This article examines the production of the internationally familiar landscapes of gated high-rise housing, malls and information technology campuses that have been constructed in the National Capital Region, India since the liberalisation of the economy in the early 1990s. It argues that Indian real estate developers have elaborated on one figure of personhood—the upwardly-mobile, high-earning, internationally-oriented ‘professional’—as part of their efforts to convince both potential international investors and Indian consumers to buy into their high-rise housing projects. The figure of the ‘professional’ must be understood as a discursive construct that industry members use to do various kinds of work, rather than as a straightforward description of actual apartment residents. This article traces the work that developers have done to create social indexical linkages between buildings and figures of personhood by analysing a range of communicative genres through which Indian real estate developers have attempted to create demand for their projects. By delineating the metadiscursive practices through which housing comes to have social indexical value, this article helps to elucidate relationships between new urban landscapes and the production of new class identities in India today.
AcharyaBallabh Prasad. 1987. ‘The Indian Urban Land Ceiling Act: A Critique of the 1979 Legislation.’ Habitat International11 (3): 39–51.
2.
AghaAsif. 2007. Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
3.
AppaduraiArjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
4.
ApplbaumKalman. 2004. The Marketing Era: From Professional Practice to Global Provisioning. New York: Routledge.
5.
ArvidssonAdam. 2000. ‘The Therapy of Consumption: Motivation Research and the New Italian Housewife, 1958–62.’ Journal of Material Culture5 (3): 251–74.
6.
BatraLalit. 2005. ‘Vanishing Livelihoods in a “Global” Metropolis.’ In Draft Delhi Master Plan 2021, edited by RoyD.BatraL., 22–32. New Delhi: Hazards Centre.
7.
BaviskarAmita. 2003. ‘Between Violence and Desire: Space, Power and Identity in the Making of Metropolitan Delhi.’ International Social Science Journal55 (1): 89–98.
8.
BijapurkarRama. 2007. We Are Like That Only: Understanding the Logic of Consumer India. New Delhi: Penguin Books India.
9.
BucholtzMaryHallKira. 2004. ‘Language and Identity.’ In A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, edited by DuranitiA., 369–93. Malden: Blackwell.
10.
CaldeiraTeresa. 2000. City of Walls. Berkeley: University of California Press.
11.
DasguptaKeya. 2003. ‘Evictions in Calcutta: Creating the Spaces of “Modernity”.’ City: A Quarterly on Urban Society4 (September): 31–43.
12.
DeshpandeSatish. 2003. Contemporary India: A Sociological View. New Delhi: Penguin Books.
13.
DupontVeronique. 2005. ‘The Idea of a New Chic Delhi through Publicity Hype.’ In The Idea of Delhi, edited by KhoslaR., 78–93. Mumbai: Marg Publications.
14.
FalzonMark-Anthony. 2004. ‘Paragons of Lifestyle: Gated Communities and the Politics of Space in Bombay.’ City & Society16 (2): 145–67.
15.
FernandesLeela. 2004. ‘The Politics of Forgetting: Class Politics, State Power and the Restructuring of Urban Space in India.’ Urban Studies41 (12): 2415–30.
16.
FernandesLeela. 2006. India’s New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
17.
FraserDavid. 2000. ‘Inventing Oasis: Luxury Housing Advertisements and Reconfiguring Domestic Space in Shanghai.’ In The Consumer Revolution in Urban China, edited by DavisD.S., 25–53. Berkeley: University of California Press.
18.
GalSusanIrvineJudith T. 1995. ‘The Boundaries of Languages and Disciplines: How Ideologies Construct Difference.’ Social Research62 (4): 967–1001.
19.
GhertnerD.Asher. 2008. ‘Analysis of New Legal Discourse behind Delhi’s Slum Demolitions.’ Economic and Political Weekly43 (20): 57–66.
20.
KackerSuneetha Dasappa. 2005. ‘The DDA and the Idea of Delhi.’ In The Idea of Delhi, edited by KhoslaR., 68–77. Mumbai: Marg Publications.
21.
KingAnthony. 2002. ‘Speaking from the Margins: “Postmodernism”, Transnationalism and the Imagining of Contemporary Indian Urbanity.’ In Globalization and the Margins, edited by GrantR.RennieJ., 72–90. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
22.
KuppingerPetra. 2004. ‘Exclusive Greenery: New Gated Communities in Cairo.’ City & Society16 (2): 35–62.
23.
LakhaSalim. 1999. ‘The State, Globalisation and Indian Middle-Class Identity.’ In Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia, edited by PinchesM., 252–76. New York: Routledge.
24.
MazzarellaWilliam. 2003. Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India. Durham: Duke University Press.
Menon-SenKalyaniBhanGautam. 2008. Swept Off the Map: Surviving Eviction and Resettlement in Delhi. New Delhi: Yoda Press.
27.
MillerPeterRoseNicholas. 1997. ‘Mobilizing the Consumer: Assembling the Subject of Consumption.’ Theory, Culture, Society14 (1): 1–36.
28.
NairJanaki. 2005. The Promise of the Metropolis: Bangalore’s Twentieth Century. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
29.
National Housing Bank. 2006. Report on Trends and Progress of Housing in India 2005. New Delhi.
30.
NijmanJan. 2000. ‘Mumbai’s Real Estate Market in 1990s: De-regulation, Global Money and Casino Capitalism.’ Economic and Political Weekly35 (7): 575–82.
31.
NijmanJan. 2006. ‘Mumbai’s Mysterious Middle Class.’ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research30 (4): 758–75.
32.
OchsElinor. 1992. ‘Indexing Gender.’ In Rethinking Context, edited by DurantiA.GoodwinC., 335–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
33.
OncuAyse. 1997. ‘The Myth of the “Ideal Home” Travels across Cultural Borders to Istanbul.’ In Space, Culture and Power, edited by OncuA.WeylandP., 56–72. London: Zed Books.
34.
PatelBimal Hasmukh. 1995. ‘The Space of Property Capital: Property Development and Architecture in Ahmedabad.’ PhD diss., University of California at Berkeley.
35.
SearleLlerena. 2010. ‘Making Space for Capital: The Production of Global Landscapes in Contemporary India.’ PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania.
36.
SharmaR.N.2007. ‘The Housing Market in Mumbai Metropolis and its Irrelevance to the Average Citizen.’ In Indian Cities in Transition, edited by ShawA., 283–313. Hyderabad: Orient Longman.
37.
SilversteinMichael. 1996. ‘Monoglot “Standard” in America: Standardisation and Metaphors of Linguistic Hegemony.’ In The Matrix of Language, edited by BrenneisD.MacaulayR.K.S., 284–306. Boulder: Westview Press.
38.
WaldropAnne. 2004. ‘Gating and Class Relations: The Case of a New Delhi “Colony”.’ City and Society16 (2): 93–116.
39.
WebsterChrisGlaszeGeorgFrantzKlaus. 2002. ‘The Global Spread of Gated Communities.’ Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design29 (3): 315–20.
40.
WoolgarSteve. 1991. ‘Configuring the User: The Case of Usability Trials.’ In A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination, edited by LawJ., 57–99. London: Routledge.
41.
ZhangLi. 2010. In Search of Paradise: Middle-Class Living in a Chinese Metropolis. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
