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The urban village, agrarian transformation, and rentier capitalism in Gurgaon, India

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  • Cowan, Thomas

Abstract

Gurgaon, India's “millennium city”, is today synonymous with India's embrace of global real estate capital and private sector‐led urban development. This paper asserts that Gurgaon's spectacular urbanisation has been fundamentally underpinned by an uneven process of land acquisition, exemption and agrarian transformation. Shifting away from dispossession‐centred analyses of contemporary urbanisation in India, this paper explores Gurgaon's “urban villages” to consider the uneven integration of agrarian classes into emerging urban real estate markets. Through an examination of differential experiences of land acquisition and agrarian social change among Gurgaon's landowning classes, the paper seeks to trace complex and nonlinear processes of agrarian transformation which make possible landscapes of global accumulation.

Suggested Citation

  • Cowan, Thomas, 2018. "The urban village, agrarian transformation, and rentier capitalism in Gurgaon, India," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 89699, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:89699
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    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/89699/
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    1. Gavin Shatkin, 2014. "Contesting the Indian City: Global Visions and the Politics of the Local," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(1), pages 1-13, January.
    2. Neil Brenner & Christian Schmid, 2014. "The ‘Urban Age’ in Question," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(3), pages 731-755, May.
    3. Harvey, David, 2005. "The New Imperialism," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199278084.
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    Cited by:

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    2. Michael Goldman, 2023. "Speculative urbanism and the urban-financial conjuncture: Interrogating the afterlives of the financial crisis," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 55(2), pages 367-387, March.
    3. Meher Bhagia & Mallika Bose, 2024. "Who owns the city? Neoliberal urbanism and land purchases in Gurgaon, India," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(3), pages 445-461, February.
    4. Rajorshi Ray & Jillet Sarah Sam, 2023. "Off-platform Social Networks and Gig Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic in India," Journal of South Asian Development, , vol. 18(3), pages 359-382, December.
    5. Aditya Ray, 2020. "IT-Oriented Infrastructural Development, Urban Co-Dependencies, and the Reconfiguration of Everyday Politics in Pune, India," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(4), pages 371-383.
    6. Choithani, Chetan & van Duijne, Robbin Jan & Nijman, Jan, 2021. "Changing livelihoods at India’s rural–urban transition," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    7. Devra Waldman, 2022. "AIMING FOR THE ‘GREEN’: (Post)Colonial and Aesthetic Politics in the Design of a Purified Gated Environment," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(2), pages 235-252, March.
    8. Alessandra Mezzadri & Kaustav Banerjee, 2021. "The afterlife of industrial work: Urban-to-rural labour transitions from the factory to the informal economy," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2021-158, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    9. Thomas Cowan, 2021. "UNCERTAIN GROUNDS: Cartographic Negotiation and Digitized Property on the Urban Frontier," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(3), pages 442-457, May.
    10. Michael Schwind & Uwe Altrock, 2023. "Negotiating Land in Rurban Bengaluru, South India," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-17, February.
    11. Paula Meth & Tom Goodfellow & Alison Todes & Sarah Charlton, 2021. "Conceptualizing African Urban Peripheries," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(6), pages 985-1007, November.
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    14. Lalitha Kamath & Malay Kotal, 2023. "SPOTLIGHTING MIGRANT AGENCY: How Migratory Movements and Temporariness Drive Peripheral Urbanization in Mumbai's Agrarian‐urban Edge," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1), pages 71-89, January.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    India; accumulation by dispossession; urban studies; agrarian transitions; urban villages; articulation; ES/J500057/1;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q15 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Land Ownership and Tenure; Land Reform; Land Use; Irrigation; Agriculture and Environment

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