Work

SURFACE TENSIONS : Roads, Potholes and the Embodied Politics of Driving in Urban India

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: In this article I draw on the embodied experience of driving into potholes and on bumpy roads in Hyderabad to show how pockmarked roads become a terrain on which political sensibilities are shaped. Drawing on ethnographic material collected over six years, I analyze how potholes shape driving dispositions in a city that is attempting to brand itself as ‘world class’. I show that far from being merely physical interruptions on the surface of the road, potholes engender political subjectivities in three ways: one, they generate, sustain and institutionalize narratives of state corruption; two, through their capacity to hurt, injure and even kill certain motoring bodies, potholes enable an experience of inequality in the register of pain and risk; and three, potholes spawn citizen engagement and claims‐making. Through a discussion of these three processes, I consider how and why the banal pothole becomes an aperture through which to view the desires, discomforts and disappointments of urban life in India. Ultimately, I argue that driving is a key mode of experiencing urban inequality, and that road surfaces are generative of politics in and of the city.

Source: International Journal of Urban and Regional Research

DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.70017

Author: Sneha Annavarapu

Language: English

Topic: Urban Planning and Governance

Subfield: Urban Studies

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Sustainable cities and communities, Peace, justice, and strong institutions

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $4,150

Funders: University of Chicago, National University of Singapore