Periurban Cartographies: Kolkata’s Ecologies and Settled Ruralities

Periurban Cartographies looks through the prism of the ＂almost
urban＂ to consider what a ＂city＂ is or could be. In doing so, the book
challenges assumptions and reconsiders design practices.

The research reported upon in this study draws on thick
description of everyday life and diffuse power in periurban Gangetic
West Bengal/Kolkata. It does so in the hope of enriching our
understanding of incremental modes of political empowerment and
the futures they make. The intention is to not just communicate the
transformations at work in creating a particular ＂kind of urban,＂ but
also to point to connections that make us rethink the ways in which
change happens.

The book is a contribution to work being done on urban theory-
building from elsewhere than the Global North, specifically from
Asia, and periurban Gangetic West Bengal/Kolkata. It is not simply
a look at a novel and singular condition in and of itself but uses that
singularity to better understand periurbanism generally and urban
political ecologies particularly. Current scholarship in urban political
ecology reminds us of some of the enduring tensions around the conceptualizations of region, socio-natures and agency, and
practice. The urban political ecology approach in this book offers a
way of moving past some of these tensions.