A collaborative book project by Malini Ranganathan, Sapana Doshi, and David Pike
In today’s cities, corruption narratives are at the heart of a widely accepted yet highly malleable discourse about the exercise of power. Brought to life through street-corner rumors, public protests, and backroom deals, corruption talk does not simply call out the bribe-taking bureaucrat. Rather, corruption stories have become a way to perceive rapid and unequal urban spatial change. In this collaborative book project and digital platform, geographers Malini Ranganathan and Sapana Doshi and literary and film studies scholar David Pike study the work of corruption stories in the imagination of global cities. The project begins with ethnographic forays in two Indian cities—Mumbai and Bangalore—and brings them into conversation with a cross-section of real and imagined urban worlds. In everyday life and in literature, culture, and film, the experience of urban transformation—from the sale of a plot of land to the construction of a luxury high-rise to the fate of a slum—unfolds through corruption plots. At stake in these plots are contested notions of the public, which construe who is harmed, who is to blame, and ultimately, what is the meaning of ethics and citizenship in struggles over space. These narratives and the intensities of feeling they conjure matter because they shape how people negotiate conditions of injustice and inequality and act on city spaces. Existing scholarship across the social sciences and humanities only tells part of how ordinary urban dwellers experience and narrate corruption. Rather than adopting a narrow definition of corruption often given by international development agendas, this project shows how corruption discourse enables a contradictory sense of ethics and diverse notions of the public—what is referred to here as “imagined publics.” It does so by exploring how stories of corruption are situated historically, and how they invoke shifting ethical registers for grasping both spectacular and everyday places.
Award period: August 1, 2017 through July 31, 2019
Khayelitsha Slum, Cape Town. Photo: M Ranganathan
“Jan Sunvai” or “People’s Hearing” in a Mumbai Slum to expose corrupt land grabs by developers. Photo: S Doshi
Slum near Asian Games Village, Bangalore (Ejjipura). Many slums in this vicinity were evicted in advance of the games. Photo: M Ranganathan
II. INFRASTRUCTURE
Street Justice. An unnamed youth stands in front of one of the many graffiti displays that blanket the undersides of flyovers and various on- and off-ramps at the intersection of 116 Street and Boyacá Avenue to commemorate the shooting death in August 2011 of the unarmed 16-year-old graffiti artist Diego Felipe Becerra, Photo: Archivo SEMANA
Water “mafia” in Bangalore. Photo: M Ranganathan
Water “mafia” in Bangalore. Image: Bangalore Mirror
III. PERIPHERIES
Always-contested property claims, especially around charitable/religious/educational “trusts”. “This property belongs to Hidyathullakhan. Trespassers will be prosecuted.” Photo: M Ranganathan
IV. SWAMPLANDS
Wetland in Bangalore. Photo: M Ranganathan
V. WORLD-CLASS ZONES
A special economic zone built with dubious legal clearance on one of Bangalore’s wetlands. Photo: M Ranganathan
Billboard hoarding advertising new luxury apartment complex in Bangalore. Photo M Ranganathan