Based on 15 months of ethnographic research between 2016 and 2019, this article explores the campus as a core site for the (re-)production of Bangladesh’s ruling party’s hegemony and domination. While previous research emphasizes the pragmatic and violent nature of student politics, this article explores the role of ideological positioning in campus politics, focusing on commemoration events and the significance of certain symbolic national days. Commemoration practices contribute to the reproduction of party narratives and ideologies at the levels of both student politics and the university administration. However, far from just reflecting the official party discourse, individuals organizing or attending these events often have pragmatic perspectives using them strategically for their own micro-political endeavors on campus. The ethnographic exploration of these dynamics elucidates when and how ideological positioning and commitment becomes relevant, as well as how personal convictions intersect with other reasons for engaging in party politics.
{"title":"Performing the Party. National Holiday Events and Politics at a Public University Campus in Bangladesh","authors":"Mascha Schulz","doi":"10.4000/samaj.6508","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/samaj.6508","url":null,"abstract":"Based on 15 months of ethnographic research between 2016 and 2019, this article explores the campus as a core site for the (re-)production of Bangladesh’s ruling party’s hegemony and domination. While previous research emphasizes the pragmatic and violent nature of student politics, this article explores the role of ideological positioning in campus politics, focusing on commemoration events and the significance of certain symbolic national days. Commemoration practices contribute to the reproduction of party narratives and ideologies at the levels of both student politics and the university administration. However, far from just reflecting the official party discourse, individuals organizing or attending these events often have pragmatic perspectives using them strategically for their own micro-political endeavors on campus. The ethnographic exploration of these dynamics elucidates when and how ideological positioning and commitment becomes relevant, as well as how personal convictions intersect with other reasons for engaging in party politics.","PeriodicalId":36326,"journal":{"name":"South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46696997","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In South Asia, marriages are overwhelmingly endogamous. In recent years, new forms of self-initiated marriages, such as love-marriages and love-arranged marriages, are beginning to emerge among the younger generation. In these new forms, young people exercise considerable choice and agency; however, when the couple crosses caste and ethnic boundaries, parents and kin often take the defiance of the younger generation as instances of dereliction of duty and transgression of family and community values. Cases of intermarriage, thus, offer a unique opportunity to investigate the social and cultural changes a society is undergoing. Based on qualitative research, conducted in southern Nepal, this paper examines the ways Madhesi (plains dwellers) men and Pahadi (hill dwellers) women enter into courtship and negotiate their marriages. We argue that new forms of subjectivity emphasizing individual choice and agency have begun to emerge among the younger generation in Nepal—and South Asia in general. The new subjectivity has unfolded in tandem with structural transformations of the economy, the state, and the culture.
{"title":"Crossing the Caste and Ethnic Boundaries: Love and Intermarriage Between Madhesi Men and Pahadi Women in Southern Nepal","authors":"C. Basnet, Ratnakar Jha","doi":"10.4000/samaj.5802","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/samaj.5802","url":null,"abstract":"In South Asia, marriages are overwhelmingly endogamous. In recent years, new forms of self-initiated marriages, such as love-marriages and love-arranged marriages, are beginning to emerge among the younger generation. In these new forms, young people exercise considerable choice and agency; however, when the couple crosses caste and ethnic boundaries, parents and kin often take the defiance of the younger generation as instances of dereliction of duty and transgression of family and community values. Cases of intermarriage, thus, offer a unique opportunity to investigate the social and cultural changes a society is undergoing. Based on qualitative research, conducted in southern Nepal, this paper examines the ways Madhesi (plains dwellers) men and Pahadi (hill dwellers) women enter into courtship and negotiate their marriages. We argue that new forms of subjectivity emphasizing individual choice and agency have begun to emerge among the younger generation in Nepal—and South Asia in general. The new subjectivity has unfolded in tandem with structural transformations of the economy, the state, and the culture.","PeriodicalId":36326,"journal":{"name":"South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41721949","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
With Badalta Gaon, Badalta Dehat (Changing Villages and Rural Society), Oxford University Press has dared to publish a book in Hindi which provides valuable insights and takes on dominant power structures in present India. This work, based on ethnography, is a serious attempt to understand rural India in general and rural Uttar Pradesh (UP) in particular. Kumar is sensitive to the plight of Muslims, and is a keen observer of environmental deterioration. The main argument of the book is that i...
{"title":"Satendra Kumar. Badalta Gaon, Badalta Dehat: Nayi Samajikta ka Uday (बदलता गाँव","authors":"Zeeshan Husain","doi":"10.4000/samaj.5789","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/samaj.5789","url":null,"abstract":"With Badalta Gaon, Badalta Dehat (Changing Villages and Rural Society), Oxford University Press has dared to publish a book in Hindi which provides valuable insights and takes on dominant power structures in present India. This work, based on ethnography, is a serious attempt to understand rural India in general and rural Uttar Pradesh (UP) in particular. Kumar is sensitive to the plight of Muslims, and is a keen observer of environmental deterioration. The main argument of the book is that i...","PeriodicalId":36326,"journal":{"name":"South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46146987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Representations of the “Rural” in India from the Colonial to the Post-Colonial","authors":"J. Cabalion, Delphine Thivet","doi":"10.4000/samaj.5376","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/samaj.5376","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36326,"journal":{"name":"South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42112585","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The idea of the village has been central throughout Indian history. Since colonial times, Indian villages have been pictured as “small republics” and as a relevant microcosm for understanding Indian society at large. Combining the issue of representation with that of rurality, this special issue investigates the actors, be they external or internal to rural society, who claim to represent the “village,” and how its internal social differentiation is being addressed: who does speak for/about/of/against/with the village? The different aspects of the representations and practices of the “rural” and its social components, contributing to the social production of rural space, are herein studied from a range of different disciplinary perspectives, such as history, political science, sociology, anthropology, and literary studies/theory. At last, the purpose of this issue is to reassert village and rural studies as a legitimate and crucial area of research through which to understand the important social, economic, political and cultural dynamics and tensions which mark the trajectory of Indian society over time.
{"title":"Who Speaks for the Village? Representing and Practicing the “Rural” in India from the Colonial to the Post-Colonial","authors":"J. Cabalion, Delphine Thivet","doi":"10.4000/samaj.5384","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/samaj.5384","url":null,"abstract":"The idea of the village has been central throughout Indian history. Since colonial times, Indian villages have been pictured as “small republics” and as a relevant microcosm for understanding Indian society at large. Combining the issue of representation with that of rurality, this special issue investigates the actors, be they external or internal to rural society, who claim to represent the “village,” and how its internal social differentiation is being addressed: who does speak for/about/of/against/with the village? The different aspects of the representations and practices of the “rural” and its social components, contributing to the social production of rural space, are herein studied from a range of different disciplinary perspectives, such as history, political science, sociology, anthropology, and literary studies/theory. At last, the purpose of this issue is to reassert village and rural studies as a legitimate and crucial area of research through which to understand the important social, economic, political and cultural dynamics and tensions which mark the trajectory of Indian society over time.","PeriodicalId":36326,"journal":{"name":"South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42148691","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper explores the political churnings around an almost twenty-year-old process of land acquisition and development in Rajarhat, an erstwhile rural settlement in the Indian state of West Bengal. The narrative takes shape against the backdrop of a neo-liberal state in the global South acting as a corporate facilitator, the concomitant dispossession, and particularly the transformation of the villages and rural livelihoods. The paper tries to trace the nature of this transformation by mapping the socio-economic changes on the one hand, and the reinvention of traditional caste-based social hierarchies brought about by such changes on the other, and highlights the formation of “syndicates” (low-level cartels) in the area as a unique manifestation of the latter. Such developments, the paper argues, symbolize a qualitative shift in rural social relations, brought about by rapid urbanization in neoliberal India.
{"title":"Politics of a Transformative Rural: Development, Dispossession and Changing Caste-Relations in West Bengal, India","authors":"Ritanjan Das","doi":"10.4000/samaj.5472","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/samaj.5472","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the political churnings around an almost twenty-year-old process of land acquisition and development in Rajarhat, an erstwhile rural settlement in the Indian state of West Bengal. The narrative takes shape against the backdrop of a neo-liberal state in the global South acting as a corporate facilitator, the concomitant dispossession, and particularly the transformation of the villages and rural livelihoods. The paper tries to trace the nature of this transformation by mapping the socio-economic changes on the one hand, and the reinvention of traditional caste-based social hierarchies brought about by such changes on the other, and highlights the formation of “syndicates” (low-level cartels) in the area as a unique manifestation of the latter. Such developments, the paper argues, symbolize a qualitative shift in rural social relations, brought about by rapid urbanization in neoliberal India.","PeriodicalId":36326,"journal":{"name":"South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45807026","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper studies subaltern agency and the changing nature of leadership in rural western India among the Bhil Scheduled Tribe or Adivasi group in the wake of the anti-dam movement initiated by urban middle-class activists of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA; also Save Narmada Campaign). Drawing on fieldwork data along with oral history, archival research, government records, vernacular records and dailies, it analyzes the politics of displacement and resettlement due to the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the River Narmada as a lived experience of two ordinary Bhil men from the submergence villages in Maharashtra state across three decades from 1985–2016. The NBA-led movement acts as a form of political education for the two Bhils who assume leadership, displacing both traditional Bhil leaders and external activists to guide their community deftly to the resettlement colonies by making claims on the Indian state, and helping to recreate life and livelihood for themselves and their fellow Bhils in the new setting.
{"title":"Learning and Leading: Resistance, Subaltern Leadership and the Making of Two Bhil Community Leaders from the Narmada Valley, Western India","authors":"Vikram Thakur","doi":"10.4000/samaj.5661","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/samaj.5661","url":null,"abstract":"This paper studies subaltern agency and the changing nature of leadership in rural western India among the Bhil Scheduled Tribe or Adivasi group in the wake of the anti-dam movement initiated by urban middle-class activists of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA; also Save Narmada Campaign). Drawing on fieldwork data along with oral history, archival research, government records, vernacular records and dailies, it analyzes the politics of displacement and resettlement due to the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the River Narmada as a lived experience of two ordinary Bhil men from the submergence villages in Maharashtra state across three decades from 1985–2016. The NBA-led movement acts as a form of political education for the two Bhils who assume leadership, displacing both traditional Bhil leaders and external activists to guide their community deftly to the resettlement colonies by making claims on the Indian state, and helping to recreate life and livelihood for themselves and their fellow Bhils in the new setting.","PeriodicalId":36326,"journal":{"name":"South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48060746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Drawing on a year’s fieldwork in the Mumbai BDD Chawls neighborhood, this paper analyses an urban migration phenomenon called the gramastha mandal. Gramastha mandals are village-run committees that buy chawl (tenement) rooms and rent them to single male migrants from their own villages. Save a few studies and cursory references, gramastha mandals have received limited academic attention, especially in today’s climate of economic liberalization following the widespread closure of Mumbai’s cotton mills. Through an examination of gramastha mandal living arrangements, working patterns and social activities, I answer three broad questions. Firstly, how have the gramastha mandals been impacted by the closure of the mills that once provided a major source of employment? Secondly how does living in a gramastha mandal room impact migrants’ relationships with the city around them and, thirdly, how does this arrangement perpetuate societal divisions from the village? I suggest that most gramastha mandal residents remain more part of their villages than of Mumbai’s social structures, and that this alienation has increased since the mills closed and opportunities for forging a working-class urban solidarity correspondingly declined. Moreover, through strict eligibility criteria, gramastha mandals replicate, rather than erode, village fault-lines between caste Hindu and Dalit Buddhist communities, a phenomenon that shows only limited signs of changing.
{"title":"Villages in the City: The Gramastha Mandals of Mumbai","authors":"J. Galton","doi":"10.4000/samaj.5414","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/samaj.5414","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on a year’s fieldwork in the Mumbai BDD Chawls neighborhood, this paper analyses an urban migration phenomenon called the gramastha mandal. Gramastha mandals are village-run committees that buy chawl (tenement) rooms and rent them to single male migrants from their own villages. Save a few studies and cursory references, gramastha mandals have received limited academic attention, especially in today’s climate of economic liberalization following the widespread closure of Mumbai’s cotton mills. Through an examination of gramastha mandal living arrangements, working patterns and social activities, I answer three broad questions. Firstly, how have the gramastha mandals been impacted by the closure of the mills that once provided a major source of employment? Secondly how does living in a gramastha mandal room impact migrants’ relationships with the city around them and, thirdly, how does this arrangement perpetuate societal divisions from the village? I suggest that most gramastha mandal residents remain more part of their villages than of Mumbai’s social structures, and that this alienation has increased since the mills closed and opportunities for forging a working-class urban solidarity correspondingly declined. Moreover, through strict eligibility criteria, gramastha mandals replicate, rather than erode, village fault-lines between caste Hindu and Dalit Buddhist communities, a phenomenon that shows only limited signs of changing.","PeriodicalId":36326,"journal":{"name":"South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45145849","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper traces the shifting loci of community in rural Haryana (“the Delhi frontier”) in the early nineteenth century, focusing particularly upon caste and kinship. It suggests that categories later identified by bureaucrats and scholars as “caste” and “tribe” in this region were in fact simply broad ethnic labels that represented only very abstract communities. It will further demonstrate that in this mobile agrarian frontier, kinship categories (such as the clan) had historically crystallized around the control of land. By implication, kinship was a vehicle of resource consolidation, whose boundaries were determined at least in part by this pragmatic consideration. An appreciation of the political dimension of kinship brings complexity to our understanding of rural politics, highlighting that the “village community” was far from being a historically stable polity.
{"title":"The Politics of Lineage: Caste, Kinship and Land Control in an Agrarian Frontier","authors":"G. Joshi","doi":"10.4000/samaj.5638","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/samaj.5638","url":null,"abstract":"This paper traces the shifting loci of community in rural Haryana (“the Delhi frontier”) in the early nineteenth century, focusing particularly upon caste and kinship. It suggests that categories later identified by bureaucrats and scholars as “caste” and “tribe” in this region were in fact simply broad ethnic labels that represented only very abstract communities. It will further demonstrate that in this mobile agrarian frontier, kinship categories (such as the clan) had historically crystallized around the control of land. By implication, kinship was a vehicle of resource consolidation, whose boundaries were determined at least in part by this pragmatic consideration. An appreciation of the political dimension of kinship brings complexity to our understanding of rural politics, highlighting that the “village community” was far from being a historically stable polity.","PeriodicalId":36326,"journal":{"name":"South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44868728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Most Indian voters will tell you that there are three things a politician needs to succeed: Media, muscle, and money. Costs of Democracy focusses on the latter and, by doing so, addresses a lacuna in our understanding of electoral dynamics in the world’s largest democracy. In contrast to the two other indispensable “M”s that a politician needs to emerge victorious, money and its role in shaping Indian political life remains understudied. Thus, the importance of the media—both conventional and...
{"title":"Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav, eds. Costs of Democracy: Political Finance in India","authors":"Kenneth Bo Nielsen","doi":"10.4000/samaj.5336","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/samaj.5336","url":null,"abstract":"Most Indian voters will tell you that there are three things a politician needs to succeed: Media, muscle, and money. Costs of Democracy focusses on the latter and, by doing so, addresses a lacuna in our understanding of electoral dynamics in the world’s largest democracy. In contrast to the two other indispensable “M”s that a politician needs to emerge victorious, money and its role in shaping Indian political life remains understudied. Thus, the importance of the media—both conventional and...","PeriodicalId":36326,"journal":{"name":"South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46091582","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：