Introduction: Reclaiming Small Towns

Himalayan Boom Town: Rural–Urban Transformations in Namchi, Sikkim

“…In this way Namchi offers insights into purposeful transformations from rural to urban in small places, so‐called ‘ordinary towns’, where people are — to return to Zeráh and Denis (: 5) — becoming urban through their lifestyles, behaviour and experiences of changing social and spatial relations. Namchi's boom has implications for new urban areas driven by different forces but subject to similar demographic changes, economic vulnerabilities and landscape transformations.…”

“…As Verstappen and Rutten demonstrate in their study of Anand in Gujarat, towns and small cities function as ‘node(s) of interconnection between rural urban and local global mobility’ (: 232). In the introduction to a recent volume on ‘ordinary towns’ in India, Zérah and Denis (: 2) argue that small towns should not be considered simply as the antithesis of the metropolis but ‘need to be studied for themselves, as sites of urbanity, economic activities and social transformations and for their place in urbanization, rural–urban linkages and the global economy’. Such research requires us to ‘redraw the map, reinstating the small towns and big villages where an increasingly large number of people reside and build their livelihoods, slowly embracing the habits and lifestyles of urban consumption’ (ibid.…”

Urbanization beyond the Metropolis: Planning for a Large Number of Small Places in the Global South

“…In his work on towns and small cities in West Bengal, Rumbach (2016) finds that disaster management institutions, knowledge, and capacity are lacking-even following decentralization reforms intended to empower local governments. Zérah and Denis (2017) argue that urban local bodies in small Indian cities are alienated from decisions around land use by top-down regional megaprojects.…”

(Dis)empowering the feminine? Spatializing the interlace of gender‐class‐neoliberal managerialism in a women‐only café in India

“…We identify the emergence of this foodwork as a managerially‐controlled spatial process (Lefebvre, 1991) as participants generate and embody various gendered‐classed‐neoliberal expectations and assumptions. Through occupying and reflecting on the spatial positionalities produced in creating them (Dale & Burrell, 2007; Foucault, 1977), we critically analyze the emerging path–kitchen, which claims to uplift working womanized bodies from being a “poor rural woman” to an “empowered working woman.” This path, when analyzed within the context of urbanization and related migration from villages to cities in India (Zérah & Denis, 2017), unravels a journey through a cafe, a microspace in a large postcolonial city, which appropriates and reproduces dominant social relations of gender and class hierarchy interlaced with neocolonial urban‐rural binarization. The latter is an underexplored vital interest in gender‐work‐organization studies (Lata et al., 2021; Nash, 2018).…”

“…the emerging path-kitchen, which claims to uplift working womanized bodies from being a "poor rural woman" to an "empowered working woman." This path, when analyzed within the context of urbanization and related migration from villages to cities in India (Zérah & Denis, 2017), unravels a journey through a cafe, a microspace in a large postcolonial city, which appropriates and reproduces dominant social relations of gender and class hierarchy interlaced with neocolonial urban-rural binarization. The latter is an underexplored vital interest in gender-work-organization studies (Lata et al, 2021;Nash, 2018).…”