Economic globalisation is enabling India to reinvent itself as a development crucible, providing previously unrealised opportunities for economic transformation. One crucial transformation of economic success is the rapidly growing middle class. Whilst the growth in the middle classes indicates improvement in the quality of life of many, the rate of consumption has also been increasing exponentially. If they, the middle classes consume resources at the same rate as the British and Americans, India will become the world’s number one producer of carbon emissions. The attitudes and aspirations of the growing middle classes are a major factor in the increased, and perhaps impulsive consumption patterns. It is therefore the aim of this research to consider the bottom-up approach, which validates this thesis by examining middle class homeowners’ preferences in Mysore, a south Indian city. Mysore used to be recognised as having socially cohesive and inclusive housing typologies that were climate responsive and calibrated to local, social and economic needs. Changes in social conditions, cultural practices and lifestyle can be seen in the way homeowners use their homes to demonstrate affluence and status. A key challenge is to research ways in which sustainable housing in an Indian context can both mitigate carbon emissions and at the same time address the material aspirations and desires of a fast-growing middle class. Baseline characteristics and homeowners’ attitudes are established by means of literature research and fieldwork. The output of this stage is triangulated with further research to narrow the focus towards boundary conditions and transition spaces for an in-depth study of relevant factors contributing towards consumption, aspiration and sustainability. The second stage points to the importance of the external boundary of the site and the edge of buildings in terms of aligning meaningful, sustainable design strategies with the concerns and aspirations of the emergent middle-class. This thesis argues that, in the domain of sustainable housing, both a qualitative approach and quantitative strategies are essential to the understanding of social and cultural dynamics as well as to measure and benchmark performance. Because of the nature of this multi-threaded approach, mixed method research practices have been followed using triangulation methodologies and grounded theory. This has resulted in the revisiting and refining of the research focus and objectives throughout the research. During the research process, spatial scenarios for housing were developed to harmonise preferences and different sustainability agendas. The research focused on identifying and testing the critical building characteristics of the boundary location. Homeowners’ preferences were qualified by a multi-sorting task analysis and study model performance tested by sophisticated environmental simulation. This was triangulated with fieldwork studies to help propose sustainable housing strategies. The methodology adopted has been critical to supporting the architectural response to the cultural and economic condition on one hand (social methods) and the climate responsive, traditional design and simulation models (environmental design methods) on the other. Different sets of fieldwork were conducted at two stages that involved archival searches and detailed interaction with architects, builders, users, academics and government agencies. In total, 240 respondents answered a questionnaire survey and 146 semi-structured interviews were conducted. The outcome of this research demonstrates how, in the absence of any counterbalancing regulations, social perception and economic aspirations limit the acceptability of sustainable design and construction strategies. In India, middle class demographics and value systems are complex; where safety and security, and display of wealth have to go hand in hand. In this context, this research provides new insight into the way sustainability can be understood in the Indian context with qualitative values that are complemented by quantitative measurements. Finally, this research suggests ways of introducing sustainable practices through a negotiated understanding that balances aspirations with more responsive design. India has identified housing as one of the eight national missions to reduce carbon emissions as part of its commitment to reduce people’s vulnerability to the impact of climate change. In a geo-climatically, regionally and culturally diverse country like India, the top-down national policy can only be successfully implemented with an understanding of the local context. A bottom-up approach to identify sustainable strategies that acknowledge homeowners needs and aspirations should be a useful contribution to achieving carbon reduction and sustainable housing in Mysore. With minor adjustments, the methodology and research process could be adopted in other Indian cities.

Why do middle class kids go to middle class schools? It all began with the story of a father’s dream. It was sometime in April in 2008 and I was in the midst of my undergraduate fieldwork. I had been exploring the resurgence in the ‘Gorkhaland’ movement across the hills of Darjeeling in North Eastern India. I had been interviewing various people who had been engaging in hunger strikes in pursuit of the cause. In the process of these interviews and in my general experiences during this time, I was struck by the constant rhetoric that they fought not for themselves or their own futures but for the futures of their children and generations to come. I was staying in the small town of Sukhia about 20 km outside of Darjeeling town. On that particular April day I had found myself temporarily housebound in the home of my host family, in the wake of a sudden tumultuous downpour. The weather it seemed was conspiring against my research, forcing me to postpone another interview. I sat in the kitchen waiting for the weather to pass, sharing an afternoon cup of tea with a side of sliced bread and jam, with Prabin, a member of my host family. Prabin worked in the office of the District Magistrate and thus was a man with a keen eye on local politics. As such, he had volunteered himself to be my unofficial research assistant. It had been a quiet Saturday about the house, as Prabin’s wife Binita and their 3-year-old son, Pranayan, were out shopping in the market. Prabin’s mother and father were visiting other family nearby, and Prabin’s younger brother, Pramod, had travelled into town to collect some supplies for his school. There was no sign of the rain letting up soon so Prabin and I continued to chat. Prabin’s son had recently started school and we were discussing his son’s apparent indifference towards schooling. ‘Everyday he cries! He doesn’t like school very much’. Prabin was convinced that his son would stop crying once he had learned the value of school. I had been working as an English teacher in a small private school and had seen first-hand how parents like Prabin acknowledged the importance of schooling choice, even as their children began their schooling journeys at around 2 years old. Prabin was keen to reinforce the idea that his son’s present school, a small building only 5 minutes’ walk up the road, was just the beginning. Prabin told me that he wanted his son to get a ‘good education’ in contrast to his own schooling experience, which he described as ‘simple’. Prabin told me that he dreamed of his son going to England and making enough money to support the whole family. Prabin knew that if his son was going to fulfil his dream then he would need to succeed at school, but not just any school. ‘I want my son to go to St. Joseph’s School; this is the best school in Darjeeling’. I was aware that there were many schools in Darjeeling, both in the town itself and in the surrounding areas, all of which professed to offer a high level of English medium education, so I was keen to know what made St Joseph’s such a certain choice. ‘Have you been there?’ he challenged me, as if to say that anyone who would lay eyes upon this place would know what he was talking about. ‘We will go there someday; it is a very nice place’. He was keen to emphasize how ‘nice’ this school was even if he had only seen the building from the road. ‘Others schools can teach English but [St. Joseph’s] is more than that. They play all the sport[s], they have good Rector, they have nice student[s], good discipline, this is the right place for my son’. Prabin emphasized that he dreamed of a good life for his son and in order to get there he first had to go to the right school. This was the first time I had even heard of St. Joseph’s School, but it provided a provocative insight into perceptions of the roles of schooling in India today. Prabin’s dream outlined a particular future for his son, which depended upon a foundation within a specific kind of schooling. I was immediately drawn to how he had mapped out a prospective educational trajectory, which leaned on certain intangible aspects of schooling that were perceived to subsequently guide his son towards a certain livelihood. St. Joseph’s had been singled out, as it offered something that others were perceived not to have. Perhaps most importantly of all, Prabin had never been to the school which he dreamed of. His ideas of St Joseph’s were ultimately imagined through an amalgam of stories that he had heard from work colleagues, interspersed with his own fleeting encounters in passing the school building. The imagined view of the school was integral in shaping Prabin’s actions. He was planning for his son’s future around a dream. Prabin’s perspective reflected a wider trend within literature pertaining to the Indian middle class, indicating a certain preference for a particular kind of schooling as being a necessary prerequisite for a specific, ultimately idealised, future livelihood. Donner (2006) identified a similar kind of career mapping amongst middle class Bengali families in Calcutta. The families, particularly the parents themselves, sought to admit their children to particular pre-schools, which were seen as the foundations of a scholastic career. Admission to future primary and secondary education hinged on the previous stage and as such, investment in each stage of the schooling process was vital in establishing the necessary trajectory for their child to progress on to specific occupations that would offer the necessary array of capital - financial, social and cultural – that would lead to a middle class life. What I became interested in was the concept that shapes this process. Why do middle class Indians choose certain schools and not others? What is the apparently intangible quality that leads parents like Prabin to desire St. Joseph’s over all the others? What is it about schools like St. Joseph’s that make them stand out from the range of available schools? It was with these questions that I headed off to St. Joseph’s for some answers.

This study examines the impact of globalization and religious nationalism on the personal and professional lives of urban Hindu middle class media women. The research demonstrates how newly strengthened forces of globalization and Hindutva shape Indian womanhood. The research rests on various data that reveal how Indian women interpret and negotiate constructed identities. The study seeks to give voice to the objectified by scrutinizing and challenging the stereotypical modern faces of Indian womanhood seen in the narratives of globalization and Hindutva. Feminist open-ended interviewing was conducted in English and Hindi in New Delhi, the capital of India, with 23 Hindu women, employed by electronic and print media corporations. Accumulated data were analyzed and interpreted using feminist critical discourse analysis. Findings from the study indicate that while the Indian middle class women have embraced professional opportunities presented by globalization, they remain circumscribed by mutating gender politics. The research also finds that as academic and professional progress empower the women within their homes, their public lives have become fraught with increasing gender violence and decreasing recourse to justice. Therefore, women accept the power stratification of their lives as being dependent on spatial and temporal distinctions, and have learnt to engage and strategize with the public environment for physical safety and personal-professional progress. While the media women see systemic masculine domination as being symbiotic with tenets of religious nationalism, they exhibit an unquestioned embracing of capitalism/globalization as the means of empowerment. My research also strongly indicates the importance of the media’s role in shaping gender dynamics in a global context. In conclusion, my research shows the mediawomen’s immense agency in pursuing academic and professional careers while being aware of deeply ingrained gender roles through their strong commitment towards their families. The findings of this study contribute to the literature on Third World nationalism, urban globalization and understandings of reworked-renewed masculine domination. Finally, the study also engages with recent scholarship on the Indian middle class (See Nanda 2010; Shenoy 2009; Lukose 2005; and Radhakrishnan 2006) while simultaneously addressing the notions of privilege and disengagement levied at the middle class woman, a symbiosis of idealization and imprisonment.

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