Paper short abstract:

Urbanisation is often studied through a positivist lens and its motivation described within the terms of political economy. I argue that anthropology should challenge this by embracing less readily quantifiable phenomena, such as the physical and metaphysical networks of urban religion and kinship.

Paper long abstract:

Urban anthropology has the critical tools to challenge the generally positivist bent of urban studies. To illustrate this, I tell the story of Harshini, who grew up in Narahenpita in the 1950s, on the peri-urban fringe of Colombo, Sri Lanka. She lives on the same street where she was born, which, when by the time I met her in 2016, had become a major inner-city thoroughfare. I extrapolate and integrate her lived experience with other forms of evidence that show the demographic, physical, and metaphysical changes that occurred in Narahenpita over five decades of urbanisation. While it is well documented that Colombo has been shaped by the Sinhala Buddhist nationalist agenda (and its shifting political and economic stances), I contend that there are also forces that remain unseen in the urbanist's rush to count the countable. Harshini's family background, religious practices, and economic fortunes provide additional layers of knowledge, rather than contradict the received wisdom of the city's urbanisation. Colombo was and is a multireligious city where the narrative of centralising state hegemony is complicated by pluralist religious practice, and interwoven histories of migration, caste, and ethnic heritage. Although urbanisation is often discussed in terms of observable physical and demographic change (underpinned by political economy) I argue that our image of urban life is constructed more completely when we attend to less readily quantified phenomena.