Local Cultures – Global Spaces

Abstract

Transformations should foreground precarity, just as precarity should foreground transformation. That is what a decolonial approach would entail. It brings centre stage critiques of how precarity and transformation are understood, by whom, and why. Such understandings are significant as they help clarify how particular forms of knowledge are produced and how they generate specific actions such as forced evictions and the resettlement of people and their livelihoods. It is a travesty that elite forms of knowledge production understand precarity as something that can only be addressed by, for example, the formalisation of urban housing or urban livelihoods (for instance, the work of UN-Habitat and ILO, respectively). This is very myopic because it presumes, wrongly, that formalisation will bring with it the best of protections – be it protection from evictions in the case of housing or social protections in the case of livelihoods. The fight for protection is not resolved by formalisation but continues in different forms with different challenges. This paper is a reflective piece. I take a long view in drawing upon my research, teaching and affective engagement with housing and livelihoods in India from the 1980s to date. I argue that while contemporary narratives on urban housing and livelihoods have adopted a more conciliary tone of inclusivity, elite understandings of precarity and transformations remain entrenched amongst a wide range of state and non-state actors. As a result, contemporary urban transformations have not reduced or removed precarity but have entrenched it, displaced it or increased it. Emotions such as anger, compassion, and empathy are urgently needed to understand precarity better in its existing and displaced forms, which is key to more effective urban transformations.