Urbanization without guarantees: articulation, rentier capitalism and occupancy on the agrarian urban frontier

Cowan, Thomas

Abstract

This article engages with the work of Stuart Hall to examine conditions of agrarian city-making on India’s urban frontier. The article draws on Hall’s writings on articulation and marxist method to propose an approach to studying the urban frontier “without guarantees’. That is without a priori presumption of the total consolidation of the non-urban to a financial-capitalist urban fabric. Examining India’s agrarian-urban frontier, the article argues that the expansion of capitalist urbanization is being commanded, appropriated, and rejected by a decidedly agrarian set of actors, social relations, and technologies. On the frontier both the state and capital are subject to a series of agrarian articulations: bargains, compromises, and reformulations with agrarian and non-urban society that alter the very character of urbanization itself and challenge the received grammars of critical urban theory. In contrast to “extended urbanisation” approaches that assert the primacy of macrogeographical capitalist intentions, the article argues following Hall, that these urban-agrarian articulations on the frontier are fundamentally uncertain, requiring specific political and ideological work to sustain and frequently subject to collapse and resettlement. The final section of the article outlines three core conditions of agrarian-urban articulation in the present conjuncture: rentier capitalism; land occupancy and territorial blockade.

Citation

Cowan, T. (2024). Urbanization without guarantees: articulation, rentier capitalism and occupancy on the agrarian urban frontier. Urban Geography, https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2024.2308399

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 14, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Feb 12, 2024
• Publication Date: Feb 12, 2024
• Deposit Date: Mar 8, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 12, 2024
• Journal: Urban Geography
• Print ISSN: 0272-3638
• Electronic ISSN: 1938-2847
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2024.2308399
• Keywords: Urban Studies, Geography, Planning and Development
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/31880708
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02723638.2024.2308399