Property & Citizenship

My ongoing dissertation project looks at what the United Nations has famously called the “challenge of slums” for urban governments. However, I approach the challenge, which will increasingly mark global cities in the 21st century, from the perspective of slum-dwellers themselves to ask: how do marginalized urban residents negotiate political concessions from the very same political and democratic institutions that obstruct their access to full citizenship? Further, what does the persistence of slum spaces, despite decades of slum clearance or upgradation, say about the distribution of socio-economic rights in the city? I answer these questions by focusing on the citizenship of slum-dwellers through the lens of their property claims.

Publications

Journal Articles

(Forthcoming) Jonnalagadda, Indivar. 2023. “Waiting for Dignity Housing: Cruel governance and unaccounted time in Hyderabad.” Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 41 (1).
Jonnalagadda, Indivar. “Of Political Entrepreneurs: Assembling Community and Social Capital in Hyderabad’s Informal Settlements.” Urban Studies, Online First (2021), https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980211014120.
Jonnalagadda, Indivar, Ryan Stock, and Karan Misquitta. “Titling as a Contested Process: Conditional Land Rights and Subaltern Citizenship in South India.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 45, no. 3 (2021): 458–76.
Jonnalagadda, Indivar. “Citizenship as a Communicative Effect.” Signs and Society 6, no. 3 (2018): 531–57.

Online Posts

Jonnalagadda, Indivar. “I’m not there – A Hyderabad / Philadelphia Parallax,” Ethnographic Marginalia, September 7, 2021,
K., Manav, and Indivar Jonnalagadda. “Affordable Rental Housing Complexes for Urban Migrants: Problems and Prospects,” India in Transition, March 1, 2021, https://casi.sas.upenn.edu/iit/manavk-indivarjonnalagadda.
Minhaz, Ayesha, and Indivar Jonnalagadda, “Urban Local Bodies are critical in the fight against COVID-19.” Hyderabad Urban Lab Blog, March 30, 2020, https://hydlab.in/blogposts/strengthen-urban-local-bodies.

Conference Presentations

Talks

“No Entry: Private Property and its Discontents in Hyderabad’s Slum Settlements,” Penn South Asia Studies Colloquium: Forthcoming Virtual Session, December 8, 2021.
“'Useless' Land Titles and Subaltern Citizenship in Hyderabad, India,” Yale South Asia Brown Bag Series, Workshop organized by the South Asian Studies Council at the Yale MacMillan Center: Virtual Session, October 27, 2021.
“Of Political Entrepreneurs: assembling community and social capital in Hyderabad’s informal settlements,” Emerging Scholars in South Asia, Seminar at the University of Melbourne: Virtual Session, July 16, 2021.
“Seeing Like a Bureaucrat: property and the construction of urban space,” Penn Urban Studies Graduate Colloquium: Virtual Session, November 19, 2020.
“Slums and the Moral Economy of Land in Hyderabad, India: 1975-2015,” Penn South Asia Studies Colloquium: Philadelphia PA, February 27, 2019.

Paper Presentations

(Forthcoming) “Waiting for Dignity: Cruel governance and unaccounted time in Hyderabad,” Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association 2022: Seattle, November 9, 2022.
(Forthcoming) “No Entry: Rethinking Customary Law through Real Estate Markets in Hyderabad Slums,” Madison Annual Conference on South Asia 2022. Hybrid Session, October 22, 2022.
“Caste, State, & Urban Ecology: How the Bathukamma Festival Reworked Socio-Environmental Relations in Hyderabad,” Eighth Penn Semiotic Anthropology Conference: Virtual Session, May 14, 2022.
“Legal Pragmatics: Pluralism and Hierarchy in Hyderabad Property Markets,” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers 2022: Virtual Session, February 28, 2022.
“Disciplining the Planet of Slums: Habitat Improvement in Hyderabad before the Infrastructural Turn,” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers 2022: Virtual Session, February 27, 2022.
“After Land Titling: ‘Useless’ land titles and subaltern citizenship in Hyderabad,” IIHS Urban ARC 2022: Virtual Session, January 14, 2022.
“Technomoral Geographies: Governing space as property across the rural-urban divide,” Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association 2021: Forthcoming Virtual Session, November 18, 2021.
“Of Political Entrepreneurs: assembling community and social capital in Hyderabad’s informal settlements,” Emerging Scholars in South Asia, Seminar at the University of Melbourne: Virtual Session, July 16, 2021.
“Dharmaganta (Hour of Duty): Anti-corruption Projects and Populist Strategy in Telangana,” Seventh Penn Semiotic Anthropology Conference: Virtual Session, May 29, 2021.
“Waiting for Dignity Housing,” Columbia University Society of Fellows Symposium on Governance by Anticipation: Virtual Session, April 21, 2021.
“‘Useless’ land titles and subaltern citizenship in Hyderabad, India,” The Andrea Mitchell Center for Democracy Graduate Workshop: Virtual Session, April 14, 2021.
“I’m not there – a Hyderabad/Philadelphia Parallax” (Short Film, 8 min.), Penn EnviroLab Conference on Placing: Virtual Session, March 19, 2021.
“Negotiating Urban Form: property relations and spatial governance in Hyderabad, India,” Mellon Humanities+Urbanism+Design Colloquium: Virtual Session, February 26, 2021.
“Of Political Entrepreneurs: assembling community and influence in Hyderabad’s informal settlements,” Penn IUR Forum on Urban Informality: Virtual Session, February 12, 2021.
“The City in Property Relations: micro-politics and crises of scale,” Penn Linguistic Anthropology Seminar: Virtual Session, February 10, 2021.
“Slum-making,” Penn EnviroLab Workshop: Virtual Session, October 30, 2020.
“Enregistering ‘Private Ownership’ in Informal Settlements of Hyderabad, India,” Sixth IIHS PhD Workshop: Bengaluru, January 13, 2020.
“Legal Title, Permanent Slums: Subaltern Property Rights and Informal Spatial Governance in Hyderabad, India,” RC21@Delhi: In and Beyond the City: Delhi, September 20, 2019.
“Enregistering ‘Private Ownership’ in Informal Settlements of Hyderabad, India,” Sixth Penn Semiotic Anthropology Conference: Philadelphia PA, May 3, 2019.
“Directing Distribution: Land Titles, Bureaucratic Texts, and the Two Faces of Paternalism in South India,” American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting: Washington DC, April 7, 2019. (co-authored with Karan Misquitta)
“Citizens in the Making: The Uptake of Government Orders in Hyderabad, India,” First Annual Meeting of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology: Philadelphia PA, March 8, 2018.

Grants & Awards

Graduate Fellowship, The Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy (2021-2022)
Mellon Graduate Student Research Award, Penn Humanities+Urbanism+Design Initiative (2021)
Dissertation Research Grant, The Wenner-Gren Foundation (2020-2021)
Joseph W. Elder Social Sciences Fellowship, American Institute of Indian Studies (2019-2020)
Geo L. Harrison Graduate Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania (2018-2019)
Summer Field Research Grant, Penn Department of Anthropology (2017 & 2018)