Cheri Histories: Working Lives and the Production of the Neighbourhood in Madras City, c. 1870-1950

切里历史：马德拉斯市邻里的工作生活和生产，c。

• 批准号: 259640885
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Ravi Ahuja
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS)
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2013-12-31 至 2016-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/259640885?language=en
• 关键词: Cheri; Histories; Working; Lives; Production

This research project identifies the emergence of a distinct type of neighbourhood in the late nineteenth century, constituted through the urban working lives of a diverse section of the workforce in the city of Madras. The study defines 'urban working lives' as an incessant articulation of interconnected social relations pertaining to land, labour and socio-political cultures, which constantly produced and reproduced the spaces of the workers' neighbourhoods. Unlike conventional histories of labour, which focus on a single occupational group (usually factory labour), the examination of urban working lives captures a large variety of old and new labour forms, indicating a historical transformation of socio-spatial relations. Migrants drawn to Madras in search of work primarily inhabited squatter settlements or cheris, which proliferated with the growth of the city. 'Cheri' is a Tamil word, which denotes rural settlements housing untouchable caste groups in spatial segregation from the other castes of the village. Stripped of its caste specificity, the 'cheri' was also a generalized term used in colonial records to describe workers' neighbourhoods in the city. Dubbed as poor, overcrowded and parasitic, these neighbourhoods represent unintended spaces of colonial 'modernity'. Cheris cannot be reduced to objects of colonial social engineering or to a presumably timeless, inert extension of the rural landscape. Rather, they constitute a dynamic field of forces where different circuits of formal and informal urban labour encountered each other and combined. Each of these encounters produced new spaces of work and living, transformed relations between the city and the rural hinterland, redefined communitarian identities like caste and religion, manufactured conflicting socio-cultural and political imaginaries of the city space and inscribed several meanings on the cheris. Moreover, the histories of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century neighbourhoods were tied to older settlements, forms and cultures of labour, which were transformed or submerged, resulting in complex quotidian work rhythms and a layered temporality within the built landscape of the city. By way of five interconnected case studies the project has the following main objectives: (a) to historically unravel the productive as well as reproductive social practices of everyday working lives, which generated the cheri as a distinct spatial formation in the urban landscape of Madras City; (b) to understand how these spaces were perceived, experienced, contested and appropriated by diverse labouring groups and (c) how these social and symbolic practices impacted on elite politics and sometimes deflected the trajectories of official town planning.

这个研究项目确定了一个独特的邻里类型的出现在世纪后期，构成了通过城市工作生活的不同部分的劳动力在马德拉斯市。该研究将“城市工作生活”定义为与土地、劳动力和社会政治文化有关的相互关联的社会关系的不断表达，这些关系不断产生和复制工人社区的空间。传统的劳动力历史侧重于一个职业群体（通常是工厂劳动力），而对城市劳动生活的考察则不同，它涵盖了大量新旧劳动形式，表明社会空间关系的历史性转变。被吸引到马德拉斯寻找工作的移民主要居住在棚户区或cheris，随着城市的发展而激增。“Cheri”是泰米尔语，指居住在与村里其他种姓空间隔离的农村定居点。除去种姓的特殊性，“cheri”也是殖民地记录中用来描述城市中工人社区的通用术语。这些社区被称为贫穷、拥挤和寄生，代表了殖民“现代性”的非故意空间。切里斯不能被简化为殖民社会工程的对象，也不能被简化为乡村景观的一个假定的永恒的、惰性的延伸。相反，它们构成了一个动态的力量场，不同的正规和非正规城市劳动力循环在这里相遇并结合在一起。每一次相遇都产生了新的工作和生活空间，改变了城市和农村腹地之间的关系，重新定义了种姓和宗教等社群主义身份，制造了城市空间的社会文化和政治冲突，并在cheris上刻下了几种意义。此外，19世纪末和20世纪初街区的历史与较老的定居点、劳动形式和文化联系在一起，这些都被改造或淹没，造成了复杂的工作节奏和城市建筑景观中的分层时间性。通过五个相互关联的案例研究，该项目有以下主要目标：（a）从历史上揭示日常工作生活中的生产性和生殖性社会实践，这些实践产生了cheri，成为马德拉斯市城市景观中独特的空间形态;（B）了解这些空间是如何被感知、体验的，（c）这些社会和象征性做法如何影响精英政治，有时偏离官方城镇规划的轨道。