ON THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF URBAN SPACE 73 the direction of problematizing space both in geography as well as in other social science traditions. 4. Space has made a major come back to social theory in postmodernism. Postmodern theory resonates with predominantly spatial terms such as site, location, place, situated and grounded. See among others, Edward Soja Post Modem Geographies. The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. (1989. London. Verso), also Jon Bird et al. ed in Mapping the Futures, Local Cultures, Global Change. (1993. London. Routledge). 5. The increasing importance of space to social theory can be traced to the fact, that social inquiry has moved away from grand aspatial categories of analysis, to more specific concrete studies of human action, which are located both temporally and spatially. One major factor that has contributed to this trend is the emergence of new social movements, which concentrate on locality specific issues, such as ecology. 6. Fredric Jameson—'Postmodern, or the cultural logic of capitalism' New Left Review 1984, No. 146, p. 71, 89. 7. Michael Foucalt 'Questions of Geography' in Power/Knowledge, Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1973 ed C Gordon (New York Pantheon), p. 69-70. 8. Squatter settlements are known by various names across the Continents of Asia, Latin America and Asia. In India they are known as 'jhuggi-jhopris' or 'bustees'; in Argentina as 'villas miserias'; in Mexico as 'colonias proletarias'; in Morocco as 'bidonvilles'; in Turkey as 'gecekondus'; as 'favelas' in Brazil and as 'callampas' in Chile. 9. Desai, A.R. and Pillai S.D., Slums and Urbanization in Bombay (1972, University of Bombay). 10. Arangannal, R., Socio-Economic Survey of Madras Slums (1975, Madras, Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board.) 11. See Anup Basu Urban Squatter Housing in Third World. (1988. New Delhi. Mittal Publications) 12. Theorists of modernity and its malaise, Hegel, Weber, Simmel, Freud, mourned the loss of community, and communitarian ties, and were deeply skeptical of what Weber referred to as the instrumental rationality of modern life. And the modern was almost always associated with the urban. Theorist of the urban, particularly Simmel concentrated on the problems and the disenchantments of urban life and existence, alienation, homelessness, rootlessness, psychological disorders and the sheer loneliness of the urban city dweller. It was accepted that the city promised freedoms not allowed by face to face communities, but it was also recognized that urban living gave rise to disorders and ailments which were peculiar to that particular kind of existence. In contrast to the theorists of modernity of the West, India as much as the post-colonial world under the influence of modernization theorists welcomed urbanism and urbanization as progressive and liberating. The city with its infinite promises of employment, its anonymity, and its impersonal social contacts would breed the modern individual emancipated from the ties of caste or community affiliations. Urbanization was the near perfect solution to caste and religious oppression and, the general problems of backwardness.