The Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH) invite you to a workshop on:
Questioning the Periurban: Everyday Existences & Possible Cohabitations in Translocalising South Asia
Speaker:
Elisa T. Bertuzzo, Independent Researcher
Tuesday, 29th October 2024, 3:45 PM IST onwards. This event will be held online over Zoom.
About the Talk
In an age determined by global mobility and multilocality, everyday life and livelihoods are increasingly determined by the possibility, and impossibility, of being on the move. Translocal people, goods, as well as ideas, are transforming urban and rural areas, landscapes and territories. Reflecting on fieldwork and mapping exercises conducted in Bangladesh, West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu over a period of 10 years (2012–2022) and within three subsequent projects, my paper – still work in progress – contributes to ongoing debates around the “peri-urban”, by focussing the role played by augmented movement in the production of space. Peri-urban areas are currently confronted with multiple challenges, linked to city-centric prejudices and therewith related poor planning, ecologically hazardous human interventions, as well as fluctuating inhabitation. Through a thick description of everyday cohabitation in metropolitan areas and their hinterlands, I aim to better connote such areas. By valorising their inhabitants’ everyday experiences, practices, as well as spatial perceptions manifested in mental maps, the paper and lecture will depict social spaces on their own right, featuring a specific production of space. Particular attention will be given to forms of adaptation, adoption, and interaction of/among migrant communities, especially seasonal and circular labourers, towards substantiating the hypothesis of society’s translocalisation.
About the Speaker
Elisa T. Bertuzzo studied comparative literature, sociology, and communication and media studies in Augsburg, Berlin and Paris and holds a PhD in Urban Studies. Bridging discourses from the fields of cultural and urban studies, her research focuses on the everyday life facets of urbanisation and settlement in South Asia through a feminist and decolonial lens. On that topic, she published Fragmented Dhaka: Analysing Everyday Life with Henri Lefebvre’s Theory of Production of Space (2009) and Archipelagos: From Urbanisation to Translocalisation (2019). She has held positions such as Post-Doc Fellow at Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies/Free University Berlin (2009–10), Associate Researcher at Humboldt University Berlin (2011–12), Senior Researcher at the Future Cities Laboratory/Singapore-ETH-Centre (2017–18), and was a Fellow of Indo-German Centre for Sustainability/IIT Madras, Chennai, in 2022. In the MA programme “Spatial Strategies” of weißensee kunsthochschule berlin, she taught in the capacities of lecturer (2015-17) and visiting professor (2018-20). She was a curator and project leader with Habitat Forum Berlin, initiating the project “Paradigmising Karail Basti” (2010–16), and with nGbK/Berlin for the project “The Driving Factor” (2020-22). Elisa ran the multimedia project “Archives of Movement”, dealing with the everyday life of seasonal and circular labour migrants in Bangladesh and India (2012-16), and in current research, is mapping the socio-ecological infrastructures, trajectories and transformative intra-actions of humans, seeds and edible plants on the move between South Asia and southern Europe.
Find all the available videos of our previous workshops, here
