RETHINKING INTER-COMMUNITY RELATIONS AND PRODUCTION OF SPACE: A STUDY OF SERAMPORE'S SOCIETY

Abstract

This thesis portrays and analyses through ethnographic and historical research how the neighbourhoods and public spaces of Serampore participate as a set of relations in, and are produced through, various modes of community interaction. It shows how Serampore makes an important backdrop for the study of industrial workers’ lives in Bengal by being home to a wide spectrum of social, spatial, sanitary, religious, and economic relations between communities through different periods of history.

The scope of this thesis contains two operative factors. The first argues that the conflicted coexistence of historical and contemporary heterogeneous social and spatial practices among dominant and subversive groups of Serampore are constituted through caste, class, and/or ethnicity that do not operate as distinct social variables, but rather interact with each other as a web of networks. The second highlights the importance of space as a process of constitution of such identities.