The Moving City - by Rashmi Sadana (Paperback)

About the Book

"The Moving City is a rich and intimate account of urban transformation told through the story of Delhi's Metro, a massive infrastructure project reshaping the city's social and urban landscapes. Presented as a series of ethnographic vignettes, Rashmi Sadana introduces the feel and form of the Metro and lets readers experience the city, scene by scene, stop by stop, as if they, too, have come along for the ride. It is a book that lays bare the radical possibilities and concretized inequalities of the Metro, how people live with and through the built environment, 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, Sadana transports the reader into a city shaped by its metro and those who depend on it, offering a revealing and unique perspective on Delhi unlike any other"--

Book Synopsis

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.

From the Back Cover

"A poetic narrative that dissolves the perception of Delhi's Metro as hard infrastructure and embeds it in the life places that are remade, reconnected, and reconceived through this intervention. Most critically, this book challenges us to nuance our imagination of infrastructure as an instrument through which urban cultures are formed and evolve."--Rahul Mehrotra, John T. Dunlop Professor of Housing and Urbanization at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University

"Richly researched and vividly written, The Moving City shows how high technology remakes urban spaces and citizens in the Global South. Rashmi Sadana's ethnography portrays the social life of infrastructure to brilliantly illuminate the ambiguous promise of modernity in a megacity."--Amita Baviskar, author of Uncivil City: Ecology, Equity and the Commons in Delhi

"The Moving City reveals the impact of infrastructure on social life in the first decade of the Delhi metro system. With a careful ethnographic ear, Rashmi Sadana patiently listens to the everyday experiences of riders, and she renders these layered voices in vignettes that richly illuminate the affecting power of gendered stories. The result is a rich and distinctive contribution to the anthropology of contemporary urban space and place."--Steven Feld, Senior Scholar, School for Advanced Research

"The Moving City is a deft account of life on the Delhi Metro, an infrastructure that has radically reshaped Delhi by offering connectivity and a new kind of social space. Through thought-provoking descriptions of connections across scenes and lives, Sadana's ethnography reads lightly yet with insight and conviction."--Sarah Pinto, author of Daughters of Parvati: Women and Madness in Contemporary India

Review Quotes

"The moving city is a vivid snapshot of Delhi in times of infrastructural change, suitable for courses on infrastructure, urbanism, and ethnographic storytelling more broadly."
-- "Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute"

"[A] beautifully crafted account of how life in Delhi becomes narrated through the Metro as it joins and cuts across disparate urban spaces."-- "Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute"

"A radical work that throws open established modes of Indian anthropological writing."-- "Biblio: A Review of Books"

"The strength of this book lies in what it has to offer as a method of encountering urban spaces. . . .This ethnography would be a welcome addition to courses in urban anthropology, anthropologies of gender, class, South Asia, and ethnographic method."-- "Anthropological Quarterly"

"Vivid and rich with detail. . . .Sadana...emphasizes the uniqueness of the Delhi Metro by centering the voices of the many people who make up its daily life."-- "Metropolitics"

"The Moving City is an important contribution to the growing literature on urban infrastructure. It is evocative and shows us the variegated ways in which mobility is mediated by aspirations, fears, exclusions and political negotiations."-- "Contributions to Indian Sociology"

"The vignettes captured by the author, constituting in effect a collection of ukiyo-e, 'pictures of the floating world, ' is a delightful and interesting twist on ethnographic writing and representation. . . Sadana's book offers a very special approach to the study of urban infrastructure and demonstrates how these little floating scenes of everyday life can tell us something about big and complex social issues."-- "Asian Anthropology"

About the Author

Rashmi Sadana is Associate Professor of Anthropology at George Mason University and author of English Heart, Hindi Heartland: The Political Life of Literature in India.