Abstract

The everyday lives of moving vendors offers a window into the broader story of urban change in India. In this talk I draw on ethnographic research amongst the sellers of flowers, coconuts, magazines, fish and others in Mangaluru, a rapidly urbanising smaller city in south India. Drawing on participation observation, I suggest the everyday life of hawking is dialectically produced through the triad of street politics, street work and street ethics. I detail how this triad intersects with the region’s history of higher education expansion, vigilante violence, and circular migration. Advancing a rhythmic conception of the city, and drawing on select elements of Carnatic music so as to disrupt traditional categories of urban theory, I conclude by suggesting that vendors’ acts of selling are ones of structured improvisation, in which limited but potentially transformative changes to the city can emerge.

Ian M. Cook is an anthropologist whose research focus includes urban India, scholarly podcasting, opening up higher education for displaced learners, and environmental (in)justice. He currently a fellow at ICAS:MP, Delhi, a member of Allegra Lab editorial collective, and a volunteer at OLIve, Budapest.