PUKAR

PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge, Action and Research), Mumbai:

PUKAR is an innovative and experimental non-profit institution that takes Mumbai as its conceptual base and laboratory and aims to contribute to a global debate about urbanization and globalization. Its goal is to do so through generating new urban knowledge and by encouraging maximum participation of Mumbai’s citizens in this process, thus contributing also to Mumbai’s dynamism and sustainability. Its Associates are a group of young scholars, social and cultural activists and professionals in the fields of art, journalism, film, architecture, urban planning concerned with globalization and urbanism, working out of their base in Mumbai, India.

The group was founded by Appadurai in 2001 and directed by him until Feb. 2003 when he became the President of its Board and its executive head. PUKAR initiates debates and dialogue among various civil society and academic institutions on the cultural effects of globalization on various aspects of social life in Mumbai. PUKAR also organizes a number of seminars, workshops, talks and film screenings in both English and Marathi and focuses specifically on producing a new space for critical engagement, especially aimed at the younger resident-citizens of the megalopolis.

PUKAR’s organizational structure, with two directors based in Mumbai and New York respectively, experiments with an innovative transnational structure which allows PUKAR to tap into transnational circuits of scholarship and activism in creative ways and to bring the specific concerns of Mumbai to these global circulations. PUKAR receives funding from a number of foundations, based both in India and elsewhere. It has also received funding from UNESCO.

PUKAR Link:
http://www.pukar.org.in/

-Arjun Appadurai is an expert in Globalization, Cultural Anthropology, Cities, Media, and Violence