Journal directory listing - Volume 67 (2022) - Journal of NTNU【67(2)】September (Special Issue: Exhibit Asia: Exploring National Image and Identity through Exhibition)
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The Great Development Exhibition: Mass Housing and the Representation of Postcolonial Modernity in South Asia
Author: Markus Daechsel (Department of History, Royal Holloway, University of London Reader in History)

Vol.&No.:Vol. 67, No. 2
Date:September 2022
Pages:33-73
DOI:https://doi.org/10.6210/JNTNU.202209_67(2).0002

Abstract:
The notion of a “Great Development Exhibition” opens up the politics of representation at some signature events in development urbanism of the 1950s: the 1954 exhibition on low-cost tropical housing in New Delhi and Pakistan’s landmark projects for the new satellite town of Korangi near Karachi, and the new national capital of Islamabad. Practices of representation associated with grand exhibitions and international trade fairs often found a functional equivalent in the “demonstration sectors” created to be the first visible parts of the new cities designed from scratch. At these exhibition events, two ideological tendencies were at work: on the one hand, a transnational, universalist discourse of development that sought to recast the world as a unitary field of action defined by a new set of scientific variables and methodologies; and on the other hand, a nationalist need to represent the essence of the new postcolonial states of South Asia in their historical and cultural uniqueness. The encounter between these two tendencies was conflictual, nuanced and differed substantially between national settings. In the final analysis, methodologies predicated on the “deconstruction” of modes of representation alone inevitably break down when faced with the micropolitics of locality. Contrary to the “grand exhibitions” held in European or North American cities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Great Development Exhibition cannot be interpreted exhaustively as a site where a global orientalist master discourse unfolds its power/knowledge.

Keywords:development urbanism, India, mass housing policy, national identity, Pakistan

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APA FormatDaechsel, M. (2022). The Great Development Exhibition: Mass Housing and the Representation of Postcolonial Modernity in South Asia. Journal of National Taiwan Normal University, 67(2), 33-73. https://doi.org/10.6210/JNTNU.202209_67(2).0002
Chicago FormatDaechsel, Markus. “The Great Development Exhibition: Mass Housing and the Representation of Postcolonial Modernity in South Asia.” Journal of National Taiwan Normal University 67, no. 2 (2022): 33-73. https://doi.org/10.6210/JNTNU.202209_67(2).0002.