Public- Private and beyond: Looking towards new meanings of public space

Public- private and beyond: Looking towards new meanings of public space

Kulwinder KAUR, Department of Sociology, Jamia Millia Islamia Central University, New Delhi. E-mail: kulwinder10@gmail.com

The discourse about ‘the end of public space’’ and the ‘‘right to the city’’ that has dominated urban social theory for the past few decades is largely derived from the neoliberal experience of Northern cities of the globe. On the contrary, the same theory neglected to focus on the public spaces in the southern cities by arguing the absence of public/private dichotomy in these cities. For example, it is common to find the actions which we club in the realm of ‘private’ such as defecating, bathing, cooking, physical intimacy, so much so as giving birth, are routinely carried out in the open spaces in cities across South Asia. However, to dismiss it as a cultural trait and to conclude it as an absence of the public –private sensibilities in a vast section of world’s urban population may obstruct the way we re-imagine the meanings, forms, and functions of public space. The deterministic views have tended to perpetuate stereotypes of urban public space in the North as being privatized and that in the South as being democratic, open and inclusive. While the observations of public spaces across the globe show juxtaposing trends which pose a threat to our very understanding of the concept of “public space”. Based on my research and empirical observation of a vast variety of urban spaces of city of New Delhi, I want to argue in this paper about a need to transcend the comforting bipolarities of inclusive/exclusive and public /private.