Date of Award
Spring 2026
Language
English
Embargo Period
4-28-2028
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
College/School/Department
Department of Anthropology
Program
Anthropology
First Advisor
Walter E. Little
Committee Members
Jennifer Burrell, Mohamad Junaid
Keywords
Kashmir, production of spatial order, settler colonialism, touristic space-making, Settler Space, Settler Storytelling
Subject Categories
Social and Cultural Anthropology
Abstract
This dissertation examines the relationship between mass tourism and settler colonial transformation in Kashmir, focusing on how everyday tourist practices, infrastructures, and state-mediated mobility reorganize space, perception, and political belonging. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted across multiple phases between 2019 and 2024, including participant observation within a mass package tour, interactions with tourists and workers both within the tourism sector and outside of it, this study traces how tourism operates not just as an economic tool but as a social and spatial process that is embedded within a settler militarized governance.
The analysis develops the concept of hujoom (crowd) to theorize the movement and aggregation of tourists as a collective formation that is enabled and regulated by state and commercial infrastructures. It also captures how crowds move in waves and intensify shared feeling, tightening space and shifting attention toward movement and experience rather than the surrounding conditions, such that the organization of control and the practices of consumption come to inform and reinforce one another. Through attention to itineraries, mobility corridors, checkpoints, leisure sites, and moments of interruption, the dissertation shows how tourism produces a structured encounter with Kashmir that foregrounds scenic consumption while backgrounding the conditions of militarization. This “backgroundification” allows tourists to experience the region as accessible and apolitical, even as their movement is carefully orchestrated through security regimes, infrastructural investments, and differentiated access, making them a part of the political.
Across sites such as Srinagar, Gulmarg, Sonamarg, and Pahalgam, the study analyzes how tourism reorganizes landscapes into consumable circuits while producing uneven forms of mobility and labor. The dissertation situates these processes within broader debates in settler colonial studies and critical tourism studies, extending these literatures beyond canonical geographies and emphasizing the role of affect, infrastructure, and everyday practice in the making of settler-colonial space.
By foregrounding tourism as a key modality through which territorial control is normalized and lived, this research contributes to understanding how contemporary forms of mobility, leisure, and infrastructure participate in the ongoing transformation of Kashmir.
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Pal, Subhajit, "Tourism and Hujoom: Rethinking a Settler Colonial Space" (2026). Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present). 407.
https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/etd/407