Current Project

My PhD project is concerned with materials and how they interact with political processes of land use and planning. In paying close attention to the movements of sand, silt and sediment across waterfronts in Goa, the project aims to question seemingly linear narratives of extraction and coastal governance. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the West Indian state of Goa, I will focus on sites of de-siltation on river fronts and other modes of governance through which sediment is moved. In paying close attention to vocabularies employed by bureaucrats, village-level governments, and anti-mining activists when dealing with silt and sand, I aim to better understand the terms of engagement with these earthly substances.

Goa’s history of land and mining plays a key role in how matter can be made sense of in various spaces. The network of low-lying fields known as the khazans which dot Goan waterfronts are heritage systems of agriculture on land reclaimed from the river or sea. Today, although they are often sites of contestations due to material dumping, maintenance disputes or pseudo-legal forms of private acquisition, they speak to a heritage of common pool resources. In highlighting the movement of sand, soil and clay on embankment and cultivation practices on khazan lands, I will probe question such as: what deems spaces a commons?; How are these categories of a commons frequently disturbed through material processes?

In light of Goa’s construction boom and recent ban on river sand mining, through this project I will also explore creative uses of sand, earth and clay. I I have a keen interest in architectural projects that use alternatives to river sand. This includes experimentation with aggregate ratios in mud bricks and thinking about the political economy of construction practices in the absence of sand. I aim to remain attentive to design and aesthetic decisions to further an understanding of how value is made and re-made through material interactions. This understanding of “an absence” of sand can scaffold broader theoretical explorations of knowing and using materials in times of ecological change.