An architecture of displacement: Spatializing identity and refugee space in Beirut and Calcutta

مرکز و کتابخانه مطالعات اسلامی به زبان های اروپایی

منو

" An architecture of displacement: Spatializing identity and refugee space in Beirut and Calcutta "
Romola Sanyal C. G. Crysler

Document Type	:	Latin Dissertation
Language of Document	:	English
Record Number	:	54412
Doc. No	:	TL24366
Call number	:	‭3353158‬
Main Entry	:	Romola Sanyal
Title & Author	:	An architecture of displacement: Spatializing identity and refugee space in Beirut and Calcutta\ Romola Sanyal
College	:	University of California, Berkeley
Date	:	2008
Degree	:	Ph.D.
student score	:	2008
Page No	:	359
Abstract	:	Refugees form a growing and complex concern for countries around the world particularly as their numbers and status remain liminal for decades creating destabilizing conditions within their host countries. This dissertation sought to uncover the ways in which policies towards refugee camps and settlements have created new ways of forging community and citizenship among host societies and refugees. Using a combination of ethnographic research, maps and images, this dissertation found how parts of the two of the largest refugee populations of the twentieth century (Indians from 1947 and Palestinians from 1948) produced two divergent refugee spaces. Although the two migrations mirror each other in many respects, there are significant differences in the political motivations of the refugees and the countries that displaced and received them. The politics of belonging in both cases influenced the ways in which the spaces of refugees evolved. Although both contexts involved forms of insurgency, these acts and intentions have different audiences. In India, refugee colonies evolved into middle class suburbs as a result of insurgent citizenship exercised by partition refugees in a largely sympathetic society and apathetic government. In Lebanon, refugee camps evolved into slums as a result of insurgent nationalism exercised by Palestinians pitted against a largely hostile and politically sensitive society and government. These historical case studies on refugees allowed a certain re-conceptualization of refugees from victims to those with agency. They studied refugee spaces through the discourse on urbanization rather than humanitarianism thus enabling an escape from the discussion of them as "exigent cities" or "emergency urbanism." Finally, they opened new questions about the formation of community and the relationship between people and space. Ultimately, the dissertation argued, the architecture of refugee spaces indicate how citizenship, the state and forms of belonging to different communities of people are constructed and maintained in the face of shifting geo-politics.
Subject	:	Communication and the arts; Social sciences; Refugee camps; Lebanon; Refugee colonies; Architecture; Calcutta; Urbanization of displacement; Displacement; Beirut; Refugees; Palestinian; India; History; Middle Eastern history; Social structure; Urban planning; 0999:Urban planning; 0700:Social structure; 0333:Middle Eastern history; 0332:History; 0729:Architecture
Added Entry	:	C. G. Crysler
Added Entry	:	University of California, Berkeley