Masculinity Consumerism and the Post-National Indian City

Imagining the city as a series of interconnected spaces the book explores how several such connections - between the home and the street family and public spaces religious and non-religious contexts for example - relate to the topic of masculinity. How do men - elite subaltern consumers 'heads' of the family members of 'Hindu fundamentalist' organisations readers of pulp fiction and 'footpath pornography' those who admire the 'strong' political leader - move between these spaces define them and are defined by them? Urbanisation in India is a vibrant site of an extraordinary cultural social and economic churn a context of both the consolidation of masculine identities as well as anxieties regarding their place in the city. The book suggests that sustained and in-depth engagements with specific historical and social contexts avoids tendencies to imagine cities as nodes of comparison that frequently generates universal models of urbanism.