The Making of Weekly Bazaars of Delhi

Abstract

The thesis argues that the bazaar as a place is not synchronically given or fixed in a state of completion. This is not simply because of the itinerant nature of these bazaars, that they are literally made, unmade, and remade every week. There are multiple, shifting, and contradictory experiences, meanings, values, and identities associated with the bazaar. The thesis thus argues that the bazaar and its various components can only be understood in terms of their rationality, i.e., their associative combination through practices. Each chapter in the thesis shows how the bazaar is enunciated by a practice, enabling the folding in of combinations of materials, affects, spaces and bodies. The thesis shows the ways in which the bazaar makes possible the iterations and improvisations in a practice. On the other hand, it also illustrates how these practices are neither infinite nor entirely spontaneous but work with codes and techniques that emerge from the bazaar and its milieu. newline newline