Social Life of Property: Changing Contours of Middle Class Property Relations in Kolkata
Author: Sreya Sen, sreya.sen89@gmail.com
Department: Centre for the Study of Social Systems
University: Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
Supervisor: Prof. Surinder S. Jodhka
Year of completion: 2023
Language of dissertation: English
Keywords:
middle class
, social mobility
, property ownership
, house/home
Areas of Research:
Regional and Urban Development
, Housing and Built Environment
, Social Transformations and Sociology of Development
Abstract
The thesis discusses the changes in the meanings of property within the increasingly (and internally) differentiated Bengali Hindu middle class in Kolkata by conducting qualitative interviews and deploying ethnographic sensibilities during fieldwork. While both Kolkata as a city and its social life have been widely studied by scholars from multiple disciplinary backgrounds, I propose that a sociological enquiry on property can be empirically located at the intersection of key concepts of property, home, and domesticity. Therefore, the primary intent of this research is to explore the interrelationship between property, ideas of home, and domesticity to highlight the socio-cultural processes that contribute to the existing definition of middle class. To do so, I interviewed home-owners and various real estate and property stakeholders across Kolkata from 2016 through 2018.
Scholars have observed that urban spaces in South Asian cities are layered with cultural meanings, social values, and norms mediated by a shared language. Their arguments attempt to extend the meanings of property beyond the political and economic interpretations, towards the socio-cultural domain. Thereby, the thesis argues that underlying the visibly changing aspirations and anxieties related to property and home-ownership are the concomitant changes in values and meanings people attach to houses, specifically the family dynamics of the Hindu middle classes of Kolkata. The city has witnessed the juxtaposition of colonial history, Partition’s long-term impact, and modern-day developments, and in recent years the political shifts have been rife with multiple narratives of political-developer-crime nexus. As I traced the patterns of residential property investments of the middle classes in the city, it was observed that investment in the eastern fringes of the city, along the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass, was the coveted direction of the city’s expansion. This stretch held promises of maximum development and modern facilities; hence, it demands more academic involvement.
While familiarizing oneself with the everyday life of the middle classes in the city, one observed the bhadralok (educated gentlefolk) negotiations between the space of a house and the sentiment of a home. Here the changes in the land market influence the networks of operation, communities involved, and the circulation of capital. Subsequently, the middle class has brought a significant change in their representations, patterns of consumption, and taste to establish a cultural hegemony over the city. Here the processes of symbolic boundary-making not only set apart the Bengali residents from their non-Bengali neighbours, especially the Marwaris, but also within their community. I also examine some of the familial ties that the Bengali middle classes attach to their identities in this city.
This research attempts to comprehend the intangibility associated with the idea of a home and the manners in which the space itself is imagined and realized. Therefore, through this work, I intend to develop a sociological pathway to understand how ‘home’ as a space is imagined, conceptualized, and assimilated. This essentially demands an emergent understanding of everyday life in urban spaces.
