Fragments for the Future: Selective Urbanism in Rural North India

Scholars are increasingly rethinking the urban, rural, and urban–rural binary. This article advances understanding of rural urban imaginaries through examining how young people in a village north India develop practices that they regard as “urban” to protect futures. Young adults (aged eighteen thirty) Bemni, Uttarakhand, urban-style educational facilities agricultural well performances gender empowerment imagined with view improving functioning their preventing migration cities. Through analyzing these “selective urbanism,” we point production ideas urbanism rurality beyond metropolitan large city regions usually studied importance especially performance fragments people’s conceptions We also examine value is attached deploy problematize rural–urban