Location FSI HALL, South Asian University, Akbar Bhawan, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi 110021
By Dr Jules Naudet
Abstract: How do the inhabitants of the most privileged neighborhoods of big metropolises see the poor? How do they distance themselves (both physically and symbolically) from them? Can their representations of the urban poor be analyzed as part of traditional or neoliberal repertoires of action and justification? To answer these questions, this paper will be drawing on the Delhi part of a comparative research on upper-class and upper-middle-class residents of the most socially selective areas (both in the inner-cities and in the suburbs) of Paris, São Paulo and New Delhi. The paper will explore the articulation between five themes, whose possible mobilization as subjective reasons for self-segregation has been systematically tested in the interviews. These topics are: (1) insecurity and crime-exposure, (2) hygiene and the risks of contamination, (3) the attachment to a moral order that would need to be protected, (4) the naturalization (or racialization) of poverty, and (5) the various valuations of competition and merit vs. solidarity.
Dr. Jules Naudet studied at Sciences Po. Paris and the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales. His research has been published in several journals including Contributions to Indian Sociology. His book "Entrer dans l’élite : Parcours de réussite en France, aux Etats-Unis et en Inde" was published in 2012 by the Presses Universitaires de France. He is currently the head of the ‘Politics and Society Division’ at the CSH.