Urban Emotions Behind the Veil: An Early-Twentieth Century Muslim Wedding in Shahjahanabad

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 649-665
Author(s):  
MEGAN EATON ROBB

AbstractWhile scholarship on pardah nashīn or veiled women in South Asia has emphasized the links between women's ritual and urban landscape, what has received less attention is the ways that domestic spaces, affective work performed in those spaces, and material culture of the home were instrumental in mapping the South Asian city during the late colonial period. Aesthetic decisions, gift-giving, and performative critiques of the public rituals of marriage acted as loci for the self-fashioning of both the colonial-era city and women's modern selves. Through close reading of an account of the customs of Delhi by a pardah nashīn woman S. Begum Dehlavi, this article shows that veiled women mapped the city through their consumption and exchange of goods, as well as through the construction and affirmation of a complex web of families in the city.

2019 ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Antonio Díaz Sotelo

ResumenEl objeto de este texto es la exposición y análisis de los procedimientos de intervención pública en el paisaje urbano de la ciudad de Madrid. El objetivo último de ese análisis es identificar el modelo público para el paisaje urbano en Madrid.  Este texto se centra en la exposición analítica de documentos oficiales antes que en sus conclusiones definitivas, por lo que le corresponde la denominación de Informe.  Este informe se organiza en dos partes: una exposición teórica que enmarca el posterior análisis de instrumentos administrativos de intervención en el paisaje.  Se concibe como parte de la investigación de Tesis Doctoral titulada “Transformación Reciente del Paisaje Comercial en el Centro Histórico”, acotada en un marco temporal de apenas diez años, marcado por la crisis y la desregulación económica, y en un marco territorial limitado al centro histórico de Madrid. Esa investigación se enmarca en una reflexión general sobre la relación entre actividad económica y paisaje urbano. El interés de este informe para la investigación es sobre la utilidad de ese modelo público para el paisaje urbano en Madrid como parámetro para valorar la rentabilidad de los esfuerzos públicos y privados en la mejora de la calidad del paisaje urbano.AbstractThe purpose of this text is the exhibition and analysis of public intervention procedures in the urban landscape of the city of Madrid. The ultimate goal of this analysis is to identify the public model for the urban landscape in Madrid. This text focuses on the analytical exposition of official documents rather than on their final conclusions, for which reason the denomination of Report corresponds. This report is organized in two parts: a theoretical exposition that frames the subsequent analysis of administrative instruments of intervention in the landscape. It is conceived as part of the Doctoral Thesis research titled "Recent Transformation of the Commercial Landscape in the Historic Center", bounded within a period of just ten years, marked by the crisis and economic deregulation, and in a territorial framework limited to the historic center of Madrid. This research is part of a general reflexion on the relationship between economic activity and urban landscape. The interest of this report for the investigation is about the utility of that public model for the urban landscape in Madrid as a parameter to assess the profitability of public and private efforts in improving the quality of the urban landscape.


Author(s):  
M.S. Parvathi ◽  

Burton Pike (1981) terms the cityscapes represented in literature as word-cities whose depiction captures the spatial significance evoked by the city-image and simultaneously, articulates the social psychology of its inhabitants (pp. 243). This intertwining of the social and the spatial animates the concept of spatiality, which informs the positionality of urban subjects, (be it the verticality of the city or the horizonality of the landscape) and determines their standpoint (Keith and Pile, 1993). The spatial politics underlying cityscapes, thus, determine the modes of social production of sexed corporeality. In turn, the body as a cultural product modifies and reinscribes the urban landscape according to its changing demographic needs. The dialectic relationship between the city and the bodies embedded in them orient familial, social, and sexual relations and inform the discursive practices underlying the division of urban spaces into public and private domains. The geographical and social positioning of the bodies within the paradigm of the public/private binary regulates the process of individuation of the bodies into subjects. The distinction between the public and the private is deeply rooted in spatial practices that isolate a private sphere of domestic, embodied activity from the putatively disembodied political, public sphere. Historically, women have been treated as private and embodied and the politics of the demarcated spaces are employed to control and limit women’s mobility. This gendered politics underlying the situating practices apropos public and private spaces inform the representations of space in literary texts. Manu Joseph’s novels, Serious Men (2010) and The Illicit Happiness of Other People (2012), are situated in the word-cities of Mumbai and Chennai respectively whose urban spaces are structured by such spatial practices underlying the politics of location. The paper attempts to problematize the nature of gendered spatializations informing the location of characters in Serious Men and The Illicit Happiness of Other People.


‘City of Gold’, ‘Urbs Prima in Indis’, ‘Maximum City’: no Indian metropolis has captivated the public imagination quite like Mumbai. The past decade has seen an explosion of historical writing on the city that was once Bombay. This book, featuring new essays by its finest historians, presents a rich sample of Bombay’s palimpsestic pasts. It considers the making of urban communities and spaces, the workings of power and the nationalist makeover of the colonial city. In addressing these themes, the contributors to this volume engage critically with the scholarship of a distinguished historian of this frenetic metropolis. For over five decades, Jim Masselos has brought to life with skill and empathy Bombay’s hidden histories. His books and essays have traversed an extraordinarily diverse range of subjects, from the actions of the city’s elites to the struggles of its most humble denizens. His pioneering research has opened up new perspectives and inspired those who have followed in his wake. Bombay Before Mumbai is a fitting tribute to Masselos’ enduring contribution to South Asian urban history


Africa ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 88 (2) ◽  
pp. 352-384
Author(s):  
Tasha Rijke-Epstein

AbstractBy considering the lifespan of a garden, this article investigates the myriad spatial practices of forgetting and remembering the colonial and postcolonial pasts that people apply to their urban surroundings in Mahajanga, Madagascar. In the heart of an ancient residential and commercial neighbourhood in this multi-ethnic Indian Ocean port city sits the Jardin Ralaimongo. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, I explore the trajectory of the garden to elucidate the ways in which different socio-political groups have drawn on this site to negotiate differences, frame collective memories, and stake their claims to the urban landscape. I show how, as city inhabitants have reworked the spaces of the garden, so too has the park itself – its layout, material artefacts and location within the city – constrained the possibilities of what can be remembered and silenced, and who can be bound to one another, in contemporary times. Over its hundred-year history, this site has been founded, forgotten and reincarnated as a memorial to a succession of revered leaders, thus serving as a kind of spatial register of the historical socio-political changes that have given rise to the city. This article suggests that the deterioration of colonial-era architectural forms through long-standing neglect and abandonment may be understood as an active spatial practice of effacing some dimensions of the past, while the subsequent recuperation of deserted public spaces by certain groups is an effort to position themselves as legitimate residents and express their attachment to the city.


Author(s):  
Stephen J. Shoemaker

As the Christianization of civic life progressed rapidly throughout the Roman Empire, one of the most effective means by which Christianity came to inhabit the Empire’s cities was through the development of public liturgy.  Ritual practices that had once been held in private, often in the homes of individual Christians, now emerged into the public sphere, even in the streets of the city itself, with the establishment of stational and processional liturgies.  Memories of the apostles and saints were also inscribed onto the urban landscape, as shrines and pilgrimage presented another means of Christianizing this space.  Perhaps nowhere are all of these elements more on display than in Jerusalem during the lifetimes of Melania the Elder and Melania the Younger. This chapter explores the unprecedented knowledge of the songs that were sung in late ancient Christian worship, made known through the recently published Jerusalem Georgian Chantbook (iadgari/tropologion).


2020 ◽  
pp. 230-320
Author(s):  
Alejandro Vera

This chapter deals with music participation in the public fiestas, both religious and secular, and other public spectacles during the colonial period. The first section studies “Nativity celebrations,” such as Christmas, the birth of members of the royal family, and others. The analysis of two villancicos, composed for some of these occasions, shows how the genre was integrated into these festive contexts and how it interacted with other genres and styles. The second section is dedicated to different kinds of fiestas, in both the city itself and its margins, also dealing with official prohibitions to non-official music. Along with civic and religious ceremonies, this section considers the stage as a privileged space for the performance of music and dance, in spite of the absence of a public theater during most of the period studied. The final section examines music presence in burials and, in a broader sense, the relationship between music and death, showing that the former was frequently considered as a tool to reach the supernatural life.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-225
Author(s):  
Anis Rahman

This article offers a historical critique of state-administered media in South Asia. Taking Bangladesh as a media epicentre, the article extrapolates the geopolitical consequences of the colonial era and postcolonial transformation in the South Asian region under which the modern state-administered media in Bangladesh continue to survive, albeit declining. Drawing from field interviews and documentary research, the article further highlights the historical struggles of the state-broadcasters, particularly Bangladesh Television, in providing public service to fragmented masses. The findings suggest that despite its failure to break free from colonial and authoritarian political misuse, state-broadcasting continues to matter for the public service to a limited extent, not because how pervasive its propaganda is but how well its programming serves the diverse publics despite persistent political mistreatment and growing market pressures. The findings are reflected with other contexts of South Asian state-broadcasting.


2020 ◽  
pp. 4
Author(s):  
Josué Eliseo Llanque Chana

ResumenLos centros históricos latinoamericanos, unas de las creaciones más interesantes de nuestra cultura, se enfrentan a profundas mutaciones físicas, sociales, funcionales, medioambientales y sobre todo paisajísticas. El paisaje del espacio público como lugar descubierto, generalmente rodeado de edificios, decorado por estatuas, fuentes, áreas de estancia, vegetación, etc., y destinado al embellecimiento de una ciudad, ha sido concebido para que los ciudadanos se reúnan a percibir la ciudad y a observar el espectáculo arquitectónico de sus principales edificios monumentales. El objetivo de la presente investigación es proponer una nueva metodología para la valoración de la calidad visual del paisaje urbano en áreas de interés patrimonial, considerada desde la visión, que se complementa con otros atributos físico-ambientales, visual-estéticos y socio-psicológicos. Adicionalmente, la calidad visual constituye un componente de la calidad ambiental y de la vida urbana que fomenta el sentido de pertenencia de las personas con su medio natural y construido. Su aplicación a los espacios patrimoniales latinoamericanos lo convierten en una nueva herramienta metodológica para su adaptación.AbstractThe historical centers of Latin America, some of the most interesting creations of our culture, face profound physical, social, functional, environmental and especially landscape changes. The landscape of the public space as a discovered place, generally surrounded by buildings, decorated by statues, fountains, living areas, vegetation, etc., and intended to beautify a city, has been conceived so that citizens come together to perceive the city and to observe the architectural spectacle of its main monumental buildings. The objective of this research is to propose a new methodology for the assessment of the visual quality of the urban landscape in areas of heritage interest, considered from the perspective, which is complemented with other physical-environmental, visual-aesthetic and socio-psychological attributes. Additionally, visual quality constitutes a component of environmental quality and urban life that fosters people's sense of belonging to their natural and built environment. Its application to Latin American heritage spaces make it a new methodological tool for its adaptation.


2019 ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Antonio Díaz Sotelo

ResumenEl objeto de este texto es la exposición y análisis de los procedimientos de intervención pública en el paisaje urbano de la ciudad de Madrid. El objetivo último de ese análisis es identificar el modelo público para el paisaje urbano en Madrid.  Este texto se centra en la exposición analítica de documentos oficiales antes que en sus conclusiones definitivas, por lo que le corresponde la denominación de Informe.  Este informe se organiza en dos partes: una exposición teórica que enmarca el posterior análisis de instrumentos administrativos de intervención en el paisaje.  Se concibe como parte de la investigación de Tesis Doctoral titulada “Transformación Reciente del Paisaje Comercial en el Centro Histórico”, acotada en un marco temporal de apenas diez años, marcado por la crisis y la desregulación económica, y en un marco territorial limitado al centro histórico de Madrid. Esa investigación se enmarca en una reflexión general sobre la relación entre actividad económica y paisaje urbano. El interés de este informe para la investigación es sobre la utilidad de ese modelo público para el paisaje urbano en Madrid como parámetro para valorar la rentabilidad de los esfuerzos públicos y privados en la mejora de la calidad del paisaje urbano.AbstractThe purpose of this text is the exhibition and analysis of public intervention procedures in the urban landscape of the city of Madrid. The ultimate goal of this analysis is to identify the public model for the urban landscape in Madrid. This text focuses on the analytical exposition of official documents rather than on their final conclusions, for which reason the denomination of Report corresponds. This report is organized in two parts: a theoretical exposition that frames the subsequent analysis of administrative instruments of intervention in the landscape. It is conceived as part of the Doctoral Thesis research titled "Recent Transformation of the Commercial Landscape in the Historic Center", bounded within a period of just ten years, marked by the crisis and economic deregulation, and in a territorial framework limited to the historic center of Madrid. This research is part of a general reflexion on the relationship between economic activity and urban landscape. The interest of this report for the investigation is about the utility of that public model for the urban landscape in Madrid as a parameter to assess the profitability of public and private efforts in improving the quality of the urban landscape.


Ethnohistory ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 667-688
Author(s):  
Servando Z. Hinojosa

Abstract Guatemalan colonial-period documents have proven valuable for revealing Maya thinking about bone, especially how Mayas imbued bones with personal identity. At key moments in the narratives of three Guatemalan manuscripts, the Rabinal Achi, Xpantzay Cartulary, and Pop Wuj, Mayas materialized the self of important individuals through their bones, treating the bones at times like captives. By doing this, colonial-era Mayas were revealing their ideational linkages with Mayas from the Classic and Postclassic periods who practiced ancestor veneration using bones. In this network of practices, Classic-, Postclassic-, and colonial-era Mayas linked human bones to enduring personal forces and used bones to support claims of ancestry to specific people. This study explores this feature of Maya life, and then analyzes how Mayas of the last hundred years now value bone more for other, non-ancestral ritual utilities. They have shifted from treating certain bones as a materialization of self to viewing bones in terms of the practical potentialities the bones encase, employing a mode of engagement exemplified by Tz’utujiil Maya bonesetters who treat broken bones with sacralized bones and bone surrogates. This work examines how bone use has oscillated between these two modes, contrasting how Mayas of the Classic, Postclassic, and colonial periods treated certain bones as a materialization of self against how Mayas of more recent decades have come to emphasize the sacred instrumentality of bone and put it to active use.


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