Event End Date
Event Title
A POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF URBAN PONDSCAPES – THE CASE OF BARDHAMAN (WEST BENGAL) AND NAVSARI (GUJARAT)
Event Details
<strong>Centre for the Study of Regional Development (CSRD)
School of Social Sciences</strong>
a presentation on
<strong>A POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF URBAN PONDSCAPES – THE CASE OF BARDHAMAN (WEST BENGAL) AND NAVSARI (GUJARAT)</strong>
by
<strong>Natasha Cornea, Dr. Anna Zimmer and Prof René Véron </strong>
of the Institute of Geography and Sustainability, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
This presentation is based on findings from the three year project on "Small cities, urban environments, and governance in India" carried out by the research team in West Bengal and Gujarat. In particular, the presentation will seek to introduce the concept of the pondscape, drawing on earlier work on the waterscape and the riverscape. Two case studies are presented: one on Bardhaman (West Bengal) and one on Navsari (Gujarat). Using the theoretical framework of Urban Political Ecology (UPE), the pondscape is understood as a landscape of power. To analyse this landscape, the research explores everyday governance of accessing ponds, the transformation of the pondscape in recent time and the environmental imaginaries attached to it. While important differences exist between both states in terms of the way ponds are embedded culturally and socially, ponds in both sites represent a crucial urban space and resource that is the focus of a variety of productive, reproductive and spiritual practices. Analysing their entanglement in an urban political ecology allows to contribute to the concept of the waterscape in its fragmented diversity and complexity as well as to push further debate within UPE on a situated UPE and the meaning of the 'urban'.
Date: <strong>23rd November, 2015</strong>