Department of Anthropology
Bio
I am an urbanist working at the intersection of urban infrastructure, urban planning and governance and the environment. I address my research questions through long ethnographic study of three kinds of political frontiers- peripheries and coasts in the Mumbai region, and urban state-making in Mizoram.
My first book was a co-edited volume titled Participolis: Consent and Contention in Neoliberal Urban Governance that focused on a critical exploration of emerging discourses and practices of “citizen participation” that have become part of urban governance reforms and infrastructure projects in India. Subsequent work has focused on the nature of urban transformations in the Global South -- I write about both state-led and structural violence but also the agency of marginalised groups in challenging dominant ways of urban living through ethnography, storytelling and multimedia formats.
I am deeply interested in reimagining planning practice by drawing from alternative ways of knowing, currently she focuses on refocusing planning by thinking with fisher knowledge and the liquidities and temporalities of the ocean.
I am committed to democratising knowledge production through experimenting with new forms of media (film, electronic media, spatial mapping and storytelling) and working in inter-disciplinary teams.
Based on ongoing work with fisher communities in Mumbai, my current Fulbright-Nehru project aims at doing two kinds of comparisons with estuarine cities in the U.S. and /South Asia in dialogue with US experts. First, to illuminate how expert-led planning interventions have marginalized littoral communities/environments and also how these communities demonstrate ‘ordinary’ expertise in already climate changed cities. Second, to deepen cross-fertilization between Northern and Southern theoretical perspectives that challenge dominant planning expertise by building from the situated expertise of marginalized communities. This will help catalyze more just (climate) planning across both South and North.
Education
Ph.D. in Urban Planning and Policy Development, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University
M.A. Development Planning and Administration, Centre for Development Studies and Activities, Pune University
B.A. Economics, Sophia College for Women, Bombay University.
Research Interests
Urbanization and Urban Transformation, Urban and Environmental Anthropology, Urban Political Ecology, Indigenous Studies, Urban Informality, Urban Planning and Governance, State-Society Relations, Black Ecologies, Racial and Spatial Justice.
Selected Publications
Anand, Nikhil and Lalitha Kamath. 2024. Eviscerating the Sea. In Special Issue Port Environments of South Asia Eds, Anusha, C, A. Omer & d. Shankar. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 44(1): 118-134.
Maringanti, Anant and Lalitha Kamath. 2023. Unmuting the Voice of Caste in Urban Studies. Review of Urban Affairs Economic & Political Weekly, Vol LVIII (52): 73-77.
Burte, Himanshu and Kamath, Lalitha. 2023. The structural violence of spatial transformation: urban development and the more-than-neoliberal state in the Global South. Introduction to the Special Feature City Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, Action DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2023.2219549
Kamath, Lalitha and Anushri Tiwari. 2022. Ambivalent Governance and Slow Violence in Mumbai's Mithi River. Enduring Harms: Unlikely Comparisons, Slow Violence, and the Administration of Urban Injustice. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 46(4): 674-686.
Kamath, Lalitha. and Gopal Dubey. 2020. Commoning the Established Order of Property: Reclaiming Fisher Commons in Mumbai. Urbanisation. 5(2). DOI: 10.1177/2455747120m972983.
Kamath, Lalitha. 2020. Refusing slum-centric mass housing: Indigenous urbanism and national housing programmes in Aizawl, India. International Journal of Housing Policy. 22(4): 522-542.
Kamath, Lalitha and Marina Joseph. 2015. How a participatory process can matter in planning the city. Economic and Political Weekly, 50(39): 54-61.
Coelho, Karen, Lalitha Kamath, and M. Vijayabaskar eds. 2013. Participolis: Consent and Contention in Neoliberal Urban India. Routledge India Cities and the Urban Imperative Series, Routledge, New Delhi.
Multimedia
Sagar Putra: Offspring of the Sea. 2021. https://www.inhabitedsea.org/the-sea-and-the-city (20 min 26 sec). The film is based on research by and made in collaboration with Lalitha Kamath & Gopal Dubey, TISS
Make/Break. 2021. A digital exhibition created by the Centre for Urban Policy and Governance, TISS
Mumbai, that traces the violence of Mumbai's transformation into a "world class" city. I have conducted the research for and developed the section on Nala Sopara. Accessible at: https://makebreak.tiss.edu
Affiliations
Professor and Chairperson, Centre for Urban Policy & Governance, School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
Fulbright-Nehru Scholar, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania (2024-25)
Visiting Scholar, Centre for the Advanced Study of India (CASI), University of Pennsylvania (2024-25)