Articles by Swapna Banerjee-Guha

Since place is the arena where social structure and social relations interact, all praxis are grounded in specific places, giving rise to relations of power, domination and resistance. Underlying the spatialities one finds the material framework of social relations, power structure and discursive methodologies of the common people. A look at the dynamics of "space" and "spatiality" as reflected in the research in globalisation studies.

An adequate understanding of the contemporary neoliberal urban process requires a grasp of its politico-economic ideological framework, multi-scalar institutional forms, diverse socio-political links and multiple contradictions. This paper examines the active engagement of neoliberalism that is not only moulding the concept of "urban", but is simultaneously intensifying unevenness in inter-urban and intra-urban development. It focuses on the National Urban Renewal Mission, the official carrier of neoliberal urbanism, and its various implications. The paper illustrates the process of restructuring in a few cities in different states, most importantly, in Mumbai, the country's budding "international financial centre", with a focus on specific "development" projects.

With the academisation of radical geographical thought and its further development from radical to critical in recent years, and a growing importance of emerging critique of erstwhile social theories in various disciplines, the globalisation discourse on space-time convergence is increasingly occupying a significant position in the ongoing debates in critical geography. It, therefore, becomes important to examine the process of globalisation with a spatial dialectical perspective and bring out the facets of political economy of space through such geographical researches.

The belated entry of geographers into the field of analysis of international operations of large industrial organisations was initially marked by a stress on individual organisations and regional issues, gradually progressed towards combining structural issues with organisational researches. Interactive approaches and the incorporation of social theory were additions in the process. With the development of a political economy perspective, however, geographical research began to identify the underlying web of economic forces and social relations of the international industrial operations and hence could integrate industrial and development geography.