Theme: “Transcendence and Control in a Global Mega City“
Dates: October 3–5, 2011
Sponsored by: ●PUKAR ●Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity ●Tata Institute of Social Sciences
This second Mumbai workshop on urban aspirations proceeds from the insight that the very notion of aspiration implies dissatisfaction with the limitation of given realities (session 4), and that the real or symbolic transcendence of these limits by one section of society often entails the active constraint of others (session 1). By turning from the metaphor of space (spaces of belonging, imagination, movement) to the non-metaphoric realities of physical space as an inherently limited resource, we confront the problem of mutually exclusive claims to occupancy and use (session 2). The rise of the mega city is closely associated with that of a new elite whose access to global cultural forms contributes to the appearance of having escaped the specificities of place. This transcendence of locality depends on an accumulation of social capital, which simultaneously implies regimes of distinction and other techniques of social differentiation. These do not go unchallenged (session 3). By what logics are some constrained to labor, that others may be free (session 6)? Transcendence, moreover, is not the sole purview of elites. Claims to the universal are made as well by groups rendered marginal in the dominant national imaginary (sessions 4 & 5), and the form of the claims they make often contain an implicit challenge to national modes of belonging as well as to the consumerist cosmopolitanism of urban elites.
Brochure: http://www.mmg.mpg.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Publikationen/Pdf/2011-10-03_Urban-Aspirations-Workshop.pdf 
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