The Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (IAS @ UBD) recently held a seminar on “Emplacements: Production and Social Reproduction in an Industrial Neighbourhood of Delhi” by Assistant Professor Sanjeev Routray of IAS. For more information about the seminar, please see the flyer below.
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Sanjeev ROUTRAY
Assistant Professor
PhD (University of British Columbia, Vancouver)
Room: FASS 2.16
Email: sanjeev.routray@ubd.edu.bn / sanjeevkroutray@gmail.com
About
Dr. Sanjeev Routray is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam.
He is a sociologist-anthropologist, critical urbanist, and migration specialist of South Asia and beyond. His areas of expertise include urban poverty, political and legal mobilizations, transregional migration, and caste and labor market negotiations.
In his first book entitled The Right to be Counted: The Urban Poor and The Politics of Resettlement in Delhi (2022), he examines how Delhi’s urban poor, in an effort to gain visibility from the local state, incrementally stake their claims to a house and life in the city. He describes the process of claims-making as an attempt by the political community of the poor to assert its existence and numerical strength, and he demonstrates how this struggle to be counted constitutes the systematic and protracted political process by which the poor claim their substantive entitlements and become entrenched in the city.
He illustrates how the quest for documenting the numerical presence and visibility of the poor is linked to tactics and countertactics, including the mediated politics of the intermediaries, documentary and inscriptive struggles to prove existence and authenticity, legal battles to contest state categorization and classification, and numerous cultural idioms and resistance strategies. Analyzing social, political, and economic relationships alike, this book traces the ways the poor work to gain a foothold in Delhi.
He is currently writing his second book tentatively titled The Plumbers of Delhi: Migration, Caste Sociality, and Citizenship in an Occupational Community. This book examines the mechanisms of caste sociality in shaping migration histories, urban labor market outcomes, community formations in cities, and rural-urban citizenship struggles among communities of plumbers in Delhi, India, and the Middle East.
Dr. Routray has received fellowships from the Urban Studies Foundation (UK), The Foundation for Urban and Regional Studies (UK), Zeit-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius Foundation (Germany), and International Development Research Centre (Canada) for his research.
Research Interests
• Migrants and their lives
• Urban transformations
• Experiences of poverty
• Postcolonial politics
• Caste and social mobility
• Transregionalism and cosmopolitanisms
Select Publications
Book
Routray, S. (2022). The Right to be Counted: The Urban Poor and the Politics of Resettlement in Delhi. California: Stanford University Press. https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=34165
Journal Articles
Routray, Sanjeev (2023). “Paper Struggles: Documents, Inscriptions, and Citizenship Negotiations in Delhi.” City: Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, and Action, 27 (1-2): 137-161. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2023.2180827
Routray, S. (2021). “Timepass” and “Setting”: The Meanings, Relationships, and Politics of Urban Informal Work in Delhi. Urban Studies. Online First: https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980211031721
Routray, S. (2014). The Postcolonial City and its Displaced Poor: Rethinking ‘Political Society’ in Delhi.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 38(6): 2292-2308. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-2427.12192
News
New Article on Documentation and Citizenship in Delhi
Assistant Professor Sanjeev Routray of the Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (IAS @ UBD) has recently published an article entitled “Paper Struggles: Documents, Inscriptions, and Citizenship Negotiations in Delhi.” Published in the journal, City: Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, Action, the article examines how certain documents, such as ration cards and voter […]
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New Article on the Urban Informal Economy in Delhi
Assistant Professor Sanjeev Routray of the Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (IAS @ UBD) has recently published an article on aspects of the informal economy in Delhi, India. Entitled “Timepass’ and ‘Setting’: The Meanings, Relationships, and Politics of Urban Informal Work in Delhi” and published in Urban Studies, the abstract of the […]
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New Book on the Urban Poor and Resettlement in Delhi
Assistant Professor Sanjeev Routray of the Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (IAS @ UBD) has recently published a book with Stanford University Press entitled The Right to be Counted: The Urban Poor and The Politics of Resettlement in Delhi. The official description of the book is as follows: In the last 30 […]
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