Lawfare and Security Labor: Subjectification and Subjugation of Police Workers in India

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Beatrice Jauregui
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Police Work ◽  
Labor Rights ◽  
Social Field ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Police Organizations ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
History Of

What labor rights do police workers have? How are they legally delimited? This article addresses these questions through a case study of government responses to attempts by police constables in post/colonial South Asia to express job-related grievances and establish employee unions. Drawing on ethnographic observations, interviews, and archival documents collected in India over fifteen years, the analysis demonstrates that, for more than a century, class warfare within police organizations has manifested in counter-insurgency “lawfare” between senior officials and subordinate personnel regarding whether and how the latter may collectively organize to transform their living and working conditions. It further shows how in this context law as a social field has worked to subjectify rank-and-file police as an ironically exploitable and expendable class of laborers who are always already suspect of rebelling against the state that they have sworn to serve. Through revelations of a long history of structural servitude compelling subaltern police in South Asia to do questionably legal types of labor, this study raises challenging questions about how police work has been conceived and practiced globally as “security labor” and how, moving forward, we must work to reimagine what police work is, what it can be, and what it ought to be.

Jumbos and Jumping Devils

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nisha P R
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Social History ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of

Jumbos and Jumping Devils is an original and pioneering exploration of not only the social history of the subcontinent but also of performance and popular culture. The domain of analysis is entirely novel and opens up a bolder approach of laying a new field of historical enquiry of South Asia. Trawling through an extraordinary set of sources such as colonial and post-colonial records, newspaper reports, unpublished autobiographies, private papers, photographs, and oral interviews, the author brings out a fascinating account of the transnational landscape of physical cultures, human and animal performers, and the circus industry. This book should be of interest to a wide range of readers from history, sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies to analysts of history of performance and sports in the subcontinent.

Progressive Law, Activism, and Lawyering in an Age of Preemption

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 252-267
Author(s):  
Rashmi Dyal-Chand
Keyword(s):  
Working Conditions ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Global Supply Chain ◽  
Environmental Movements ◽  
Improve Working ◽  
Detailed History ◽  
History Of ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Core Questions

Preemption is one of the most important legal doctrines for today’s progressives to understand because of its power to constrain progressive policymaking and social movement lawyering at the state and local level. By examining the detailed history of a decades-long campaign by the labor and environmental movements to improve working conditions in an industry at the heart of the global supply chain, Scott L. Cummings’s Blue and Green: The Drive for Justice at America’s Port (2018) provides a case study about the doctrine and impacts of preemption. The study also inspires lawyers and activists alike to reexamine core questions of factual relevance, representation and voice, and precedent.

Exportation of Manpower: A Case Study of Chinese Seasonal Laborers in an Agricultural District in Hokkaido

2020 ◽  
Vol 03 (02) ◽  
pp. 2050005
Author(s):  
Yoshihisa Godo ◽  
Tai Wei Lim
Keyword(s):  
Working Conditions ◽  
Capita Income ◽  
National Average ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Agricultural Industry ◽  
Agricultural Laborers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Wage Increases

Chiebun District in Hokkaido, one of Japan’s largest vegetable- producing districts, has a long history of accepting agricultural laborers from China. Previously, farms in Chiebun District recruited seasonal laborers from the northeastern part of China, where per-capita income is much lower than China’s national average. At that time, the main reason Chinese laborers came to work in Chiebun District was to earn money. However, because of wage increases in China, it became difficult for Chiebun District farms to recruit these seasonal laborers. Around the same time, consumers’ demands for new types of vegetables were increasing in other regions such as Hebei, Henan, and Shandon Provinces, creating the need to train the farmers in these areas. Farms in Chiebun District provide comfortable living and working conditions for Chinese laborers. In return, the Chinese laborers, as indispensable manpower, contribute to the prosperity of the local agricultural industry in Chiebun District. As such, Chiebun District presents a model of a reciprocal relationship between Japanese farms and Chinese seasonal laborers.

The Colonial Genealogies of Political Decay and Legitimation Crises: An Enquiry into the Predicament of State-construction in Post-colonial South Asia

2020 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 276-293
Author(s):  
Sanjeev Kumar H. M.
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
After Effects ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Legitimation Crisis ◽  
State Construction ◽  
History Of

This article is an attempt to conceptualise and theoretically explain the colonial genealogies of the processes of state-making and state-construction in post-colonial South Asia. In pursuit of this, the article seeks to theorise the colonial ways of providing a sense of fixity of political territoriality, held together by colonially crafted institutions of metropolitan governance, as an independent variable in determining the nature of the processes of state-making and state-construction in the region. On this count, an enquiry into the complex trajectory of these post-colonial political processes, which are the dependent variables for this article, is the fundamental problematic of analysis. This problematic would be decoded with the help of a dual conceptual framework, involving what Samuel Huntington designates as political decay and the legitimation crisis given by Jurgen Habermas. In the context of South Asia, the predicaments of political decay and legitimation crisis, according to this article, manifest as after-effects of engagement on the part of the region’s post-colonial polities with the imported values of colonial modernity and neoliberal economic reforms. By drawing instances from two countries of the Indian subcontinent, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the article tries to show how these after-effects have played out in the form of a tumultuous political history of the processes of state-making and state-construction. The article, in this way, is an attempt to theorise the inter-sectionalities between the colonial and post-colonial periods of South Asia. This has been done here by problematising such a historical inter-sectionality from the perspective of the two intervening variables—the received values of colonial metropolis and the morals of modernity—mediated through neoliberal economic reforms.

‘One Can’t Help Shuddering at the Sight of the Ruin of This Thriving Town’: The Great Fire in Yeniseisk and Its Consequences. 1869-1870

2018 ◽  
pp. 483-494
Author(s):  
Natalia V. Gonina ◽  
◽  
Anna P. Dvoretskaya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Krasnoyarsk Krai ◽  
External Resources ◽  
Irkutsk Region ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Town

This archive draws on archival sources to study the Great Fire in Yeniseysk in 1869 and its consequences for development of this northern provincial town. The research derives its novelty from the first publication of documents of the State Archive of the Krasnoyarsk Krai and that of the Irkutsk Region, which describe measures of fire response and name benefactors. Historical approach allows to place specific patterns of local community in the context of social history of the 20th century. Anthropological approach allows to identify means and modes of surviving in a natural disaster. The fire clamed about 200 lives, destroyed all wooden buildings in the town, and disrupted daily activities of more than 7 thousand Yeniseysk citizens. At present, such disasters are considered as more than just local disasters. From the religious point of view, such natural disasters disrupt the balance and harmony of the God's world and require worldwide effort to set it to rights. The case-study of the Yeniseysk community concludes that actions of a person within the fire storm were determined not just by self-preservation, but also by responsibility for the lives of those around them. People appealed to church for help. Many Yeniseysk priests rose to the occasion as their vocation demanded. The archival documents show how rapidly the nation responded to the disaster. The case-study of Yeniseysk in 1869-1871 demonstrates an array of measures aiming to attract external resources. The activities were based on Christian principles of communal spirit and charity, community help and civic cooperation in joined efforts of state and public institutions, private and corporate donors. The article concludes that effective moneyed assistance and social support significantly decreased the severity of losses.

Scylla et Glaucus: A case study

1992 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 199-228
Author(s):  
Neal Zaslaw
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Louis Xiv ◽  
French Opera ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
History Of

The policies of centralisation pursued by Louis XIV and his ministers affected most aspects of French life and culture. From 1645 opera had been imported from Italy by Louis' minister Cardinal Mazarin, originally out of political motives. When it had become ‘naturalised’, assuming its characteristic French guise under the despotic direction of Lully's Académie Royale de Musique, it continued to serve political purposes. In return for a monopoly on theatre music, Lully saw to it that opera served not only as entertainment for the nobility and bourgeoisie, but also as propaganda for the state and for the divine right of the King. An incidental effect of these policies was that the number of French operas produced was small compared to the number in Italy. This was due to the monopoly; to the centralisation, which meant that with few exceptions ‘French’ opera really meant ‘Parisian’ opera; and to the lavishness of the productions, which made frequent changes of repertory impractical even with subsidies. Each première was an event of note, chronicled in official and unofficial sources – the archival documents, mémoires, correspondence, periodicals, pamphlets and books of the day. This profusion of documentation frequently makes possible a degree of precision about the history of early French opera that can rarely be attained for other national schools.

scholarly journals MAKING YEMEN INDIAN: REWRITING THE BOUNDARIES OF IMPERIAL ARABIA

2009 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 38a-38a
Author(s):  
John M. Willis
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
Legal Identity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Project

This article argues that the Aden Protectorate constituted one of the westernmost parts of India in terms of its political–legal identity and its place in the cultural project of imperial India. Although the port of Aden was governed as part of the Bombay Presidency until 1937, the tribes of the Aden Protectorate were treated as independent native states similar to the princely states of India. Using the sultanate of Lahj as a case study, the article shows the extent to which the colonial state used the Indian model to elaborate a history of the sultanate as an independent political entity, a status that was then institutionalized in historical texts, ethnographic knowledge, and state rituals. The article concludes with an analysis of the protectorate's participation in the 1903 Coronation Durbar in Delhi as a means of demonstrating its place in the British imagination of a socially and politically fragmented India that extended beyond geographical South Asia.

scholarly journals AT THE NATION-STATE’S EDGE: CENTRE–PERIPHERY RELATIONS IN POST-1947 SOUTH ASIA

2016 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 509-539 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELISABETH LEAKE
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
History Of ◽  
Autonomy Movements

ABSTRACTThis article examines centre–periphery relations in post-colonial India and Pakistan, providing a specific comparative history of autonomy movements in Nagaland (1947–63) and Baluchistan (1973–7). It highlights the key role played by the central government – particularly by Jawaharlal Nehru and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto – in quelling both insurgencies and in taking further steps to integrate these regions. It argues that a shared colonial history of political autonomy shaped local actors’ resistance to integration into the independent nation-states of India and Pakistan. This article also reveals that Indian and Pakistani officials used their shared colonial past in very different ways to mould their borderlands policies. India's central government under Nehru agreed to a modified Naga State within the Indian Union that allowed the Nagas a large degree of autonomy, continuing a colonial method of semi-integration. In contrast, Bhutto's government actively sought to abandon long-standing Baluch political and social structures to reaffirm the sovereignty of the Pakistani state. The article explains this divergence in terms of the different governing exigencies facing each country at the time of the insurgencies. It ultimately calls for an expansion in local histories and subnational comparisons to extend understanding of post-1947 South Asia, and the decolonizing world more broadly.

scholarly journals Modern landscaping and medicinal plant loss as a legacy of colonialism in Nigeria (Lokoja as case study).

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 197-203
Author(s):  
Michael Oloyede Alabi
Keyword(s):  
Urban Design ◽  
City Planning ◽  
Town Planning ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Indigenous Plants ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Town

This paper aims to trace the history of colonial urban planning in Nigerian cities, its legacies of urban design and beautification of the environment. In Nigeria the town planning institutional frame works was established under the colonial rule which persisted to the post colonial period. In this sense the colonial era was a phase in which European institutions and values systems were transferred to Nigeria, one of which is the concept of environmental beautification with the use of plants. An investigation is carried out on the influence of colonial rule on landscaping and urban design. Findings show that the introduction of deliberate landscaping to city planning have over the years systematically led to loss of valuable indigenous plants partly due to the introduction of exotic plants. These are plants that initially were seen as sources of cure for several ailments. There is therefore the need for a rethink as to the type of plants to be used for landscaping.

scholarly journals Mass Mobilization in Indian Politics: A Case Study of Non-Cooperation Movement

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-25
Author(s):  
Farooq Ahmad Dar ◽  
Muhammad Sajid Khan ◽  
Muhammad Abrar Zahoor
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mass Mobilization ◽  
Indian Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Masses

Mass-Mobilization is one of the key ingredients for not only launching a movement but also for spreading any political agenda. The involvement of the masses always plays an important role in a process of bringing change anywhere and at any time. The history of South Asia, however, witnessed that in the struggle against the colonial rulers, to begin with, started by the elite alone. Politics was considered as the domain of a selected few and the common men were considered as ignorant and perhaps irrelevant and thus were kept at a distance. It was only after the beginning of the twentieth century and especially after the entrance of Gandhi on the political screen that the masses gained importance and were directly involved in political affairs. They not only became part of the Non-Cooperation Movement but also played an important role in spreading the movement all across India. In this paper, an attempt has been made to highlight Gandhi’s efforts to mobilize Indian masses during the Non-Cooperation Movement and its impact on the future politics of the region. The paper also discusses in detail different groups of society that actively participated in the process of mass-mobilization.

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