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by D. Asher Ghertner (Author)
Rule by Aesthetics offers a powerful examination of the process and experience of mass demolition in the world's second largest city of Delhi, India. Using Delhi's millennial effort to become a 'world-class city, ' the book shows how aesthetic norms can replace the procedures of mapping and surveying typically considered necessary to administer space. This practice of evaluating territory based on its adherence to aesthetic norms - what Ghertner calls 'rule by aesthetics' - allowed the state in Delhi to intervene in the once ungovernable space of slums, overcoming its historical reliance on inaccurate maps and statistics. Slums hence were declared illegal because they looked illegal, an arrangement that led to the displacement of a million slum residents in the first decade of the 21st century.
D. Asher Ghertner is an interdisciplinary scholar who uses the contemporary politics of slum demolition and urban renewal in India to challenge conventional theories of economic transition, city planning and political rule. He is Assistant Professor in Geography and Director of the South Asian Studies Program at Rutgers University. He previously taught at the London School of Economics.
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