Mahalle Bilgi Sistemi’nin işlevi, sistemin muhtemel faydaları, mahallelere ve kente yapacağı katkılar temel seviyede değerlendirmeye çalışılmıştır. Mahallelerin; merkezi yönetim, yerel yönetimler ve hemşehriler açısından öneminin arttırılmasına yönelik uygulama önerilerine yer verilmiştir.

Green Design in Urban Squares: Ecological Urban Consciousness in Landscape Architecture Education

Due to increase in population density in cities, unplanned urbanization, where built areas proliferate and concrete and impermeable surfaces are predominant, have started to capture cities. While this causes the natural environments and green areas in cities to decrease day by day, it also directly affects the formation of heat islands in the cities, air pollution and the decrease in the quality of life of people. Since landscape architecture is a discipline that deals with the planning, development, protection and design of rural and urban open spaces that can make the future better, teaching students the importance of the ecological city and the criteria of designs for this should be the primary goal in universities. The area, which was determined as an Urban Transformation area by Trabzon Municipality and planned to be designed as Karagöz Square, was studied within the scope of Karadeniz Technical University Landscape Architecture Environmental Design Project 4 in the fall semester of 2019-2020. The lecturer of the course aimed to teach the students the awareness of green design-oriented city square solution in line with ecological city criteria. Within the scope of this study, course data were examined with ecological city criteria.

MAN'S EMOTIONAL RESPONSES AND WELLBEING IN THEKASBAH OF ALGIERS

Human's emotional responses to the built environment are crucial to ensure both well-being and urban consciousness. The following research aims to explore the relationship between user's emotional responses to the built environment stimulus related to wellbeing. It studies people's emotional response as they encounter the alleys of the Kasbah of Algiers. A group of 10 architects participated in this study; they walked through the alleys of the Kasbah of Algiers, while talking spontaneously about their emotions and feelings regarding this space, and taking simultaneously pictures of the built environment scenes that are in relation with their emotional experience. Based on the Plutchik’s works, a content analysis is conducted on this 10 architect's collected testimonies. This analysis aims to identify the architect's emotional response to the spatial stimulus of the Kasbah of Algiers, and its related cognitive and behavioral reactions. The results show that joy, admiration, surprise, awe and optimism are the emotional responses that address more users' comfort, satisfaction and well-being in the Kasbah of Algiers. these emotional responses are related to the spatial stimulus: terraces with open view on the sea and the sky; large and proportioned lanes flooded with sun light and fresh air; and transition from close dark ambiances and spaces to open lightened ambiances and spaces like the transition in the Kasbah dwellings from the ''Skifa'' to the ''patio'' and from the ''rooms and stairs'' to the ''terrace'', or the transition from the ''alley'' to the ''impasse'' especially the covered impasses with low ceilings.

Evaluation of Variables Constituting Urban Consciousness in Ankara by Factor Analysis

Evaluation of Variables Constituting Urban Consciousness in Ankara by Factor Analysis

KENTLİLİK BİLİNCİNİN OLUŞUMU VE KENTE ENTEGRASYON SÜRECİNDE HEMŞEHRİ DERNEKLERİNİN ETKİSİ

Sosyal, siyasal ve kültürel birçok alanı etkisi altına alan küreselleşme, tarih boyunca insan ilişkilerini merkezine alan kentleri de kaçınılmaz olarak etkilemiştir. Kentleşme sürecinde yoğun bir göç dalgasıyla karşılaşan kentler, artan nüfus baskısı sonucunda birçok sorunla baş etmek durumunda kalmıştır. Hem kentsel mekânların fiziksel yapısını hem de bu mekânlardaki toplumsal yaşamı etkileyen sorunlardan biri de kente göç eden bireylerin kentle bütünleşme durumudur. Kırdan kente gelen bireyler, bir yandan sosyal ve ekonomik yapıya uyum sağlamakta zorluk çekerken diğer yandan kentte yaşayanlar tarafından kabul görme endişesi taşımaktadırlar. Buna karşın bireyin kenti sahiplenme, kendisini kentin bir parçası olarak hissetme, kent yaşamına uyum sağlama ve sahip olduğu kentlilik bilinci seviyesi kentlerin mevcut sorunlarının çözümünde önemli bir unsuru oluşturmaktadır. Buradan hareketle kente göç eden bireylerin uyum sorunlarını hafifletmek için dayanışma olgusunu temel alan ve tampon mekanizmalar olarak nitelendirilen “hemşehri dernekleri” kurulmaktadır. Temel olarak hemşehriler arasında yardımlaşmayı sağlamak, onları bir araya getirmek ve maddi-manevi destekte bulunmak gibi amaçlarla kurulan derneklerde, hemşehri kavramı aynı memleketten göç edenleri tanımlamaktadır. Kente göç edenlerin kırsal alanda edindikleri cemaat ilişkilerini kentte sürdürmelerine ve geldikleri yöreye ait kültürel değerleri korumalarına hizmet eden hemşehri derneklerinin, tam da bu noktada kente uyum konusunda ne derece işlevsel oldukları tartışma konusudur. Zira dernekler söz konusu özellikleri ile bireylerin kırsaldan getirdikleri yaşam örüntüleri içerisinde kalmalarına sebep olabilmekte, dolayısıyla kentlilik bilincinin edinilmesini geciktirebilmektedir. Bunun yanı sıra derneklerin “hemşehri” tanımını mevzuatımızla uyumlu olarak “o yörede ikamet edenleri” kapsayacak şekilde ele almak yerine, “aynı yerde doğmuş olma” anlayışına dayandırmaları göç edenlerin kaynaşma sürecini uzatan bir unsur olarak görülebilir. Bu kapsamda çalışmanın amacı, hemşehri derneklerinin göçün ilk dönemlerinde kente uyumu destekleyici bir mekanizma olma özelliği taşımasına karşın sonraki dönemlerde kentlilik bilincinin oluşturulmasını yavaşlatıcı bir etkiye sahip olduğu tezi ile hemşehri derneklerinin kentlilik bilinci üzerindeki etkisini açıklamaktır. Bu doğrultuda yöntem olarak metin analizi kullanılmış, literatür taraması ile çalışmanın temelini oluşturan kavramlar açıklanmış, yapılan alan araştırmaları değerlendirilmiş ve konuyla ilgili mevcut durum tespit edilerek gerçekleştirilmiş çalışmalara ilaveten yapılması önerilen hususlar ortaya konulmuştur.

Landon’s Local Attachments: Urban Mobility, Literary Memory, and the Professional Woman Writer

Landon’s Local Attachments: Urban Mobility, Literary Memory, and the Professional Woman Writer Eric Eisner (bio) “Oh, London!” letitia landon effuses in an 1834 letter to novelist Anna Maria Hall, “Mr. Leigh Hunt says prettily of some Italian name, that he cannot write it without pleasure. I say the same of London!”1 Celebrity poet, enterprising editor and critic, and in the 1830s successful novelist as well, “L.E.L.” operated at the forefront of London’s literary world. From the start, her urban identifications have been understood as central to her sensibility: looking back, her friend William Howitt commented in his Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets (1847) that “city life was part and parcel of her being.”2 Despite renewed interest in Landon, however, recent scholarship often registers her “local attachments” (to borrow Charles Lamb’s phrase) only in passing, if at all, emphasizing instead the self-exoticizing verse that brought her to notice in the 1820s—poetry conjuring the faraway, not the streets outside her door.3 [End Page 27] Yet across Landon’s writing of the 1830s—in fiction, essays, letters and poems—she articulates an intimate connection between the writer’s imagination and the city’s energies, often vaunting a privileged and knowing perspective on the streetscape she inhabits. She launches her 1834 New Monthly Magazine essay “Calendar of the London Seasons” (signed “L.E.L.”) from the perspective of “a cockney, heart and soul” who, with typical Cockney chauvinism, declares she “never in my life looked over with any interest any map but the map of London” a striking comment from someone known for her verses about foreign places. “I never wish to go farther than a hackney-coach can take me; I desire nothing better than pavement beneath my feet,” she explains.4 Her 1831 silver-fork novel Romance and Reality attends to the rhythms and feel of contemporary metropolitan life, while her 1837 novel Ethel Churchill is set in the eighteenth-century city. Such poems as “The Factory” (1835) and her “Scenes in London” series (1836) take up urban life, but, as Margaret Linley points out, even gift-book poetry accompanying illustrations of rural sights, such as “Linmouth” (1833), become excuses for writing about the city.5 After her death, moreover, Landon endures in Victorian cultural memory—in London guidebooks as well as for successive London writers—not only as the sentimental “poetess” with whom we are familiar, but also as a quintessential voice of the city. This essay examines the complex exchanges with literary tradition through which Landon constructs a mode of literary authority tied to urban location as she aggressively makes the case, in both poetry and prose, for a specifically lyric mode of urban consciousness, not as a counterpoint to, but rather bound up with, the city’s motion, crowds, and noise. Anne Janowitz identifies a form of mobile lyric identity connected to urban structures of experience and available, across the nineteenth century, to “persons whose identities, like the city itself, were being forged rather than inherited”: peculiarly urban voices … who intuit a freedom which links them to a whole patchwork of urban culture where they might grasp the freedom of sublime experience.6 Though she goes unmentioned in Janowitz’s account, I argue Landon articulates a version of this democratic identity, at once passionately attached [End Page 28] to metropolitan experience and radically unmoored. Figures of urban mobility crowd into Landon’s writing in the ’30s—from solitary urban wanderers to the “most migratory multitude” of people and vehicles transiting in and out of London.7 Landon uses these figures, and in particular the figure of the woman walker—mobile but also exposed, independent but also literally outside—in order to think through the contradictory and gendered conditions of authorship as well as her relation to the city as social and political community. The woman walker is of course a charged figure in literature of the nineteenth-century city, frequently associated with sexual fallenness, the prostitute, and the urban underclass. In Landon’s writing, however, this figure concentrates the insecurity and also the sense of possibility and provisional autonomy—the activity and freedom...

Shiptown: Between Rural and Urban North India by Ann Grodzins Gold

Reviewed by: Shiptown: Between Rural and Urban North India by Ann Grodzins Gold Kavithaa Rajamony Gold, Ann Grodzins. Shiptown: Between Rural and Urban North India. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. Shiptown: Between Rural and Urban North India explores Jahazpur, a qasba (a small market town) in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Based on Ann Grodzins Gold's ethnographic research, the book traces the history of Shiptown, the literal translation of "Jahazpur." Gold argues that imagination and production of space are important aspects of understanding landlocked Jahazpur and that this space is always in a state of flux. Through her interactions with local people, Gold realizes that the name Jahazpur is a misnomer. There was no large body of water nearby that would explain the name Shiptown. The town was originally called Yagyapur (Sacrifice City) after the mythic snake sacrifice King Janamejaya performed to avenge the death of his father, Parikshit, during the Mahabharata times. Somehow the name Yagyapur had morphed to Jahazpur over the years. Gold constructs the idea of Jahazpur as a qasba (a place that is neither a village nor a town) by contrasting it with the town of Devli on the one hand and the Santosh Nagar colony on the other. Because of its proximity to military camps and industrial enterprises, Devli is highly developed, as is Santosh Nagar, which is a planned space with a "radically mixed population" (73). Jahazpur, however, is marked by the absence of development, is isolated, and is a small, [End Page 424] congested area. At the same time, it is better than surrounding villages because it has good schools and offers job opportunities. Thus, Jahazpur occupies an interstitial space; it is neither a village nor a city. This urban/rural interface is crucial for understanding Jahazpur's market economy. Jahazpur's market, which was originally inside the qasba walls but later spread out, is an unplanned space where distinctions based on caste and religion become blurred. The market economy depended on the agricultural produce people purchased after the harvest. The main goal of the shopkeepers, however, is making profit and Gold observes that trading and ethics have always had a strained relationship. The goods for Jahazpur's market came from manufacturing centers all over the country but were transported to small local shops by handcart. So Jahazpur is a place that reflected true urban consciousness but has a village-like ethos and culture hidden within it. These aspects make it impossible to characterize Jahazpur as an urban or rural space. Gold reiterates the dual nature of the town throughout the book. Delving deeper into Jahazpur's history, Gold observes that the town has been alternately ruled by Hindus and Muslims. The installation of a statue of Lord Ganesh in a meeting hall suggests that Hindus have regained power over Jahazpur's past. Gold clearly establishes the connection between space and religion, emphasizing that festivals and the processions associated with different religions transform known spaces into unfamiliar ones. Festival processions are spectacle performances that create illusion. As Gold notes, "There is an emotional or devotional transformation that happens by introducing emblems of spiritual power, abstract or iconographic, into public space" (103). Like religion, Gold says, spirituality has the power to transform spaces, as seen in the urs (death anniversary) for the Muslim saint Gaji Pir. During this festival, a passage always remains unoccupied between the qawwali (performance of devotional song) and the tomb of the saint, as it is believed that Gaji Baba was sitting there. This becomes a privileged space. The atmosphere created through such spiritual experiences brings a transformation within, which Gold experiences when she is sprinkled with rosewater: "I feel emotion. I feel this headless warrior's dua (blessing)" (145). This passage reflects how spaces are socially constructed and why there is a need to analyze how discourses about multiple notions of inclusion and exclusion are intricately connected with particular spaces. This is clearly evident in Jahazpur, where people who belong to [End Page 425] different castes and religions occupy the specific spaces allotted to them, a practice that creates "homogeneous neighborhoods" (73). Gender also plays a role in segregation. There are spaces in Jahazpur where women rarely...

Brand Preference Towards Footwears

The Indian Footwear sector is a promising one with tremendous opportunity for growth both in the international and domestic market. With low production cost, abundant supply of raw material, evolving retail system, buying patterns and huge consumption market, this sector is posed to grow to great heights. But this market is highly fragmented. The Unorganized sector dominates the industry posing a threat to the organized players. The Indian consumers have become more discerning these days. The double income stance, increased disposable income among the urban middle class, brand and fashion Consciousness due to globalization has all led to changing lifestyle of the Indian consumers. The objective of the present study is to ascertain the level of brand preference towards the footwear. It is found that there is no significant association between socio economic variables except age and their level of brand preference towards footwears.

Becoming Taiwanese: Ethnogenesis in a Colonial City 1880s–1950s by Evan N. Dawley

Reviewed by: Becoming Taiwanese: Ethnogenesis in a Colonial City 1880s–1950s by Evan N. Dawley Madeline Y. Hsu (bio) Evan N. Dawley. Becoming Taiwanese: Ethnogenesis in a Colonial City 1880s–1950s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2019. xxii, 413 pp. Hardcover $65.00, isbn 978-0-674-23720-9. The transformative impact of Japanese colonization of Taiwanese society and identity is commonly presumed but has not been systematically scrutinized, until this monograph. Evan Dawley's deeply researched study of the northern port city of Jilong (Keelung) spans the waning years of the Qing dynasty, the highly organized enactment of Japan's imperial projects after the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki, and the island's conflicted return to Chinese rule in 1945, under the shadow of the Nationalists' losing civil war against the Communists on the mainland. Dawley attributes "the process of Taiwanese ethnic formation" to "collective efforts and a shared urban consciousness" developed on the part of Jilongese elites "in resistance against, and dialogue with, Japanese and Chinese nationalisms" (p. 348). Becoming Taiwanese scrupulously traces how Jilong's leaders adapted to multiple regime changes and navigated in service to local interests politically, economically, and organizationally. Their success in [End Page 119] mitigating the imposition of external controls—such as efforts first to Japanize and then to Sinicize them—furthered the coalescing of community consciousness into ethnic identity formations by the 1920s. Jilong's local elites performed critical services as brokers for the minority regimes that held power and through repeated practice navigating changing authority structures learned to juggle their cooptation into foreign administrations against their defense of certain boundaries around Jilong Taiwaneseness, a balancing act visible in the development of institutions for credit and banking, public welfare, and religious practices. Under Japanese colonization, Jilongese developed attitudes and strategies to conserve local autonomy that came into ready redeployment when Taiwanese, tellingly identifying as benshengren or "insiders," quickly realized the considerable gulf between their interests and the priorities of their new rulers from mainland China, waishengren or "outsiders." From the perspective of Jilongese, the waishengren replaced Japanese as an outsider, authoritarian administration that excluded them from positions of power and economic opportunities. Despite shared Chinese ancestry, the Nationalists were focused on winning the civil war on the mainland, rather than reintegrating Taiwan's population as racial equals, in part because they seemed to have identified too much with the Japanese enemy. Benshengren and waishengren held incompatible conceptions of "modernity," leading each to simultaneously perceive the other as less civilized: benshengren because the mainland Chinese did not uphold the standards of public hygiene and health that had prevailed under Japanese rule and the waishengren because Taiwanese had not participated in the Sinicizing processes forging citizens in service of the modern Chinese nation. The precipitous deterioration of social stability and economic conditions under Nationalist fostered such general anger and discontent that island-wide violence erupted barely a year and a half after Retrocession (guangfu), or the glorious return, leaving wounds that have required decades to scar over and gain resolution. The February 28th Incident, followed by the White Terror and martial law eras, is often credited with sowing the seeds of Taiwanese nationalism, but Dawley traces the deeper roots for Taiwan ethnic consciousness to community strategies and organizational practices that developed under Japanese colonial rule. By focusing on one locality and generations of its Taiwanese leadership, Dawley is able to render more visible how Japanese colonization reshaped Taiwanese society and political behaviors in ways that distinguished islanders from mainlanders when reunited under Nationalist rule in 1945, adding to an already rich scholarship on Taiwan's colonial history, including Ming-cheng Lo's Doctors within Borders: Profession, Ethnicity, and Modernity in Colonial Taiwan (UC Press, 2002); Andrew Morris's Colonial Project, National Game: A History of Baseball in Taiwan (UC Press, 2010); and Paul D. Barclay's Outcasts [End Page 120] of Empire: Japan's Rule on Taiwan's "Savage Border," 1874-1945 (UC Press, 2017). It is Dawley's approach, however, that speaks most directly to ethnic identity formations and how well-equipped Taiwanese had become to resist Nationalist efforts to impose sinicization on them. Becoming Taiwanese illuminates the highly topical question of how...

Urban Consciousness for Sustainable Development

Urban Consciousness for Sustainable Development