1st Edition
Heritage, Crafting Communities and Urban Transformation Durga Puja Festival, Kolkata
This book emphasises the need to empower marginalised communities to contribute to decision-making processes within policy realms. It contributes to ongoing debates in the social sciences about infrastructure rights and citizenship, and it throws insight on human–infrastructure interactions in the informal neighbourhoods of the global South.
The book delves into the complexities of caste, gender, class, and political identities and affiliations associated with the multiple factors of inclusion and exclusion particularly in the case of access to infrastructure in informal settlements in urban areas with an added productive function. This book is about how this historic inner-city, situated, religious idol-crafting community is transforming due to factors including access to physical and social infrastructure, local governance policies, sociopolitical hierarchies, and complexities of informal tenure. Drawing on sociocultural norms, and values of idol-crafting practices, it documents, analyses, and presents the networks and relations of the neighbourhood through a spatial and material lens. Findings contribute to understanding how traditional practices of a crafting community are adapting, appropriating, producing, and reshaping informal spaces in Kumartuli.
The book is aimed at academic audiences across the world researching creative industries, Kolkata’s regeneration agenda, and cultural tourism. It will be of interest to the wide disciplines of Urban Studies, Development Studies, Architecture and Planning, and Culture and Tourism Studies.
Chapter 1 Durga Puja, Kumartuli, and Kolkata
Festival, religion, culture, and politics
Colonial Calcutta’s Durga Puja
Barowari brought inclusivity
Cultural heritage, informality, and idol-crafting practice
Structure of the book
Chapter 2 Crafts and practitioners
Idol-crafting practice and sustainability
Kumbhakar caste relates to pottery
The caste-based potters’ para
Interwoven communities of practice
Emerging actors and shifts
Chapter 3 The spaces of production
The neighbourhood
Streetscapes, alleys, riverfront
The conventional workshop-residence
The ‘factory-shed’ workshop
Chapter 4 Seasonal adaptations and everyday negotiation
The preparation phase
Adaptation, accommodations, and negotiations
Infrastructural disrepair and hopelessness
Social cohesion, coordination, and competition
Will Kumartuli continue to thrive?
Chapter 5 Complexities
The redevelopment plan
Reaction and resistance to the KMDA plan
Tenure and ownership: realities
Informality in the heritage
Chapter 6 The emerging and diverging spaces of production
Kumartuli on a regular day
Changing spaces: repurposed workshop
Agency and new typologies
Appropriation and socio-spatial relations
Spatial flexibility and reparation in a Kolkata basti
Chapter 7 Kumartuli’s future?
Kumartuli’s present
Reparations and public services
Contributions and implications of this research
Recommendations
Personal reflections
Methodological appendix: research strategies
Glossary of Bengali words
Biography
Debapriya Chakrabarti is a researcher in the field of urban studies at the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research and teaches at the Manchester School of Architecture. She is trained as an architect and urban planner. Her research interests lie at the intersection of urban regeneration, cultural industries, and place-based development policies.
