Spectacular Cities ─ Religion, Landscape, and the Dialectics of Globalization

Plenty has been written on globalization to understand what it is. However, scholarship on globalization tends to segment it into either economic globalization in the form of flows of capital, investment, and goods; cultural globalization in the form of fast food, Barbie dolls, and migrant landscapes; or political globalization, in the form of erosion of the nation state. This book explores spectacular landscapes of the Akshardham temples in Gandhinagar and Delhi in India, and Atlanta, Dallas, Houston in the U.S.to understand globalization as it unfolds in a culture-economy synthesis. Adopting Marxian dialectical method, this book explores how culture, economy, and spectacular urban landscapes work in tandem to produce globalization through migrant narratives, migrant temple complexes, Vedic boat rides, and theme park religious complexes. The book therefore is as much an exploration of the dialectical stance in social theory and geography, as it is a Marxist feminist critique of the spectacular commodification of the urban form.

Ipsita Chatterjee is Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of North Texas.