Contributions to Indian Sociology recent issues

Work and autonomy in the assembly of printed circuit boards: An ethnographic account

Subramanian, D. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:48:38 PDT

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.

The Gulf in the imagination: Migration, Malayalam cinema and regional identity

Radhakrishnan, R. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:48:38 PDT

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 select films from the commercial and art house cinemas of the 1970s, and middlebrow cinema of the 1980s and the turn of the century. These are read along with the economic changes within the film industry and the discourse of development in the region to mark the shifts that have happened to the desires and despairs associated with the Gulf dream.

One day's sultan: T.N. Seshan and Indian democracy

Gilmartin, D. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:48:38 PDT

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.

Handled with discretion: Shaping policing practices through witch accusations

Macdonald, H. M. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:48:38 PDT

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.

The politics of naming: The search for linguistic and ethnic identity in Tamil Nadu

Meganathan, R. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:48:38 PDT

Book Reviews

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:48:38 PDT

Lived experiences: Marriage, notions of love, and kinship support amongst poor women in Delhi

Grover, S. — Tue, 19 May 2009 07:01:38 PDT

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—approval and encouragement for the former and the opposite for the latter. This article critically examines the lived experiences of ‘arranged marriages’ and ‘love marriages’ among working–class women in Delhi in order to show how, in practice, conjugal relations, in both instances, elicit complex and heterogeneous responses from natal kin. The article highlights the role of emotional, material and practical support provided by the primary natal kin to their married daughters in shaping women's relationship with their husbands and affines. Using ethnographic methods to study the dynamics of married couples’ everyday marital conflicts in slums and low–income resettlement colonies in Delhi, this research makes a case for a deeper and more nuanced understanding of contemporary natal kin support structures, mother–daughter bonds and spousal intimacy in urban north India.

The political economy of bonded labour in the Pakistani Punjab

Martin, N. — Tue, 19 May 2009 07:01:38 PDT

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.

Categories of relatedness: Rituals as a form of classification in a central Indian society

Hardenberg, R. — Tue, 19 May 2009 07:01:38 PDT

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 of ‘kinship’ has the positive effect of elucidating a number of ‘tropes’ for the construction of such relatedness. However, her simultaneous deconstruction of all classic conceptions of kinship neglects central dimensions of social life such as relationship terminologies and marriage rules. In discussing forms of relatedness among the Dongria Kond, a so-called Scheduled Tribe inhabiting the highlands of Orissa (India), I argue that studies of the emotional and practical aspects of kinship should not supersede the formal aspects of rules and classification but rather complement them. In the ethnographic context, all dimensions and expressions of relatedness merit anthropological inquiry. By combining classic approaches and the study of cultural ideas concerning ‘kinship’ the multiple dimen-sions of relatedness—as encountered in the field—may be conceptionalised.

Brahmins in the modern world: Association as enunciation

T.S, R. B. — Tue, 19 May 2009 07:01:38 PDT

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 structured and configured, whether they play out differently across different levels, the contexts of caste mobilisation, etc. This article attempts to address these questions, albeit based on the specific case of the Brahmins of Karnataka. It addresses three issues. One, it suggests that caste associations force the Brahmin self to confront the non-Brahmin challenge most directly. Two, it argues that the differences between Brahmin jati-specific associations and all-Brahmin associations tell us something interesting about the nature of caste association itself. Finally, it proposes that we approach caste association as an enunciatory space, whose primary task is to publicly speak as, and on behalf of, a modern caste self.

The remembering village: Looking back on Louis Dumont from rural Tamil Nadu

Pandian, A. — Tue, 19 May 2009 07:01:38 PDT

The actuality of tales from the past

Breman, J. — Tue, 19 May 2009 07:01:38 PDT

Book Reviews and Notices

Tue, 19 May 2009 07:01:38 PDT

Editorial

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:03:02 PST

'We work together, we eat together': Conviviality and modernity in a company settlement in south Orissa

Strumpell, C. — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:03:02 PST

Among themselves and within their families, workers of a public sector power project in Orissa, constantly and intentionally, violate the restrictions on inter-caste contact that they perceive as prevailing in their various villages of origin. Subscribing to the teleology of modernisation, the workers dichotomise the industrial settlement and the village as ‘modern’ and ‘backward’ sites, respectively. Their withdrawal into these ‘backward’ villages for weddings and other rituals is explained with reference to the ‘outside’, peripheral character of the settlement. I argue that this conceptualisation hints at a spatial limitation of the institution of caste, and has, at the very least, facilitated the creation of a ‘modern’, caste-negating working class.

Understanding acculturation among second-generation South Asian Muslims in the United States

Ali, S. — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:03:02 PST

This article addresses an understudied area in studies of immigration—why patterns of acculturation of second-generation immigrants vary. To address this question, I draw on ethnographic research conducted among second-generation South Asian Muslims in New York City. Sociologists generally assume that acculturation is an inevitable process, and that it proceeds from less to more. I argue that acculturation is a more complex process that varies over time and situation for individuals, and can even go from more to less acculturation. Building on Judith Harris's group socialisation theory and Murray Milner Jr.'s theory of status relations, I propose that acculturation is a dynamic status process, and that we can better understand variations in patterns of acculturation of individuals by looking at their peers—the kinds of intimate associations that individuals make, and the kinds of peer group norms to which individuals conform.

'Paying back to society': Upward social mobility among Dalits

Naudet, J. — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:03:02 PST

This article discusses the way upward social mobility is subjectively experienced by Dalits in India. It proposes a phenomenological analysis of upward social mobility, looking particularly at the way in which upwardly mobile persons deal with the tension between their group of origin and their new group. The main argument is that a moral imperative to ‘pay back to society’ structures the experience of a sharp change in class and status. The specificity of the experience of upward social mobility in the Indian context seems to be that it is not characterised by a tendency to forget the group of origin in order to better acculturate to the new group, nor is it characterised by feelings of ‘being ashamed’ of the group of origin, and even less by a sentiment of ‘guilt’ about abandoning this group. On the contrary, the perpetuation of a link with the group of origin (i.e., the caste group) seems to completely shape the experience of mobility. After showing that the basis of this particular ethos of mobility is caste, the article ends with a discussion of the way in which caste renders it difficult to define social mobility in the Indian context.

For a Sociology of India: Satish Saberwal in conversation with Nandini Sundar and Amita Baviskar

Sundar, N., Baviskar, A. — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:03:02 PST

As part of an ongoing engagement with the sociology of India, CIS will profile the life and work of senior sociologists. This interview was conducted over three sessions at Professor Saberwal's home, on 6, 11 and 26 August 2008. We also requested Mrs. Edith Saberwal to contribute to the discussion regarding their personal life. The interviews were laced throughout with Professor Saberwal's characteristic humour—which unfortunately, we cannot fully reproduce here. We thank Professor Saberwal for answering all our questions patiently. We are very grateful to him and his daughter Gayatri Saberwal for carefully correcting the transcript.

Roots of partition

Ghosh, A. — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:03:02 PST

Book Reviews

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:03:02 PST

Errata

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:03:02 PST

Islamic 'reform', the nation-state and the liberal subject: The cultural politics of identity in Kachchh, Gujarat

Ibrahim, F. — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:03:57 PDT

This article argues that transnational Islamic movements provide discursive fields within which Muslim women in Kachchh, Gujarat, are able to contest prescriptive notions of work, the body, honour and piety. It reflects on the articulation of collective identity and its gendered dimensions, as manifested in a conjuncture of global discourses—Islamic reform as well as NGO-led political–economic emancipation. While neo-liberal development discourse is rooted in the philosophy of the liberal, autonomous, modern subject, movements of religious revival are often thought of as epitomising the non-liberal, ‘traditional’ subject. I suggest that the dichotomies of modernity/tradition or liberal/non-liberal are productively disrupted when one examines how these discourses become entangled with one another to produce subjectivities that are somehow indebted to both, as a new space opens up for women to selectively redefine choices that are responsive to both local and global conditions. The article also uses this ethnography to ask how we might reconcile global, transnational religious idioms with a more secular–liberal market discourse which, in turn, generates beliefs and practices that seek to manipulate identities in the public sphere. The article concludes by questioning the modular nature of the liberal public sphere, by reflecting on the role played by religious movements in constituting such a sphere.

Between encompassment and closure: The 'migrant' and the citizen in India

Roy, A. — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:03:57 PDT

The figure of the citizen as it emerged with modernity also produced the ‘constitutive outsider’ denoting differential or layered inclusions. The legal-constitutional language of citizenship in India and the manner in which it has unfolded in practice shows that citizenship oscillates ambivalently between encompassment and closure, creating a differential layering of citizenship. While encompassment unfolds as a potential moment of liberatory change, closure, as a simultaneous differential experience of citizenship, creates a breach in the differentiated-universalism envisaged by the logic of encompassment. It is this oscillation and ambivalence which creates the ‘disturbed zones of citizenship’ that propel the category of the citizen out of a legal trapping into a concept whose realisation has its own logic and momentum. In order to demonstrate this, this article maps the amendments that have taken place in citizenship laws in India, sieving out in particular the category of the ‘migrant’, to identify moments of encompassment and closure. It shows how the migrant has been integral to the amendments, and traces its different figurations within them, to demonstrate shifts in the ideological basis and institutional practices of citizenship in India.

Aadamkhor Haseena (The Man-Eating Beauty) and the anthropology of a moment

Singh, B. — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:03:57 PDT

In this article I trace certain related trajectories: the emergence and possible disappearance of the cinematic form of the soft-porn ‘morning show’; the waxing and waning arrangements of certain spaces in the city of Delhi, in particular cinema halls in Old Delhi; and lives enmeshed in this unstable itinerant matrix of cinema and the city. In confronting these situations of permanent mobility, we are led to the conceptual issue of time. Do the hands of a clock describe units of experience? Does time privilege movement or rest? How do we understand time in terms of both materiality and subjectivity? How do cinematic affects relate to durational experience? I address these questions by setting out the anthropology of a ‘moment’ as a way of understanding durational experience. The moment is conceptualised in two distinct but related forms: as a chronograph (that tracks trajectories of movement and matter) and as a crystal (that follows varying states of mind). Understanding the issue of time as a philosophical problem through the writings of Gilles Deleuze, I also consider what kind of relationship exists, or might exist, between anthropology and philosophy.

Narrative absence: An 'Untouchable' account of Partition migration

Kaur, R. — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:03:57 PDT

The core of symbolic communities, like the community of Partition migrants, is formed through the discursive ownership of historical experiences—for instance, the loss of human lives, personal property and dismemberment of national territory; followed by the restoration of that loss through examples of successful refugee resettlement and national self-assertion. Within the master narrative of Partition migration history, however, the experiences of forced movement and resettlement suffered by the ‘Untouchables’ are obscured. Popular accounts of violence, forced movement and suffering are largely built around the narratives produced by upper caste and upper middle-class migrants and exclude the experiences of Untouchable migrants. This narrative absence becomes a gauge of both the discursive and physical exclusion of ‘Untouchable'refugees from the legitimate community of Partition migrants. Such a meta-version of Partition history constitutes the realm of the normal, outside which ‘Untouchable’ narratives exist as an aberration in the theme of modern citizen-making in post-colonial India. In this article, I examine these ‘aberrations’ to provide an alternate reading that helps us challenge the master narrative of Partition migration history.

What an Oriya widow can eat

Routray, S. — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:03:57 PDT

Towards a radical sociology of religion

Madan, T.N. — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:03:57 PDT

Book Reviews

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:03:57 PDT

Errata

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:03:57 PDT