Splintering urbanism and nationalism in the “world-class city”: reflections on field work on stand-up comedy production in Mumbai

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the contradictions I encountered during fieldwork in the city of Mumbai, India, studying stand-up comedy as a site of struggle over globalization and national identity. In this essay I will focus on my engagement with the theoretical framework of “splintering urbanism” (Graham and Marvin 2001)—which I adopted to situate the emergence of stand-up comedy in the context of the production of ‘global’, ‘world-class’ urban space in Mumbai. During my fieldwork, I observed that the processes of splintering urbanism in Mumbai had produced conditions that encouraged the rise of nationalism, which runs contrary to the assumption that splintering urbanism creates a “global urban archipelago”. This paper argues that producing Mumbai as a world-class city is equated with national advancement and cultural transformation. Specifically, Mumbai becomes India’s global city, and the mobilizing of resources and labor for the global city based economic growth is promoted through nationalist rhetoric. Mumbai’s stand-up comedy scene is a good site to study these transformations because it has been a site of controversy over national identity since the 2010’s and because its emergence is almost entirely dependent on the splintering of Mumbai’s infrastructure services.

KEYWORDS:

• Mumbai
• splintering urbanism
• stand-up comedy
• nationalism
• world-class city

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Aju James is a doctoral candidate in American Culture Studies at Bowling Green State University, OH. He also serves as the Minority Faculty Fellow in the College of Education and Professional Development at Marshall University. His work focuses on the influence of media production in urban planning and reorganization in India.

Notes

1 Stand-up comedy producers typically own or work for companies that rent performance spaces and organize comedy shows at those venues. They are typically concerned with creating a unique brand for their company that can foster a dedicated audience. This is usually done by arranging the best line-up of comedians possible on any given night, a variety of business models focused on food and beverages, and keeping audiences engaged with productions in digital media.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Stoddard-&O’Neill SCCS Fund, Fall 2017, provided by the School of Cultural and Critical Studies, Bowling Green State University.