Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses how 'property' becomes a focus of the reordering of social relationships under conditions of neoliberlaiism

Paper long abstract:

Neoliberalism and the attending withdrawal of the state from society leads to a reordering of all social relationships, including the most intimate ones. Whilst India's urban middle-class families are said to be winners of liberalisation, not all sections of the middle class are benefitting in equal measure, as neoliberalism promises individual success and opportunities for those willing to take risks, whilst earlier solidarities disappear.

Bengali middle-class families in Calcutta often experience these tensions and ambiguities in terms of downward social mobility, which makes for precarious presents and uncertain futures. Thus, the post-liberalisation period is marked by moral ambiguity, ie in intra-generational and gender relations, or the devaluing of 'community'.

The paper will focus on 'property' in these debates and discusses how central ideas about the moral dilemmas experienced are articulated in discourses around rights in and ownership of real estate, a new and powerful trope to connect meaningful pasts, criticize the present and imagine futures possibilities.

As new circuits of value emerge at the confluence of local histories, the state and global imageries, many middle-class families are struggling to come to terms with the lure of unimaginable potential riches, to be realised in the form of real estate, and the way property relations challenge existing ideas about appropriately gendered subjectivities.