The Multiplex in India: A Cultural Economy of Urban Leisure

During the decade of its existence in India, the multiplex cinema has been very much a sign of the times – both a symptom and a symbol of new social values. Indicative of a consistent push to create a ‘globalised’ consuming middle class and a new urban environment, multiplex theatres have thus become key sites in the long-running struggle over cultural legitimacy and the right to public space in Indian cities.

This book provides the reader with a comprehensive account of the new leisure infrastructure arising at the intersection between contemporary trends in cultural practice and the spatial politics that are reshaping the cities of India. Exploring the significance, and convergence, of economic liberalisation, urban redevelopment and the media explosion in India, the book demonstrates an innovative approach towards the cultural and political economy of leisure in a complex and rapidly-changing society.

Key arguments are supported by up-to-date and substantive field research in several major metros and second tier cities across India. Accordingly, this book employs analytical frameworks from Media and Cultural Studies, and from Urban Geography and Development Studies in a wide-ranging examination of the multiplex phenomenon.

Adrian Athique is lecturer in media at the department of Sociology, University of Essex. His research interests include film exhibition in South Asia, unofficial networks of media distribution, new media technologies and the transnational reception of media in Asia – all of these part of a wider interest in cultural sociology, geography and history.

Douglas Hill is a lecturer in Development Studies in the department of Geography at the University of Otago, New Zealand. His research engages with comparative political economy, especially in South Asia.