NLS Faculty Dr. Sushmita Pati’s Book Shortlisted for the 2023 BISA IPEG Book Prize

NLS faculty member Dr. Sushmita Pati’s book, “Properties of Rent: Community, Capital and Politics in Globalising Delhi” (Cambridge UP) has been shortlisted for the 2023 BISA IPEG book prize (for the best book published in the field of IPE in 2022).

The British International Studies Association (BISA) promotes International Studies through publications, research, academic networks and funding opportunities. IPEG (International Political Economy Group) is one of the principal working groups under the umbrella of BISA, with over 400 members. The main purpose of IPEG is to bring together scholars and students with an interest in IPE.

Sushmita’s book is among the four books that have been shortlisted this year for the prize. An official announcement by BISA said: “The shortlisted books represent the very best of IPE scholarship, cutting across disciplinary boundaries and addressing timely topics such as sovereign indebtedness, inequality, illicit financial flows and urban development. The committee will read the four shortlisted books over the summer and report back in the autumn.”

The other three books are:

• Quentin Bruneau, States and the Masters of Capital: Sovereign Lending, Old and New (Columbia UP)
• Lynn Horton, Men of Money: Elite Masculinities and the Neoliberal Project (Rowman & Littlefield)
• Julia Morse, The Bankers’ Blacklist: Unofficial Market Enforcement and the Global Fight against Illicit Financing (Cornell UP)

Voting panel:

Sandy Hager, Chair (City, University of London)
Kate Bedford (University of Birmingham)
Florence Dafe (Technical University of Munich)
Susanne Soederberg (Queen’s University)
Ernesto Vivares (FLACSO, Ecuador)

Book abstract:

We live in cities whose borders have always been subject to expansion. What does such transformation of rural spaces mean for cities and vice-versa? This book looks at the spatial transformation of villages brought into the Delhi’s urban fray in the 1950s. As these villages transform physically; their residents, an agrarian-pastoralist community – the Jats – also transform into dabblers in real estate. A study of two villages – Munirka and Shahpur Jat – both in the heart of bustling urban economies of Delhi, reveal that it is ‘rent’ that could define this suburbanisation. ‘Bhaichara’, once a form of land ownership in colonial times, transforms into an affective claim of belonging, and managing urban property in the face of a steady onslaught from the ‘city’. Properties of Rent is a study of how vernacular form of capitalism and its various affects shape up in opposition to both state, finance capital and the city in contemporary urban Delhi.

To know more about her book, watch the interview with Dr. Sushmita here.