Showing papers in "Contributions to Indian Sociology in 2009"
TL;DR: In the popular discourse, "arranged marriage" and "love marriage" are assumed to be radically opposed forms of conjugal union, associated with equally polarised responses from the natal kin this article.
Abstract: In the popular discourse, ‘arranged marriage’ and ‘love marriage’ are assumed to be radically opposed forms of conjugal union, associated with equally polarised responses from the natal kin—approva...
124 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a body of recent scholarship concerned with free trade zones in India is presented, based upon the notion of engines of growth and vehicles of social mobility, which are imagined by politicians, planners and business elites as "engines of growth" and "vehicles of mobility".
Abstract: India’s free trade zones are imagined by politicians, planners and business elites as ‘engines of growth’ and ‘vehicles of social mobility’ Building upon a body of recent scholarship concerned wit
36 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a three-decade-long relationship between the economy influenced by the Gulf and Malayalam cinema, in its industrial and narrative context, is examined. And the authors argue that the contestation over regional identity was played out on aesthetic grounds, where the wealth and objects associated with the Gulf economy were deployed both at the formal and thematic levels, to produce claims about the legitimacy and desirability of the changes that become visible in the economic and social hierarchies within the region.
Abstract: This article, taking up for analysis the three-decade-long relationship between the economy influenced by the Gulf and Malayalam cinema, in its industrial and narrative context, argues that the Gulf has been a significant point of reference for the imagining of a cultural identity in Kerala. It attempts to weave together three aspects—the development models that are in place, the economic conditions within which the film industry operates and the textual aspects of the films produced—to foreground the links between the economy, aesthetics and the imagining of regional identity. I argue that the contestation over regional identity was played out on aesthetic grounds, where the wealth and objects associated with the Gulf economy were deployed both at the formal and thematic levels, to produce claims about the legitimacy and desirability of the changes that become visible in the economic and social hierarchies within the region. The article examines the representations of the Gulf within the region, using se...
21 citations
TL;DR: The Indian state of Chhattisgarh has been continually confronted with violent assaults and murder targeting individuals who are believed to practice witchcraft as mentioned in this paper, highlighting the way prevailing assumptions about witchcraft, long held by the media, police and state, were contested.
Abstract: The Indian state of Chhattisgarh has been continually confronted with violent assaults and murder targeting individuals who are believed to practice witchcraft. By sketching the murder of accused witch, Kulwantin Bai Nishad, in 1995, I highlight the way prevailing assumptions about witchcraft, long held by the media, police and state, were contested. Intersecting with a national and state discourse of modernist ideals, witch-related violence has been transformed into a politicised object that signals extreme underdevelopment in a state whose legitimacy depends upon progress and development. The Indian Police Service (IPS), the foremost organisation to contend with these issues, maintains a crucial role in administering the citizen-state encounter. Commonly associated with attributes of corruption, misuse of authority, violence and partisan politics, the police official emerged in the findings as an ordinary citizen having a special and sometimes difficult public job. By examining a discretionary 'practice' at work in police dealings with witchcraft accusations, I argue that power shapes what is recognised as criminal behaviour, the significance assigned to a crime and therefore, practices of policing. This article concludes that discretionary power opens up a terrain of unpredictability and `formlessness' that lends hope for citizen rights.
17 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine economic and social relations in order to understand political assertion and mobilisation among rural bonded labourers in the Pakistan Punjab, and argue that labourers have not been able to unite politically as a class and challenge their employers because years of authoritarian rule in Pakistan have entrenched a highly factional style of politics dominated by the landed elites.
Abstract: This article examines economic and social relations in order to understand political assertion and mobilisation among rural bonded labourers in the Pakistan Punjab. Bonded labour, characterised by economic and extra-economic forms of compulsion together with vertical ties of patronage, remains widespread in the region. I propose that the perpetuation of these relations is largely explained by the capture of state institutions by a traditional landlord elite and its monopoly over the means of coercion coupled with a highly seasonal demand for labour. I examine how employment and indebtedness combine to restrict workers' physical and economic mobility. I argue that labourers have not been able to unite politically as a class and challenge their employers because years of authoritarian rule in Pakistan have entrenched a highly factional style of politics dominated by the landed elites. My article contributes to the literature on agrarian change, class formation and the state in south Asia.
16 citations
TL;DR: Seshan's tenure as Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) in the early 1990s transformed the role of the Election Commission of India in India's electoral politics and highlighted the tension between law and democracy in shaping democratic ideals.
Abstract: T.N. Seshan’s tenure as Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) in the early 1990s transformed the role of the Election Commission of India in India’s electoral politics. This article examines Seshan’s reforms but concentrates in particular on the public controversies that Seshan’s tenure at the Election Commission engendered. Public debate about the role of the Election Commission brought to the surface underlying assumptions about the meaning of popular sovereignty in defining India’s democracy. It highlighted the tension between law and democracy in shaping democratic ideals in India and underscored a view of elections as legally marked by a cyclical notion of ‘electoral time’. The reforms of the Election Commission during the early 1990s, in fact, opened an unprecedented period of public debate in India on the nature of electoral democracy, which this article explores.
14 citations
TL;DR: In this article, an empirical engagement with the concept of dominant castes in the context of electoral politics in a district of Bihar is presented, showing that there is no settled "dominant caste" and that numerical and economic and political strength is shared between several castes.
Abstract: M.N. Srinivas described rural India as characterised by the presence of locally influential ‘dominant castes’. This article is an empirical engagement with the concept of ‘dominant caste’ in the context of electoral politics in a district of Bihar. An analysis of the patterns of caste interactions in this region shows that there is no settled ‘dominant caste’. Numerical as well as economic and political strength is shared between several castes. Not only do the major castes compete and manoeuvre for power, even the minor castes challenge the major castes’ attempts at establishing dominance, by approaching the courts and, in the case of disputes, making strategic alliances with one major caste in order to oppose another. This article examines the dynamics of these shifting caste responses and alliances in order to illustrate the fluidity of caste equations in contemporary Bihar. It also highlights the role of state institutions such as the police and the courts, but most significantly, electoral representa...
11 citations
TL;DR: In the Dravidian movement, a deliberate attempt was made to recognise or to assume a distinct identity for Dravidians as a race as discussed by the authors, which was referred to as DK (Dravidar Kazhagham).
Abstract: The practice of naming children tells us many things about the search for linguistic and ethnic identity in Tamil Nadu. Till the 1940s, naming patterns depended mostly on caste lines and, to a great extent, people belonging to upper castes named their children after gods and goddesses and gave them other religious names as well. One could without much trouble identify the caste, group or region a person belonged to from her or his name. With the Dravidian movement, this practice changed. Under E.V. Ramasamy Naicker—also known as Periyar (a title meaning ‘grand wise man’ or ‘elder’)—the founder of the movement that eventually became the Dravidar Kazhagham (DK), a deliberate attempt was made to recognise or to assume a distinct identity for Dravidians as a race. Periyar argued that the Dravidians, who were later dominated by the Aryans, were the original inhabitants of then kandam (the southern nation). This was believed to have been the land of Kumari kandam, also known as Lemuria, and is said to have connected India, Sri Lanka and Indo-China,
10 citations
TL;DR: Dumont's later work on subjects such as hierarchy and purity, the focus even now of lively controversy, built outward from extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted in south India as discussed by the authors, where he is known especially for his work on social institutions such as caste, and for studying such institutions from a holistic and comparative standpoint.
Abstract: Louis Dumont (1911–98) was one of the foremost anthropologists of the 20th century and a central figure in essential debates on the sociology of India. He is known especially for his work on social institutions such as caste, and for studying such institutions from a holistic and comparative standpoint. What is not acknowledged often enough, however, is that his later work on subjects such as hierarchy and purity—the focus even now of lively controversy—built outward from extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted in south India. In an early essay on renunciation published in Contributions to Indian Sociology in 1960, for example, Dumont notes that ‘the direct study of a small Hindu group led me to abstract certain principles which, it then appeared, could be more widely applied’ (Dumont 1960: 37). Between 1948 and 1950, Dumont spent two years in Tamil Nadu and eight months, in particular, studying the Piramalai Kallar caste in the countryside west of Madurai. T.N. Madan has written that Dumont’s experiences with the Kallars and more generally in the Tamil country had made the strongest and most durable impressions upon him (Madan 1999: 478). As Dumont mused in a 1979 interview with Jean-Claude Galey: ‘The Tamils are born sociologists and the culture is beautiful. I am deeply attached to the Tamils’ (Galey 1982: 21).
8 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss Brahmin associations in Karnataka and discuss the conceptual questions of how caste asso-ciations are structured and discussed Brahmin "caste" associations.
Abstract: This article discusses Brahmin ‘caste’ associations in Karnataka. Extant scholarly litera-ture on the theme has inadequately addressed the conceptual questions of how caste asso-ciations are struct...
8 citations
TL;DR: The distinction between supposedly static and formal approaches to the study of kinship and Janet Carsten's "new" study of relatedness is examined in this article, where Carsten shifts towards a broader understanding.
Abstract: The distinction between supposedly static and formal ‘old’ approaches to the study of kinship and Janet Carsten's ‘new’ study of ‘relatedness’ is examined. Her shift towards a broader understanding...
TL;DR: In South Asia, post-colonialism has arguably found its most fertile field of inquiry and revision in South Asia as discussed by the authors, and the reasons for this are complex and relate, in part, to the nature of both colonial administration and the colonised civilisations to be found in the region, as well as to the different independence movements, many of these persisting well beyond formal grants of independence in the late 1940s.
Abstract: In highlighting the relationship between the production of knowledge, the administration of government and the formation of subject–citizens in colonial systems, post-colonialism has arguably found its most fertile field of inquiry and revision in South Asia. The reasons for this are complex and relate, in part, to the nature of both colonial administration and the colonised civilisations to be found in the region, as well as to the nature of the different independence movements—many of these persisting well beyond the formal grants of independence in the late 1940s. Also important is the emerging post-colonial middle class, its transnational interconnections comprising inter alia extensive participation in knowledge/information economies, and its ‘organic intellectuals’ (Gramsci 1971) whose work represents the interests of their class. In other words, the tremendous insights offered by post-colonial theory into the nature of latent or implicit power relations to be found in forms of knowledge reveal the ongoing complicity of scholarship in government. Post-colonialism, thus, raises the issue of how the nexus of knowledge and power translates into contemporary situations—the post-colonial predicament (Breckenridge and van der Veer 1993).
TL;DR: Work, conceptualised as a concrete and practical activity, continues to remain an under-explored problematic in the field of Indian labour studies as discussed by the authors. The neglect of ethnographic research techniques could perhaps account for this shortcoming based on non-participant observation in a public sector company.
Abstract: Work, conceptualised as a concrete and practical activity, continues to remain an under-explored problematic in the field of Indian labour studies The neglect of ethnographic research techniques could perhaps account for this shortcoming Based on non-participant observation in a public sector company, this article examines the practices and attitudes of workers specialised in assembling printed circuit boards for electronic telephones Despite the standardised nature of the product and its low economic value, operatives allocated to this task experience a significant degree of autonomy in their daily activities In consonance with their personal inclinations and interests, they are not only free to structure their immediate physical environment but also to control their work pace and organise the way they perform their jobs In all these spheres of practice, important variations can be observed from one individual to the next This situation belies the conventional thesis equating semi-skilled occupations of the kind described here with job fragmentation, the absence of individual discretion and stringent managerial controls The departure from the norm stems in part from the desire to preserve a harmonious industrial relations climate and in part from the non-strategic character of the end product-telephones-in the company's portfolio But slack disciplinary controls, a problem common to state-owned enterprises in general, could also explain the latitude granted to workers
TL;DR: The restructuring of world economies in the 1980s and the 1990s has given rise to debates around globalisation, feminisation and flexibility as mentioned in this paper, and in the light of these macroeconomic debates, this artic...
Abstract: The restructuring of world economies in the 1980s and the 1990s has given rise to debates around globalisation, feminisation and flexibility. In the light of these macroeconomic debates, this artic...