Thomas Blom Hansen

Bio: Thomas Blom Hansen is an academic researcher from Stanford University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Politics & Sovereignty. The author has an hindex of 21, co-authored 41 publications receiving 2899 citations. Previous affiliations of Thomas Blom Hansen include Yale University & Roskilde University.

Majoritarian State: How Hindu Nationalism is Changing India

Abstract: "Majoritarian State" traces the ascendance of Hindu nationalism in contemporary India. Led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP administration has established an ethno-religious and populist style of rule since 2014. Its agenda is also pursued beyond the formal branches of government, as the new dispensation portrays conventional social hierarchies as intrinsic to Indian culture while condoning communal and caste- and gender-based violence. The contributors explore how Hindutva ideology has permeated the state apparatus and formal institutions, and how Hindutva activists exert control over civil society via vigilante groups, cultural policing and violence. Groups and regions portrayed as ‘enemies’ of the Indian state are the losers in a new order promoting the interests of the urban middle class and business elites. As this majoritarian ideology pervades the media and public discourse, it also affects the judiciary, universities and cultural institutions, increasingly captured by Hindu nationalists. Dissent and difference silenced and debate increasingly sidelined as the press is muzzled or intimidated in the courts. Internationally, the BJP government has emphasised hard power and a fast expanding security state. This collection of essays offers rich empirical analysis and documentation to investigate the causes and consequences of the illiberal turn taken by the world’s largest democracy. (Publisher's abstract)

Performers of sovereignty: on the privatization of security in urban South Africa

Abstract: The police force was the most hated and visible representation of South Africa's apartheid state. The massive crime wave after 1994 and the new anxieties in a democratic South Africa have made secu...

Sounds of Freedom: Music, Taxis, and Racial Imagination in Urban South Africa

Abstract: At first sight, the major cities in South Africa do not appear to have changed much over the last decade. Their physical layouts still reflect the apartheid planners’ obsession with fixity — of identities, of space — and with control of movement. Yet cities like Johannesburg and Durban have experienced profound changes. The diverse spaces of the city are today used in radically different ways and are imbued with a new set of meanings more related to the senses than to economic functions. A city like Johannesburg, as pointed out forcefully by Achille Mbembe and Sarah Nuttall (2004), has become the site of a radical heterogeneity and proliferating desires. Its new dynamism both reinvents the city’s founding moment of creativity and moral transgression during the gold boom of the late nineteenth century and indicates its emergence as a new, immensely creative African metropolis. The distinction between the erstwhile white centers of South Africa’s cities (clean, modern, and universal in aspiration) and the racially defined townships (designed as enclosed, stable, and quasi-domestic community spaces) have given way to what Mbembe and Nuttall call a new and radical “social velocity” (2004: 349). This essay focuses on how the kombi-taxi — the

The culture of control: crime and social order in contemporary, society

Abstract: Nos últimos trinta trinta anos, houve profundas mudanças na forma como compreendemos o crime e a justiça criminal. O crime tornou-se um evento simbólico, um verdadeiro teste para a ordem social e para as políticas governamentais, um desafio para a sociedade civil, para a democracia e para os direitos humanos. Segundo David Garland, professor da Faculdade de Direito da New York University, um dos principais autores no campo da Sociologia da Punição e com artigo publicado na Revista de Sociologia e Política , número 13, na modernidade tardia houve uma verdadeira obsessão securitária, direcionando as políticas criminais para um maior rigor em relação às penas e maior intolerância com o criminoso. Há trinta anos, nos EUA e na Inglaterra essa tendência era insuspeita. O livro mostra que os dois países compartilham intrigantes similaridades em suas práticas criminais, a despeito da divisão racial, das desigualdades econômicas e da letalidade violenta que marcam fortemente o cenário americano. Segundo David Garland, encontram-se nos dois países os “mesmos tipos de riscos e inseguranças, a mesma percepção a respeito dos problemas de um controle social não-efetivo, as mesmas críticas da justiça criminal tradicional, e as mesmas ansiedades recorrentes sobre mudança e ordem sociais”1 (GARLAND, 2001, p. 2). O argumento principal da obra é o seguinte: a modernidade tardia, esse distintivo padrão de relações sociais, econômicas e culturais, trouxe consigo um conjunto de riscos, inseguranças e problemas de controle social que deram uma configuração específica às nossas respostas ao crime, ao garantir os altos custos das políticas criminais, o grau máximo de duração das penas e a excessivas taxas de encarceramento.

The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World

Abstract: PrefaceThe Leonard Hastings Schoff Memorial Lectures 2001The Nation in Heterogeneous TimePopulations and Political SocietyThe Politics of the GovernedGlobal/Local: Before and After September 11The Great PeaceBattle HymnThe Contradictions of SecularismAre Indian Cities Becoming Bourgeois At Last?Bibliography

Transnational Migration Studies: Past Developments and Future Trends

Abstract: The past two decades have witnessed a sea change in migration scholarship. Most scholars now recognize that many contemporary migrants and their predecessors maintain various kinds of ties to their homelands at the same time that they are incorporated into the countries that receive them. Increasingly, social life takes place across borders, even as the political and cultural salience of nation-state boundaries remains strong. Transnational migration studies has emerged as an inherently interdisciplinary field, made up of scholars around the world, seeking to describe and analyze these dynamics and invent new methodological tools with which to do so. In this review, we offer a short history of theoretical developments, outlining the different ways in which scholars have defined and approached transnational migration. We then summarize what is known about migrant transnationalism in different arenas—economics, politics, the social, the cultural, and the religious. Finally, we discuss methodological...

Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race

Abstract: MC 281 is the second in the required sophomore sequence for Social Relations and Policy. In this course, we will explore the interactions and experiences between and among various groups in American history. We will consider how Americans both defended and contested prevailing definitions of fitness for citizenship and inclusion in the political process and American life, and how groups sought to gain access to social and political equality. This course focuses on the history of relationships within and between different groups in the United States, and explores the complexities of those relations. Rarely centered solely on race or ethnicity, such interactions were also affected by gender, sexuality, religion, nation, and class. We will also explore the shifting definitions of race and ethnicity. Students will analyze not only the experiences of the different groups, but also the connections between them to assess the larger dynamics and their implications for public policy.