Gender, Urban Space, and Everyday Life in the Age of the Delhi Subway System, 2002-2018

FAIN: FT-264777-19

Rashmi Sadana
George Mason University (Fairfax, VA 22030-4444)

Writing a chapter of a monograph detailing ethnographic fieldwork on how the new Delhi metro system reflects and constructs gendered behavior.

The arrival of the Delhi Metro – an ultra-modern, high-tech, and highly surveilled urban rail system, and South Asia’s first major, multi-line metro – has become a touchstone for discussions of urban development, gendered social mobility, and India’s increasingly aspirational culture. A street-level ethnographic view of the city, this book project captures the contradictions of a capital-intensive mega project that seeks to equalize how people of all social classes and backgrounds get around. Focusing on the stories of everyday riders as well as those who designed and built the system, the book documents the story of the Delhi Metro and its social impact since its arrival in 2002. In so doing, this project offers a fresh and contemporary understanding of Delhi that redefines the urban landscape and goes beyond clichés of "third world cities" in the global south.

Associated Products

The Moving City: Scenes from the Delhi Metro and the Social Life of Infrastructure (Book)
Title: The Moving City: Scenes from the Delhi Metro and the Social Life of Infrastructure
Author: Rashmi Sadana
Abstract: The Moving City is a rich and intimate account of urban transformation told through the story of Delhi's Metro, a massive infrastructure project that is reshaping the city's social and urban landscapes. Ethnographic vignettes introduce the feel and form of the Metro and let readers experience the city, scene by scene, stop by stop, as if they, too, have come along for the ride. Laying bare the radical possibilities and concretized inequalities of the Metro, and how people live with and through its built environment, this is a story of women and men on the move, the nature of Indian aspiration, and what it takes morally and materially to sustain urban life. Through exquisite prose, Rashmi Sadana transports the reader to a city shaped by both its Metro and those who depend on it, revealing a perspective on Delhi unlike any other.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520383968/the-moving-city
Primary URL Description: Publisher's website for the book.
Secondary URL: https://www.ucpress.edu/blog/57565/the-understudied-social-lives-of-public-transit/
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's blog post about the book.
Publisher: University of California Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780520383968
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Urban Transport and the Politics of Sensation in Delhi (Article)
Title: Urban Transport and the Politics of Sensation in Delhi
Author: Rashmi Sadana
Abstract: The Delhi Metro has created a new sensory ecology of mobility, Rashmi Sadana argues in this multimedia essay on spaces of inclusion and exclusion in the modern city.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://roadsides.net/sadana-006/
Primary URL Description: The article on the Roadsides journal website.
Access Model: Open access
Format: Journal
Publisher: Roadsides E-Journal

The Understudied Social Lives of Public Transit (Blog Post)
Title: The Understudied Social Lives of Public Transit
Author: Rashmi Sadana
Abstract: An example of the methods and stories found in Rashmi Sadana's The Moving City, her new ethnography of the Delhi Metro urban rail system.
Date: 11/08/2021
Primary URL: https://www.ucpress.edu/blog/57565/the-understudied-social-lives-of-public-transit/
Website: UC Press Blog

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