Teaching and Learning Anthropology

How do airy materials constitute the urban? This is an anthropological question that has been of interest to me as I teach in a university campus in Northern India. Surrounded by agricultural fields and national highways, the campus is at least 60 km from the city of Delhi—infamous as the most polluted place in the world. My ability to notice how air pollution constituted Delhi peaked during a lecture with undergraduate students in late October 2019, when I was informed that they were being forced to sit in the bad air in my classroom because the student body’s request to cancel classes on account of air pollution had been denied. This moment has remained etched in my memory as it led to a long conversation in class about what it means to live with air through breath. Since Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence is a residential university, I wondered how air quality was constituting how students related to living on campus. In acknowledging the agentive quality of air, I use this vignette and the conversation that followed to think through how air simultaneously constitutes the urban/rural divide and dissolves it, thus reformulating our relationship to the urban.