Paper short abstract:

It argues that in order to understand subversive modes of representation amidst the growing 'specter of capital', the ontology of world anthropologies needs to go beyond the dichotomization of the 'civil' and the 'political' in everyday life.

Paper long abstract:

In the contemporary 'urban' condition, liberal democracy and transnational sovereignty offer us numerous avenues for the realization of 'World Anthroplogies' across space and time. But scholars like Ananya Roy (2015) caution us against the adoption of '… a universal grammar of cityness, modified by (exotic) empirical variation'. They harp on the celebration of a contingent historicity. Howsoever it definitely goes beyond doubt that the 'planetary urbanization' (Brenner 2013) syndrome is soon making deep inroads into the postcolonial social fabric. The rise of a caste-class consociation and the growth of a hegemonic middle class (Heller and Fernandes 2006), for instance, seem to have had engendered an ossification of a neoliberal ethic that definitely dares to ruffle up the very ontology of a 'postcolonial aura' (Dirlik 1994) or the very 'ordinariness' (Robinson 2005) of the city. Apart from my current research work on the role of neighborhood associations in shaping the contours of urban politics in Delhi, the paper shall draw upon studies on the evolution and growth of two key themes viz., gentrification and urban renewal, in cities of both the Global North and South. In so doing, it argues that in order to understand subversive modes of representation amidst the growing 'specter of capital' (Chibber 2013), the ontology of world anthropologies needs to go beyond the dichotomy of the 'civil' and the 'political' in everyday life. Further, we do need to unabashedly get prepared for capturing the ethos of what, I prefer to term as, 'symbiotic spaces of neo-populist sovereignty'