Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the ambivalent and contradictory condition of Dharavi, India’s prototypical slum, to interrogate ideas and concepts of modern (political) society. Focussing on informal modes of sociality and governance the paper uses the concept of translation to understand the projects and experiences of “slum”-residents.

Paper long abstract:

The paper centres on Dharavi, the prototypical slum in Indian discourse. It combines a look from afar with a look from inside. "Slums" represent key experimental sites with governmental projects, economic interests and middle class sensitivities on one side, and the social engagement of people considered marginalized, and their strategies of resistance, on the other. Slums are under contradictory pressures, to get "normalized" as also to contain and preserve difference. Those considered marginalized engage with the state and the public sphere in new ways, including creating their own modalities of governance. The concepts of "political society", "civil society", or "social movement" cannot adequately grasp this new constellation. People engage with the larger world in a wide range of ways, helping create new political possibilities, but also interlinking with a wide range of other networks, including various religious ones. They are exploring new livelihood prospects, but also new ways to gain respect, give life a new horizon, and find security and a place. Many of these engagements happen on the borderline of what is conventionally being distinguished as public and private. We have to rethink the usefulness of this distinction, as we have to rethink our ideas of sociality. The paper takes "slums" as exemplars of informality, economically and socially, considering informality as both constraining and enabling, but also as in peculiar ways intertwined with the "formal" sector. The paper will suggest the concept of "translation" to access this complex new and undertheorized area of relationship and interaction.