Urban Utopias

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xviii

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2. Introduction: Urban Utopias—Excess and Expulsion in Neoliberal India and Sri Lanka

   • Tereza Kuldova, Mathew A. Varghese

   Pages 1-15

3. Futuristic Visions of Urbanity and Socio-Economic Expulsions

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 17-17

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   2. The Impossibility of World-Class Slum-Free Indian Cities and the Fantasy of ‘Two Indias’

      • Tara van Dijk

      Pages 19-36

   3. Guarded Luxotopias and Expulsions in New Delhi: Aesthetics and Ideology of Outer and Inner Spaces of an Urban Utopia

      • Tereza Kuldova

      Pages 37-52

   4. Golden or Green? Growth Infrastructures and Resistance in Goa

      • Kenneth Bo Nielsen, Solano Jose Savio Da Silva

      Pages 53-73

   5. Vikasanam: The Expansionist Choreography of Space-Making in Kerala

      • Mathew A. Varghese

      Pages 75-95

   6. Cities of Neoliberal Future: Urban Utopia in Indian Science Fiction Cinema

      • Shiju Sam Varughese

      Pages 97-115

4. Urban Megalomaniac Visions and Heritage Utopias

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 117-117

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   2. Manifesting Sri Lankan Megalomania: The Rajapakses’ Vision of Empire and of a Clean Colombo

      • Øivind Fuglerud

      Pages 119-138

   3. A Modern Chakravartin: Mayawati’s New Buddhist Visual Culture

      • Melia Belli Bose

      Pages 139-167

   4. Past as a Metaphor in the New Utopian Imaginations of Heritage in Kerala

      • Rachel A. Varghese

      Pages 169-187

   5. Excavating the City: Metro Rail Construction and Imagination of Past in Contemporary Jaipur

      • Garima Dhabhai

      Pages 189-205

5. Urban Queer Utopias and Bodily Expulsions

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 207-207

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   2. Utopia or Elsewhere: Queer Modernities in Small Town West Bengal

      • Paul Boyce, Rohit K. Dasgupta

      Pages 209-225

   3. Utopia Interrupted: Indian Sex/Gender Dissident Activism and the Everyday Search for a Life Worth Living

      • Caroline Osella

      Pages 227-246

   4. Queerness’s Domain?: Queer Negotiations, Utopian Visions and the Failures of Heterotopias in Bangalore

      • Jacquelyn P. Strey

      Pages 247-267

   5. Epilogue: The Promise of Urbanity—How the City Makes Life Worth Living

      • Robert Pfaller

      Pages 269-279

6. Back Matter

   Pages 281-289

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This book brings anthropologists and critical theorists together in order to investigate utopian visions of the future in the neoliberal cities of India and Sri Lanka. Arguing for the priority of materiality in any analysis of contemporary ideology, the authors explore urban construction projects, special economic zones, fashion ramps, films, archaeological excavations, and various queer spaces. In the process, they reveal how diverse co-existing utopian visions are entangled with local politics and global capital, and show how these utopian visions are at once driven by visions of excess and by increasing expulsions. It’s a dystopia already in the making – one marred by land grabs and forced evictions, rising inequality, and the loss of urbanity and civility. 

• South Asia
• Heritage studies
• Aesthetic theory
• Utopian processes
• Popular cutlure

• Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

  Tereza Kuldova

• Department of Political Science, Maharajas College, Kerala, India

  Mathew A. Varghese

Tereza Kuldova is Researcher at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation, and History, University of Oslo, Norway, and Visiting Senior Researcher at the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Vienna, Austria. 


Mathew A. Varghese is a non-resident research fellow with The Centre for Public Policy Research (CPPR), Kochi, India, and Lecturer at The Maharajas College, Kerala, India. 

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