Friday 29 August 2014

Urban/ Development

Displacement, Revolution, and the New Urban Condition: Theories and Case Studies by Ipsita Chatterjee from Sage India.

Displacement, Revolution, and the New Urban Condition provides a window into the global urban contradiction through the lens of a Third World city. It is not a book on urban India, or a book on Ahmedabad city, or even a book on the Sabarmati River Front Development (SRFD) project, but it is a book that uses all these lenses to conceptualize urban exploitation.

The author develops a dialectical praxis of theory transfer that takes us from the First World to the Third World and back again. In the process, the arrow of theory transfer is not reversed, because theory cannot be transferred by simply changing the direction of the arrow; instead, an attempt is made to (re)produce and (re)inform different conceptual worlds by juxtaposing it with the SRFD project in Ahmedabad city.

This book is, therefore, as much about the poor people of Ahmedabad as it is about global urban displacement and the politics of resettlement and resistance—theory and practice are always inflected, and the chapters demonstrate this inflection deeply and clearly. The point is to change the world, and to do so we must relentlessly struggle to better the concepts that we use to understand it with. This book is such a struggle.


In our Urban Studies section, Rs. 645, in hardback, 180 pages, ISBN : 9788132116608



Social and Community Development Practice by Manohar Pawar from Sage India.

Social and Community Development Practice makes a persuasive case for employing a social development approach to community development practice at local and village levels. Towards this end, the book offers a conceptual clarity of social and community development (SCD) by adding new dimensions. It also shows the significance of social policy education for social and community development workers and the need for expanding community development practice from local levels to international levels.

The author argues that the social work profession itself needs to quickly reorganize and strengthen. It needs to consider alternative modes of preparing social workers and community organizers who can reach out at local levels. The profession also needs to develop indigenous ethical standards for SCD practice. The author’s deep reflections reveal the dire need to refocus on SCD practice to address major issues such as poverty and inequality plaguing vast populations around the world.



In our Development Studies section, Rs. 995, in hardback, 320 pages, ISBN : 9788132118459

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