1. ‘Aspirations for Religion? Translocal Urbanism, Secularization, and the Cacophony of Religious Performance in Mumbai’byProf D. ParthasarathyICCR Visiting Chair in India Studies, FASS South Asian Studies Programme and IIT Bombay Venue: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore, AS7 Shaw Foundation Building, Level 6, Research Division Seminar Room (06-42) Date: 4 November 2013 (Monday) Time: 2.30 pm – 4.00 pm Please RSVP via EventBrite at http://cities-cluster-seminar.eventbrite.sg/ This talk will outline the findings from an ongoing study of the topography of religious performance in contemporary Mumbai that both links to and distinguishes from larger economic and political struggles in the city. The exercise is part of an attempt to re-conceptualize the city and the urban as analytical categories. It is embedded in a basic theoretical assumption that cities and the urban in India cannot and ought not to be studied in contradistinction to the rural, that rural-urban transitions and networks, and the presence of peasants of various hues in the city are intrinsic to any understanding of the Indian urban. Using a broad methodological approach of focusing on informality and public spaces, the larger study focuses on religion, politics, and the economy, from the perspective of peasant migrants to the city who are not sufficiently or substantially linked to the city to leave either a lasting imprint on space, or to determine spatial outcomes. But they are yet involved in place-making, creating informal places - locations where one can observe and study translocal peasants and their social actions.