research on waste in indian cities

1. A Presentation for APU
Shireen Mirza
Ph. D in Sociology & Anthropology
Assistant Professor
IIIT-Delhi

2. Research Areas
URBAN STUDIES; INFRASTRUCTURE OF
WASTE AND SANITATION; SCIENCE,
TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY; CASTE;
LABOUR; ECOLOGY.
STIGMA AS A SOCIAL IDEA AFFECTS THE
MORPHOLOGY, DESIGN, SANITARY
INFRASTRUCTURE AS WELL AS TECHNOLOGIES
ASSOCIATED WITH IT.
THINKING AT THE CUSP OF CONCEPTUAL CATEGORIES OF-
SOCIETY ENVIRONMENT
TECHNOLOGY

3. Research Focus
Research at the intersection of
theories of urbanisation &
anthropology of religion.
Research Question- HOW DO
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL FORMS OF
PRE-CAPITAL DRIVE
URBANISATION AND ARE DRIVEN
BY IT ?
• Stigmatised Caste labour &
Feudal Social Relation
• Siting olandfill sites and
slaughterhouses
• overlaps between caste and
sanitation-notions of disgust,
stink and contamination are
governed by society and its
hierarchies
• Caste animates the
materiality of infrastructure
and constructs the design of
cities
• Peripheral urbanisation

4. Research Contribution: Thinking about urban space-making through -
1. Caste
• Caste labor allows for integration of capital- pre-capitalist social structures not remnants of
past or external to capital.
• beyond geographically bound theories of caste as an exceptional feature of South Asian
societies, where labour and status combine, occupational specialization ascribed.
2. Technology
• Notions of pollution and contamination inform the design of waste technology that
emphasise removal from its place of production to urban peripheries
• Social constructs the material.
• Technology is shaped in a web of social relations & power dynamics underlie technical acts
3. Marginality
• Naming and constructing boundaries of objects, spaces and communities as non-value
• This process is socially defined leading to the exclusion of social groups.
• Production of boundaries as technique of governance.
4 . Environment
• Study processes of naming and constructing objects and sites as non-value through
categories such as ‘pollution’, ‘hygiene’ ‘nature’ ‘waste’ reveals environmental struggles
and contestations between classes and social groups
• Unpacking the emergence of expert knowledge via questions of power and culture

5. rational urban planning practices. Social as
determining urban space.
The social violates any linear logic of planning
and development, exceeding instead into the
realm of the exceptional, hierarchical and
normative in both state-led as well people-led
processes.
Science Technology Studies- value is derived
from social ideas which are attributed to
objects that co-produce stigma. This
recognizes agency in objects in constituting
the social.
Technology studies by questioning the idea
of technology as an application of science, by
emphasizing technology as socially and
politically produced. For instance, negative
stigma or avoidance can be seen as informing
the design of waste technology as the
removal of discard elsewhere or emphasizes
minimal contact with the animal carcass.

6. Publications from the Book
• Monograph in progress on Sanitary Infrastructure and the Making of Mumbai’s
Margins that is being considered for publication in the Antipode Book Series
(published by Wiley-Blackwell), edited by Vinay Gidwani and Sharad Chari.
• Forthcoming (2020) ‘Landfill as a Site of Capital: Three Moments in the Life of
Landfills in Mumbai City ’ Economic and Political Weekly RUA special issue on
'Waste and Pollution' Ed. by Amita Baviskar and Vinay Gidwani.
• Forthcoming (2020) ‘Politics of Waste and Caste in Indian Cities’, Oxford
Bibliographies. Invited entry
• (2019) ‘Cow Politics: Resistance and Regulation of Animal Slaughter in Bombay
City’ Journal of South Asian Studies. 42:5. Print ISSN: 0085-6401 Online ISSN:
1479-0270.
• (2018) ‘Figure of the Halalkhore: Caste and Stigmatised Labour in Colonial
Bombay’ was published in Economic and Political Weekly 53: 3, pp. 79-85

7. PhD Dissertation
URBAN IS MEDIATED THROUGH RELIGION
& RELIGION MEDIATES URBAN SPACE
1. Fractures within tradition
• ritual holding rational value &
shaping reform of tradition
• nostalgia for tradition where
ritual performance is efficacious
2. Muharram procession as a re-enactment
of feudal political structures of the
Hyderabad Princely State
3. Religious memory express nostalgia
 For a lost urban ecology
 Flooding River Musi
 Expansive darghas as common spaces
 Healing Unpolluted Air
 Feudal palaces and private orchards
 Held value for Multiple communities
 Constituted public sphere
4. Nostalgia & Religious Memory as
• lost imagination of possible futures
• arena for critiquing urbanization
Shia Community in Hyderabad Old city

8. Publications from the PhD
(2017) Lost worlds: Perspectives of decline among Shias of Hyderabad old city
Contributions to Indian Sociology 51, 2: 1-28.
(2015) Muslims, Media and Mobility in the Indian Ocean Region in The Shi'a in
Modern South Asia: Religion, History and Politics. Justin Jones and Ali Usman
Qasmi (eds). Cambridge University Press: UK. pp. 131-159.
(2014) Traveling saints and connecting print cultures: Two conceptions of Twelver
Shi’a reformism in the Indian Ocean Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society: Special
Issue on Shi'ism in South Asia, 3, 24: 455–475. ISSN: 1356-1863 EISSN: 1474-0591
(2014) Waqf and urban space: Production of a Muslim minority identity in
Hyderabad's old city in Becoming Minority: How Discourses and Policies Produce
Minorities in Europe and India. Jyothirmaya Tripathi (ed). Sage: New Delhi. pp.
293-314.

9. Education and Professional Background
• Visiting Assistant Professor School of Human Ecology; Ambedkar University (01-08-
2019)
• Assistant Professor (Contractual) School of Undergraduate Studies Ambedkar
University (19-09-2016-31-07-2019)
• Visiting Assistant Professor Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi (15-07-
2015-14-07-2016)
• Visiting Fellow Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religion and Ethnic Diversity,
Gottingen (01-02-2015-14-07-2015)
• Assistant Professor (Regular); Department of Humanities and Social Science, IIT-
Madras (15-12-2011-31-01-2015)
• Post-Doctoral Research Urban Religion Tata Institute of Social Science, Mumbai (08-
04-2011)
• Ph.D. in Anthropology and Sociology School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London (31-01-2012)
• Ph.D. coursework in Cultural Studies; Centre for the Study of Culture and Society,
Bangalore (27-07-2005)
• M.A. Gender, Literature, Modernity; University of Warwick (2002)

10. Relevance and Contribution to the Department
Academic Relevance:
Anthropology’s engagement with technology :
• redefines technology as social phenomenon-simultaneously material, social & symbolic.
• Critique of human-centred foundations of anthropological knowledge
• Development and deployment of technology happens in a web of social relations
Contributions to IIIT-D
Develop PhD coursework-
• Technology & Society
• Anthropology of Technology
• Sociology of Knowledge
Apply for Project Grants
• Areas GIS technology and landfill siting practices
• Assessment of Okhla waste plant: data on Asthama files
• E-Waste practices
• Build collaborations with the Delhi Government on Delhi-NCR Infrastructure projects

11. Current
Courses
New Courses
B.Tech/
Ph.D.
 Introduction to Sociology
 Sociology of New Media
 Anthropology of Social Media
 Anthropology of Technology :
Magic, science & Religion
 Technology & Society
3 aspects of technology:
• Sites of producing technology-ethnographies of laboratories and
scientific controversies
• uses of technologies—representations and symbolic dimension
• Ethnographically based design interventions.
 Sociology of Risk
 Sociology of Knowledge
• Mertonian science
• Thomas Kuhn-
• New Sociology of science-STS, SCOT, SSK