Hydraulic City

"This book is a fine intervention in anthropology, geography and sociology, as it troubles not just conventional understandings of how urban fragmentation works but is also an example of engaging creatively with socio-material assemblages and processes governing everyday life in the city.  . . . This book provokes a broader scholarly imagination––one that is as empathetic as it is innovative." -- Sneha Annavarapu * International Journal of Urban and Regional Research *
"Using a rich, empirically grounded approach, Anand makes a major contribution to the existing literature on water services, citizenship and difference. . . . An exceptionally good read that will appeal to a broad range of audiences, both specialist and non-specialist." -- Anke Schwarz * City *
“Nikhil Anand makes a most significant contribution to the anthropology of the state.” -- Atreyee Majumder * Pacific Affairs *
“Hydraulic City is an outstanding work. It will be of considerable interest to scholars of South Asian societies in general, especially those concerned with matters of the development, reproduction and undermining of states.” -- Andrew Dawson * Journal of Asian and African Studies *
"Timely, expansive, and thoroughly researched. . . . Undoubtedly an important text that will go on to have important afterlives in scholarship on South Asia, infrastructure, water, cities, and citizenship." -- Tessa Farmer * Anthropological Quarterly *
"Insightful and deeply engaging for both an ethnographer as well as a lay person. . . . Brings in a fresh perspective into urban cultural anthropology of water and its users." -- Nakul Mohan Heble * Economic and Political Weekly *
"Deftly brings together historic and ethnographic narratives about the quest for water in the city of Mumbai and its long entanglements with the politics of citizenship. It is a work that nimbly shifts between scales and time, moving between historic narratives of installing the public water system and everyday experiences of gathering water. . . . Rife with fluidity and movement . . . This is a book that has a broad appeal that cuts across disciplinary boundaries." -- Chitra Venkataramani * Asian Journal of Social Science *
"Anand proficiently merges theories of infrastructure and citizenship to explain the uncertainty surrounding water in Mumbai. Thanks to his clear writing and evocative ethnographic story-telling, readers can gain a solid social and technical understanding of the leaking leviathan of Mumbai . . . A fantastic, highly enjoyable ethnography that will probably have a strong influence on debates about cities and the fluid (i.e. volatile) links between infrastructure and urban citizenship." -- Lukas Ley * City & Society *
"An important contribution towards understanding how infrastructure and society interface in complex and dynamic ways. . . . Anand’s ability to draw from multiple bodies of scholarship and communicate the otherwise dense, multilayered and messy real-world precarity of citizenship and access with nuance and detail is impressive. The book helps refocus, re-scale and recontextualize water’s inaccessibility as linked to intimate and dynamic facets of everyday life." -- Sameer H. Shah * Progress in Development Studies *
“Hydraulic City is a thoughtful ethnography of how hopes, desires, and distributions of life are mediated by and accrete in the everyday infrastructures that surround us--systems that are perpetually falling apart and, much like our own lives, relations, and imaginaries, require constant upkeep and maintenance. Such a focus is beautifully reflected in the book’s form.” -- Shreyas Sreenath * Anthropology Book Forum *