Lorena Gibson

India's recent rapid economic growth has not improved the lives of those living in poverty, such as those residing in Howrah's bastis (slums), which have been described as " deplorable " , " dirty " , " filthy " and " overcrowded " since the late 1800s. In this chapter I argue that Howrah's bastis, many of which are inhabited by the minority and marginalised Muslim population, are " forgotten places " : historically and politically constructed habitats that are neglected, but nevertheless deeply inhabited, by the state (Lee and Yeoh, Urban Studies 41(12): 2295–2301, 2004; Fernandes, Critical Asian Studies 42(2): 265–272, 2010). In these bastis, services that are the responsibility of the state, such as access to education or the civic amenities discussed by Walters (this volume), are not adequately provided for, resulting in uneven development and vulnerable urban spaces within Howrah city. Furthermore, I show how " forgotten places " leave a gap that NGOs and grassroots organisations try to fill, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork to describe the efforts of Howrah Pilot Project, an organisation that runs grassroots-level development initiatives in one of Howrah's bastis. By considering how Howrah Pilot Project works to provide Muslim children from the poorest households within that basti with access to education—widely considered a basic human right—I argue that it can be viewed as a response to the processes of " active forgetting " perpetuated through historical sociocultural structures of inequality and injustice. However, such organisations need to be augmented by a responsive state in order to achieve meaningful, long-term, beneficial change.

In this article I reflect on how a moment of crisis - having to fire a research assistant - became an epiphany that triggered my interest in agency, which ultimately became the focus for my doctoral dissertation. The aims of this article are twofold: first, to contribute to literature illustrating how serendipity and unexpected difficulties can shape ethnographic practice (e.g. Andrews, 2005; Cottle, 2001; Konecki, 2005; Pieke, 2000); and second, to describe how I came to appreciate the ways in which agency is embedded within and informed by the historical, sociocultural, and religious structures that shape the lives of Muslim women living in areas of urban poverty in Howrah.

This article is constructed as three narratives that are situated within the distinct and separate spatio-temporal contexts of social activism and research of the three contributors. Each contributor’s role and position within this context has inflected his/her discursive approach, ranging from a polemical stance to one of empiricism and reflexivity. The article thus presents multiple modes of writing, analysis, and engagement, drawing on participant-observation to oral history documentation, activist experience, and field survey. The trajectory of each contribution is linked and we aim to provide a cohesive account in three voices, offering imbricated views of a pedagogical context in an extremely poor, Muslim slum in Howrah, West Bengal, India. This article-cum-photo essay is also an illustration of how collaborative writing — inclusive of activist experience and academic research — can address the issues of poverty and hope as it examines the role of education in such a context.

This thesis is a comparative study of exceptional women organising for social change through grassroots-level development initiatives in education and income- generation in urban poor areas of Howrah and Kolkata (West Bengal, India) and Lae (Papua New Guinea). It explores the relationship between hope, agency, and development by investigating the historically specific circumstances and practices of women organising collectively as they struggle to create more meaningful lives for themselves, their families, and the larger communities in which they live.

Research for this study is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with four grassroots organisations: two led by Muslim women in Howrah and Kolkata, and two led by Christian women in Lae. Data was gathered using a diverse portfolio of qualitative methods and analysed with a common conceptual framework that draws on Bourdieu’s theory of practice.

This study combines analyses of historical processes, habitat, and structured social space with in-depth, place-based ethnography to show that as socially embedded beings, the culturally constructed ways in which we hope and act for development are lodged in social relations. It illustrates the dialectic relationship between structure and agency by showing how these active, articulate, intelligent women living in poverty sometimes reproduce the structural inequalities they are working to transform. This thesis identifies a number of ‘side effects’ of development, including collective hope and collective agency, which serve to sustain collective action in the face of adversity, hardship, and failure to achieve social change. It increases our understanding of development by offering a critical, comparative mode of scholarship that focuses on people’s hopes and agency and allows for a reading in terms of possibilities as well as success and failure.

This MA thesis seeks to explore the meaning of Hip-Hop for members of the Aotearoa Hip- Hop community. Based on participant-observation and interviews with members of the Hip-Hop community conducted during 2001-2003, this thesis provides an ethnographic study into what I have identified as the twelve key characteristics of Aotearoa Hip-Hop (authenticity, community, education, empowerment, history, knowledge, originality, representation, resistance, respect, skill and style). The thesis focuses on how these attributes are embodied in performance and in ongoing dialogues within the Hip-Hop community, as well as in the ways in which gender is negotiated in Aotearoa Hip-Hop, revealing the complex and sometimes contradictory nature of Hip-Hop culture in Aotearoa. It also considers the influence of the concept of whakapapa on Aotearoa Hip-Hop’s distinctive historical trope, showing how ongoing dialogues within the Hip- Hop community occur at events and online, enacting Hip-Hop communities at these imagined and virtual sites.