Bulldozers in the City Economies of Excess and Repair

Document Type

Research Article

Abstract

Bulldozers have been ubiquitous machines on the Indian landscape in the last two decades, but of late have been violently deployed by the majoritarian state to dispossess Muslims. This article brings together two very different lives of the machine—one in which the machine becomes the adjudicator of justice through the extrajudicial exercise of power and the other, that circulates in the construction industry, its repair and refurbishment. It puts science and technological studies in conversation with urban political economy to argue how machines actively shape urban lives through construction and demolition and by being in circulation. By looking more closely at the history of the machine globally and in India, its deployment at sites of demolitions, and its end point in Delhi’s scrap markets, this article uncovers the diverse relationship the machine has with the city and its people. These machines redraw the relationship between state, law, and people on one hand, and buyers, sellers, owners, drivers, and spare-parts businessowners on the other, to show that the political lives of these actors collide and converge but do not remain the same.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-11767244

Publication Date

3-19-2025

Journal

Public Culture

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