INFRASTRUCTURES FROM ABOVE AND BELOW - LECTURE SERIES IN URBAN STUDIES
7 PM
Leaks and the Hydraulic City by Nikhil Anand, University of Pennsylvania
Regenzzimmer, Kollegienhaus 111, Universität Basel, Petersplatz 1
Nikhil Anand will present a portion from his recent book, Hydraulic City: Water and the Infrastructure of Citizenship in Mumbai. Anand explores the politics of Mumbai’s water infrastructure to demonstrate how citizenship emerges through the continuous efforts to control, maintain, and manage the city's water. The book demonstrates how Mumbai’s water flows, not through a static collection of pipes and valves, but through a dynamic infrastructure built on the relations between residents, plumbers, politicians, engineers, and the 3,000 miles of pipe that bind them. In addition to distributing water, the public water network often reinforces social identities and the exclusion of marginalized groups, as only those actively recognized by city agencies receive legitimate water services.
Nikhil Anand is Assistant Professor in Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. His work focuses on the political ecology of urban infrastructures, and the social and material relations that they entail. He examines how natural resources and specific figurations of the public are mobilized to assemble urban development and environmental projects in Mumbai.
The lecture series “Infrastructure from Above and Below” is organized by Urban Studies at the University of Basel in collaboration with the S AM Swiss Architecture Museum.
(photo: Pipes in Mumbai, © Nikhil Anand)
