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Paper short abstract

I examine the place of rocks in the making of urban life in Hyderabad, India, and how, as a substance, it occupies the place of a solid-fluid, through their interaction with governance, culture, and capitalism.

Paper long abstract

Hyderabad in India lies atop the massive Deccan Plateau, characterized by the volcanic basalt that results in the rocky terrain that is carved out to make space for agriculture, urbanities, and cultural life. The granite formation in this region is millions of years old, and it remains the site of alterations and contestations as city developers meet the demands of an increasingly urbanized population (Lasania, 2022). Rocks are imagined to be enduring materials but years of weathering have sculpted these granites into “gravity-defying” shapes which look like they might collapse at any moment (Gupta, 2021). Local movements were set up to save the rocks from rapid urbanization, a cause that is considered significantly removed from other ecological concerns involving clean water, air, and forest cover due to the more obvious consequences to human life (Society To Save Rocks, 2015).

Through historical analysis and in-depth interviews with various actors, I trace the histories of the rocks as they interact with urban politics and publics, how they remain interpretively flexible (Pinch & Bijker, 2012) through the eyes of city governments, activists, historians, urban features like roads and buildings, and human & non-human species. Rocks, as a substance, remain understudied as a part of the Anthropocene, even as rocks are understood to be essentially entangled with civilization (Clark, 2022). This paper contributes to an understanding of the rock as a solid-fluid substance that emphasizes these entanglements of geology and urban cultures (Luque-Ayala & Nieuwenhuis, 2026; Verne et al., 2025; Wang, 2023).