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Small Spaces Summary

Small Spaces: Recasting the Architecture of Empire by Professor Swati Chattopadhyay (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)

Small Spaces recasts the history of the British empire by focusing on the small spaces that made the empire possible. It takes as its subject a series of small architectural spaces, objects, and landscapes and uses them to narrate the untold stories of the marginalized people-the servants, women, children, subalterns, and racialized minorities-who held up the infrastructure of empire. In so doing it opens up an important new approach to architectural history: an invitation to shift our attention from the large to the small scale. Taking the British empire in India as its primary focus, this book presents eighteen short, readable chapters to explore an array of overlooked places and spaces. From cook rooms and slave quarters to outhouses, go-downs, and medicine cupboards, each chapter reveals how and why these kinds of minor spaces are so important to understanding colonialism. With the focus of history so often on the large scale - global trade networks, vast regions, and architectures of power and domination - Small Spaces shows instead how we need to rethink this aura of magnitude so that our reading is not beholden such imperialist optics. With chapters which can be read separately as individual accounts of objects, spaces, and buildings, and introductions showing how this critical methodology can challenge the methods and theories of urban and architectural history, Small Spaces is a must-read for anyone wishing to decolonize disciplinary practices in the field of architectural, urban, and colonial history. Altogether, it provides a paradigm-breaking account of how to 'unlearn empire', whether in British India or elsewhere.

Small Spaces Reviews

This brilliantly provocative study provides an alternative, micro-scalar history of colonial and middle-class domiciles, along with an extraordinary archeology of objects and bodies that mediated the intimacy of the rulers and the ruled-taking us on an exhilarating journey from the cellars, kitchens, dining rooms and verandahs of the imperial mansions of Calcutta to the streets, bazars and bungalows of the Bengal and north-Indian countryside. * Sudipta Sen, University of California, Davis, USA *
In this erudite yet eminently accessible volume, Chattopadhyay imaginatively stitches together the overlooked worlds of fragmented and seemingly minor spaces underpinning the workings of everyday life and better regarded practices, inspiring readers, by example, to recognize their indispensability and resilience. * Zeynep Kezer, Newcastle University, UK *
An original examination of empire from marginal spaces in the built environment. This book unites subalterns with the spatial medium of their agency during colonial rule. It brilliantly reveals the hidden infrastructure of empire through an architectural and social history of service, separation, and subordination. * K. Sivaramakrishnan, Yale University, USA *

About Professor Swati Chattopadhyay (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)

Swati Chattopadhyay is Professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, with an affiliated appointment in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments Part I. Small Spaces 1. Of Small Spaces 2. Empire of Small Spaces Part II: Trade and Labor 3. Dependency 4. Locating the Bottlekhana 5. Potable Empire 6. Europe Goods 7. Strange Tongues 8. Making Invisible Part III: Land Imagination 9. Vantage 10. Connective Spaces 11. Anomalous Spaces 12. An Aesthetic Episode 13. Roofscape Part IV: A Geography of Small Spaces 14. Collections and Containment 15. Portable Geographies 16. A Good Shelf 17. A Box of Medicine 18. Epilogue Appendix A Index

Additional information

GOR013692927
9781350288201
1350288209
Small Spaces: Recasting the Architecture of Empire by Professor Swati Chattopadhyay (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
Used - Very Good
Paperback
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
2023-09-21
360
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - Small Spaces