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Sites of entitlement : claim, negotiation and struggle in Mumbai

McFarlane, C.; Desai, R.

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Authors

R. Desai



Abstract

This paper develops a conception of “sites of entitlement” as a basis for better understanding how infrastructure and services are perceived and experienced in informal settlements. While legal and policy frameworks are often viewed as the source of entitlements to infrastructure and services, the complexity of provision, access and negotiation in informal settlements demands a conception of entitlement that exceeds those domains. Based on ethnographic research on sanitation and water in informal settlements in Mumbai, we focus on the ways in which people’s everyday experiences, interactions and practices constitute sites of entitlement. These sites are unevenly produced, contested, often in flux and ambivalent, sometimes made through collective struggle and at other times through quiet individual practice, and always constituted by social relations. Sites of entitlement emerge in close relation to moral economies, and are characterized by often profound and – for research, policy and practice – challenging levels of spatial and temporal variation. We argue that sites of entitlement are vital for thinking through the possibilities of realizing the universal right to sanitation and water

Citation

McFarlane, C., & Desai, R. (2015). Sites of entitlement : claim, negotiation and struggle in Mumbai. Environment and Urbanization, 27(2), 441-454. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956247815583635

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Oct 1, 2015
Deposit Date Feb 12, 2015
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Environment and Urbanization
Print ISSN 0956-2478
Electronic ISSN 1746-0301
Publisher SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 27
Issue 2
Pages 441-454
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/0956247815583635
Keywords Informal settlement, Moral economy, Mumbai, Sanitation, Sites of entitlement.

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).





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