Centre for the Study of Regional Development (CSRD),
School of Social Sciences (SSS III),
Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)
organises a seminar by
Prof Nihal Perera
(Emeritus Professor of Urban Planning at Ball State University, USA)
on
From Victims to Agents of Change: How Ordinary People Create “Lived” Spaces
on February 27, 3:30 pm
at Room no. 134 (Carto Lab), CSRD, SSS III
Space is central to society. Per mainstream discourses, social space is largely produced by the state and capital. Nihal Perera’s work takes issue with this preconception and addresses the colossal gap left by the leaders in the field of social production of space including Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey. As demonstrated in his People’s Spaces (Routledge 2016), the adaptation, interpretation, transformation, and creation of spaces are also carried out by ordinary people. Perera argues that the vast terrain of ordinary actors and spaces which are currently marginalized should be reflected in academic debates and policy decisions and that the local thinking processes that constitute these spaces need to be acknowledged, enabled, and critiqued.
Adopting an inside-out perspective, empathic to the subjects, and using field studies, Professor Perera will demonstrate how subjects reconcile the difference between the intended goals of imposed/provided spaces and ordinary people’s own understandings and expectations of these, creating spaces for their daily activities and cultural practices. At the other end, the spaces ordinary people produce make the state and capital negotiate their needs. He will pay special attention to the need to switch intellectual tools.
Nihal Perera, PhD, is Emeritus Professor of Urban Planning at Ball State University (USA) and the founder and director of CapAsia, immersive-learning semester in Asia (1999-2021). The two-time Fulbright Scholar (China and Myanmar) was also Senior Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore, at King Mongkut Institute of Technology (Thailand), University of Alberta (Canada) and was a Graham Foundation Fellow. He received three Fulbright-Hays awards, scholarships from the European Union and USAID. A primary contributor to the field of “postcolonial urban studies,” and leading scholar of Colombo, his research focuses on how ordinary people negotiate and create (lived) spaces for their daily activities and cultural practices. He has written articles on gender, race, planning, Chandigarh, Dharavi, Yangon, and Gary (USA) and his books include Decolonizing Ceylon, Transforming Asian Cities, and People’s Spaces.
