and Response of the Youth of Dhaka City.

Result: First Class 2nd Position; (4.00/4.00, evaluated to Canadian standard by WES, Toronto)

*Due to university session-jam, Master’s and Bachelor’s result publications were delayed and were awarded in 2012 and 2010 respectively.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Geography of Cities

Digital Technologies

Surveillance

Smart City

Big Data

ACADEMIC AFFILIATION

Aug.2014 – Present.       Lecturer, Department of Sociology, University of Dhaka.

May.2014 – Aug.2014 Lecturer, Department of Political Science and Sociology, North South University, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

EMPLOYMENT

Nov.2013 - Apr.2014       Research Associate, Urban Research and Development Society, Dhaka

Sept.2011 - Aug.2012     Teaching Assistant, Department of Sociology, McMaster University

Apr.2010 - July.2010       Research Assistant, Human Development Research Center (HDRC), Dhaka

Jan.2010 - Apr.2010 Research Intern, National Institute of Population Research and Training, Dhaka

REFERRED PUBLICATIONS

Masum, Muntasir. 2015. “The Process of Capital Accumulation through Real-Estate Development: the case of Dhaka City.” Social Science Review 32(2):195-210.

Description: Can real-estate development take place without dispossession? Perhaps not. State mechanism of the global south has produced contradictory dichotomies of real- estate development on one hand and dispossession on the other. Over the years, governments in Bangladesh has gradually limited their roles in ensuring housing needs while being replaced by the private housing companies. Built on David Harvey's analyzes of urban space and the reinvestment of capital into the secondary circuit, this paper discusses flexible accumulation by dispossession in conjunction with the real-estate housing development of urban Dhaka. This qualitative research combines secondary archival data with primary data and argues that urban real-estate projects have created distinctive investment opportunities and facilitated capital accumulation and dispossession. The analysis shows that speculative gain drives conspicuous consumer practices and real-estate companies. The spatial production process triggers housing investment to close the rent-gap and creates a built environment that aid the generation of high-rent as exchange value. Bureaucratic ambiguities among the government agencies and the urban development policies have remained vague; however, such elusive mechanism supports rampant private real-estate development, and capitalist accumulation and appropriation. In Bangladesh, unlike other countries of the world, the coalition of the power elites, the subtle changes in urban renewal policies, the monetary transaction/bribery, and the urban governance have always been a gray area and continue to be at present. Thus, the inaccessibility of the official archival data and the refusal of the real-estate companies to co-operate limited the research scope. The paper concludes by suggesting urban policy changes to ensure accountability and to limit flexible accumulation, and by emphasizing on government housing projects instead of private real-estate housing projects to avoid the discontents of capitalism.

Masum, Muntasir. 2010. “Globalization and Commercialization of Culture: Analyzing the Consumer Attitude and Response of the Youth of Dhaka City.” The Global Studies Journal 3(3):71-81. Description: Since the 1990s, globalization has had strong influences on the social, economic

and cultural sphere of Bangladesh, more specifically, on the lives of its young generation. A quantitative approach with self-administered survey questionnaire was used to conduct this research. This study is an attempt to delve into the issue how global culture, rooted in globalization, created zeal in changing consumer attitude and response of the youth in Bangladesh by promoting similar patterns of information and communication exposure, consumption of food, trendy fashion, westernized and fusion music, and family ties and life. These are a mere reflection of what Wallerstein, Rosenau, Gilpin, Held, Appadurai and Giddens thought predominant factors to evaluate system encouraging chains between the core and peripheral producers and consumers. Based on empirical data, this study thus concludes that consumer attitude and response of the youth of Dhaka City is mediating the relationship between globalization and commercialization of Culture.

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES