Attend via Zoom: https://myumi.ch/Jw117

If the entanglements of real estate and finance capital are pivotal in ongoing urban transformations in cities of the global south, then a less visible but equally vital dimension is the process of land assembly on which residential and commercial real estate speculation and development are premised. This talk pries open the value chain of land assembly that underlies these transformations in a rapidly expanding peri-urban frontier of Bengaluru, India. Drawing on detailed interviews with land market intermediaries, operating across different scales, who were instrumental in assembling agricultural land for a large apartment complex, my talk shows how existing forms of social power and local knowledge are harnessed to create inter-scalar linkages that enable the creation and extraction of value in Indian real estate. It makes the case for understanding the economic and cultural work of intermediaries in animating land’s value chain as ‘articulation work’.

Gidwani is an economic and labor geographer who works on agrarian and urban transformations. His co-edited book, Chronicles of a Global City: Speculative Lives and Unsettled Futures in Bengaluru was recently published by University of Minnesota Press.

Made possible with the generous support of the Title VI grant from the U.S. Department of Education.