Re-framing Democracy and Agency in India

Interrogating Political Society

Edited by Ajay Gudavarthy

Publication date:

01 March 2012

Publisher

Anthem Press

Dimensions:

229x153mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9780857283504

‘Re-framing Democracy and Agency in India: Interrogating Political Society’ critically unpacks the concept of ‘political society’, which was formulated as a response to the idea of civil society in the postcolonial context. The volume’s case studies, drawn from across India and combined with a sharp focus on the concept of political society, provide those interested in Indian democracy and its changing patterns with an indispensable collection of works, brought together in their common pursuit of highlighting the limitations of different core concepts as formulated by Chatterjee. Centred around five themes – the relation between the civil and the political; the role of middlemen and their impact on the mobility of subaltern groups; elites and leadership; the fragmentation and intra-subaltern conflicts and their implications for subaltern agency; and the idea of moral claims and moral community – this volume re-frames issues of democracy and agency in India within a wider scope than has ever been published before, and gathers ideas from some of the foremost scholars in the field. The volume concludes with a rejoinder from Partha Chatterjee.

1. Introduction: Why Interrogate Political Society? – Ajay Gudavarthy; Part I: Political Society and Protest Politics; 2. Political Society in a Capitalist World – Swagato Sarkar; 3. Antinomies of Political Society – Implications of Uncivil Development – Ajay Gudavarthy and G. Vijay; 4. Civil Society and the Urban Poor – Supriya RoyChowdhury; 5. Contentious Politics and Civil Society in Varanasi – Jolie M. F. Wood; 6. The Politics of a Political Society – Ranabir Samaddar; Part II: Political Society, Middlemen and Mobility; 7. The Pyraveekar: The ‘Fixer’ in Rural India – G. Ram Reddy and G. Haragopal; 8. Politics of Middlemen and Political Society – Stuart Corbridge, Glyn Williams, Manoj Srivastava and René Véron; 9. Widows’ Organizations in Kerala State, India: Seeking Citizenship amidst the Decline of Political Society – J. Devika and A. K. Rajasree; Part III: Civil Society and/or Political Society; 10. Clubbing Together: Village Clubs, Local NGOs and the Mediations of Political Society – Tom Harrison; 11. Civic Anxieties and Dalit Democratic Culture: Balmikis in Delhi – Omar Kutty; 12. The Habits of the Political Heart: Recovering Politics from Governmentality – Aparna Sundar and Nandini Sundar; 13. Civil Society in the East and Some Dark Thoughts about the Prospects of Political Society – Sanjeeb Mukherjee; Part IV: Rejoinder; 14. The Debate over Political Society – Partha Chatterjee

‘This volume offers rich theoretical and empirical engagement with Partha Chatterjee’s idea of political society, and critically navigates the interface between political society and the dynamics of resistance in India’s emerging social reality, arguing that it is the struggles that lie beyond survival strategies that are imperative for democratisation. By posing questions of democracy and agency, these essays comprise a significant advance in the debate on civil and political society, and move towards presenting alternative interpretations of popular politics in contemporary post-colonial societies.’ —Professor Zoya Hasan, Jawaharlal Nehru University