Doctoral Dissertation Research: Green Evictions: The Politics of Land Privatization and Access in Delhi

三十年来，印度德里第一次发生了大规模的非正式穷人被强行驱逐的事件。这些驱逐是由城市公共土地私有化推动的。媒体、政客和法院经常将德里穷人的流离失所解释为环境改善的过程：通过驱逐穷人来绿化城市。这项研究的目的是考察环境话语如何塑造印度城市主义的人文地理。它特别关注环境话语在使公共土地私有化合法化方面的作用，这种私有化如何影响德里贫困居民的生计和保有权保障，以及穷人如何理解和应对这些不断变化的环境状况和表现。本博士论文研究项目分为三个阶段，探讨环境话语在关键地理节点的产生、传播和接受。第一阶段将考察精英对环境的看法，以询问反贫穷的、往往是新自由主义的环境代表是如何产生和组织的。第二阶段将部分通过政府调查和测绘工作，探讨这些陈述如何传播到非正式住区，以及非正式穷人如何接受和回应这些陈述。这项研究的第三阶段将调查德里的一个定居点如何通过自我绘制地图和创建自己的“绿色城市”替代代表来有效地阻止驱逐。本博士论文研究将采用多种定性方法，包括参与者观察、结构化和非结构化访谈、印刷材料审查、档案研究和小规模结构化调查。这项研究将通过探讨环境法规和话语如何与新自由主义经济议程相一致的问题，促进关于全球南方新自由主义改革和城市重组的学术和政策辩论。该项目对世界各地和国家在新自由主义经济改革条件下的产权、土地保有权、公共空间和贫困政策等问题具有广泛的影响。它将为促进可持续和公平的城市发展项目提供具体的政策建议，评估印度城市经济改革的社会影响，并深入了解城市穷人如何应对监管和政治限制。它还将有助于城市地理学内部关于全球南部空间重组和城市治理模式的辩论，以及对印度城市当前政治经济和城市化变化的讨论。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立研究生涯。

For the first time in thirty years, large-scale, forced evictions of the informal poor are taking place in Delhi, India. These evictions are driven by the privatization of public urban land. The displacement of Delhi's poor is explained and often justified by the media, politicians and the courts as a process of environmental improvement: greening the city by evicting the poor. The objective of this study is to examine how environmental discourse is shaping the human geography of Indian urbanism. In particular, it looks at the role of environmental discourse in legitimating the privatization of public land, how this privatization has affected the livelihoods and tenure security of Delhi's poor residents, and how the poor understand and respond to these changing conditions and representations of the environment. This doctoral dissertation research project consists of three phases, which explore the production, circulation, and reception of environmental discourse at key geographic nodes. The first phase will examine elite perceptions of the environment to interrogate how anti-poor and often neoliberal representations of the environment are produced and organized. The second phase will explore how these representations are spread into informal settlements, in part through government survey and mapping exercises, and how the informal poor receive and respond to these representations. The study's third phase will investigate how one settlement in Delhi has effectively thwarted eviction by self-mapping and creating its own alternative representation of a "green city." This doctoral dissertation research will employ multiple qualitative methods, including participant observation, structured and unstructured interviews, examination of print materials, archival research, and small-scale structured surveys. This study will contribute to academic and policy debates on neoliberal reform and urban restructuring in the global South by probing into the question of how environmental regulations and discourses come to align with a neoliberal economic agenda.This project has wide-ranging implications for the issues of property rights, land tenure, public space, and poverty policy under conditions of neoliberal economic reform for localities and states around the world. It will provide concrete policy recommendations for promoting sustainable and equitable urban development projects, evaluate the social impacts of economic reform in Indian cities, and provide insight into how the urban poor respond to regulatory and political constraints. It will also contribute to debates within urban geography over patterns of spatial restructuring and urban governance in the global South and to discussions of current changes in the political economy and urbanism of Indian cities. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award will also provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.