Through ethnographic material gathered in Muslim woodworking mohallas (neighbourhoods) of a North Indian city, this article attends to ‘performed’ elements of everyday convivial interactions. It builds on work situating conviviality as a normative project aimed at understanding and fostering interaction within urban space that bridges forms of difference. Through descriptive accounts the article illustrates how convivial exchanges can embody degrees of instrumentality and conceal relations of power and marginalisation that act to silence outrage or contestation. This ‘performed conviviality’ is dealt with in a broader context of ‘scale’ that considers how marginalisation and connectedness (the marginal hub) intersect in even the most mundane moments of convivial exchange. By tracing processes of marginalisation, boundary making and bordering within the local, citywide, state and international context, the article follows the production of a marginalised or ‘border’ subjectivity through to the individual level. The subjectivities produced in this context act to enforce degrees of self-imposed silence amongst those subjected to processes of marginalisation. In addition, again attending to scale through an acknowledgement of the connected nature of the mohallas, the article also considers the role of conviviality in global chains of supply through the creation and maintenance of bonds and obligations that facilitate production in the city’s wood industry.
Chambers, Thomas
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences\Department of Social Sciences
Year of publication: 2019Date of RADAR deposit: 2017-09-21