scholarly journals Corruption and Factionalism in Contemporary Punjab: An ethnographic account from rural Malwa

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 942-970 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICOLAS MARTIN
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Village Level ◽  
Congress Party ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
The Village ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Large Sections ◽  
Improve Service Delivery

AbstractOver the length of its current tenure, Punjab's Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has sought to become more a socially inclusive party, more responsive to popular demands, and even to improve service delivery and eradicate corruption. However, despite these lofty goals, it has also presided over what people refer to as ‘goonda raj’—a rule of thugs—and has managed to alienate large sections of the population and, in the process, fuelled the rise of the anti-corruption Aam Admi Party in the state. In this article, based on ethnographic fieldwork in rural Malwa, I attempt to shed light on the roots of this contradiction. Is it simply the case, as ordinary people allege, that the SAD's claims are empty and that its members are merely interested in looting the state? Or, alternatively, is it the case that the party merely operates in accordance with Punjab's allegedly time-honoured tradition of rival factions competing to appropriate the spoils of power? I suggest instead that much of the corruption and violence observable at the village level in Punjab has its roots in the antagonistic relationship between the Congress Party and the Shiromani Akali Dal. It is this antagonism that appears to fuel the SAD's highly partisan form of government, and it is partisan government that appears to fuel the corruption and the village-level factional conflict that is documented in this article.

Studies in Indian Agriculture: The Art of the Possible by Gilbert Etienne, translated from the French by Megan Mothersole. University of California Press, 1968.

1969 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-231
Author(s):  
Hiromitsu Kaneda
Keyword(s):  
Rural Economy ◽  
Field Work ◽  
The State ◽  
University Of California ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Village Level ◽  
Indian Agriculture ◽  
Development Block ◽  
The Village

This book is a unique example of research on Indian agriculture that begins at the village level and works upward and outward to the development block, the district, and ultimately the state. It is based on the author's own field work in four Indian villages, in Utter Pradesh, Madras, and Maharashtra, where he and his family lived during 1963/64. Utilizing his ability to talk to ordinary people in Hindi, relying mainly on such first-hand sources of information as village land records, block and district plans, and minutes of local councils as well as interviews with farmers, the author attempts meticulously to reach conclusions based on the knowledge of what is practicable in the rural economy of India.

scholarly journals Facets of Democracy: An Overview

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 15-29
Author(s):  
Aswasthama Bhakta Kharel
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
The World ◽  
Elected Representatives

 Democracy allows the expression of political preferences of citizens in a state. It advocates the rule of law, constraints on executive’s power, and guarantees the provision of civil liberties. It also manages to ensure human rights and fundamental freedoms of people. In democracy, people are supposed to exercise their freely expressed will. Ordinary people hold the political power of the state and rule directly or through elected representatives inside a democratic form of government. Democracy is a participatory and liberal way of governing a country. Different countries in the world have been practicing various models of democracy. There remains the participation of people in government and policy-making of the state under democracy. But when the majority can pull the strings of the society without there being legislation for protecting the rights of the minority, it may create a severe risk of oppression. Many countries of the world at the present time are facing democratic deficits. In several countries, the democratic practices are not adequately regulated and governed, as a result, the rise of violations of rules of law is observed. Even a few countries practicing democracy are not living peacefully. This situation has put a significant question about the need and sustainability of democracy. Democracy is a widely used system of governance beyond having several challenges. Here the concept, origin, models, dimensions, practices, challenges, solutions, and future of democracy are dealt to understand the structure of ideal democracy.

The Family Way: Manhood and Dabangai in the Making of a Dynasty in Uttar Pradesh

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Satendra Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political System ◽  
Uttar Pradesh ◽  
Indian Politics ◽  
Village Level ◽  
Congress Party ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Village

Only looking at the Congress Party can obscure the fact that political dynasties, in different forms and degrees, exist in a number of political parties in India. There are many examples of political families ruling the roost across the states but digging deeper shows us that the malaise goes to the village level as well. Therefore, to completely examine the extent to which Indian politics is dynastic, this article investigates strategies and networks of a local political dynasty in the Meerut district of Uttar Pradesh (UP). It explores how a family, by getting elected its sons into the local political bodies, becomes a powerful political dynasty over a period of time and how entry of this dynasty into the Indian political system is assisted by political parties and caste associations. Furthermore, this article shows the ways in which popular notions of leadership and manhood play important role in the making of a dynast along with the importance of dynastic ties for the marginalized rather than privileged groups.

Land Is Like a Mother: The Contradictions of Village-Level Protests

People's Car ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 100-130
Author(s):  
Sarasij Majumder
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Land Acquisition ◽  
Rural Life ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Village Level ◽  
Front Stage ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Village ◽  
Urban Media

This chapter considers the village protests against land acquisition as performances. It uses the idea of performance, built on concepts of a front stage and a backstage, to contrast the spectacular with the mundane. It highlights the rhetorical strategies that landholding villagers use to represent themselves and rural life to the urban media, urban activists, and the anthropologist using the trope of the peasant living a harmonious rural life. These gendered self-images derive from leftist politics and its extolling of rural life and the peasantry as articulated through such statements as “Land is like mother; it cannot be bought and sold.” This chapter shows how the protest tactics and images challenged the state but also exacerbated conflicts among villagers and prevented them from entering into dialogue with the government regarding compensation and rehabilitation.

Mediating Conflict

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sirpa Tenhunen
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phones ◽  
Political Action ◽  
West Bengal ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
The State ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Political Work ◽  
Congress Party ◽  
Left Front ◽  
Different Levels

Chapter 6 provides an overview of the studies on new media’s role for political activism and then examines how mobile phones mediate political action by exploring activists’ use of mobile phones for their daily political work in rural West Bengal. The ethnographic fieldwork was carried out during the rise of the opposition, the Trinamul Congress Party, in West Bengal; consequently, the chapter also highlights the factors that helped bring the Trinamul Congress Party to power after decades of the Left Front Government’s rule of the state. This chapter illustrates how phone use builds on earlier political patterns and meanings, but has made politics faster, more heterogeneous, and translocal. Incidents that appear to be spontaneous reactions to the ruling party’s misdeeds often originate in communication between different levels of party hierarchies, followed by the horizontal spreading of information both within and outside the party.

Is economic inequality a universal evil?

2019 ◽  
pp. 91-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rostislav I. Kapeliushnikov
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
The State ◽  
Fair Play ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
The Public ◽  
Discursive Power ◽  
A Current

Using published estimates of inequality for two countries (Russia and USA) the paper demonstrates that inequality measuring still remains in the state of “statistical cacophony”. Under this condition, it seems at least untimely to pass categorical normative judgments and offer radical political advice for governments. Moreover, the mere practice to draw normative conclusions from quantitative data is ethically invalid since ordinary people (non-intellectuals) tend to evaluate wealth and incomes as admissible or inadmissible not on the basis of their size but basing on whether they were obtained under observance or violations of the rules of “fair play”. The paper concludes that a current large-scale ideological campaign of “struggle against inequality” has been unleashed by left-wing intellectuals in order to strengthen even more their discursive power over the public.

EXPEDITION TO MALI, 2020

2020 ◽  
pp. 12-28
Author(s):  
D. V. Vaniukova ◽  
◽  
P. A. Kutsenkov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mass Murder ◽  
The State ◽  
Case Scenario ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
Traditional Art ◽  
Peter The Great ◽  
State Museum ◽  
Bobo Dioulasso ◽  
Oriental Studies ◽  
The Village

The research expedition of the Institute of Oriental studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences has been working in Mali since 2015. Since 2017, it has been attended by employees of the State Museum of the East. The task of the expedition is to study the transformation of traditional Dogon culture in the context of globalization, as well as to collect ethnographic information (life, customs, features of the traditional social and political structure); to collect oral historical legends; to study the history, existence, and transformation of artistic tradition in the villages of the Dogon Country in modern conditions; collecting items of Ethnography and art to add to the collection of the African collection of the. Peter the Great Museum (Kunstkamera, Saint Petersburg) and the State Museum of Oriental Arts (Moscow). The plan of the expedition in January 2020 included additional items, namely, the study of the functioning of the antique market in Mali (the “path” of things from villages to cities, which is important for attributing works of traditional art). The geography of our research was significantly expanded to the regions of Sikasso and Koulikoro in Mali, as well as to the city of Bobo-Dioulasso and its surroundings in Burkina Faso, which is related to the study of migrations to the Bandiagara Highlands. In addition, the plan of the expedition included organization of a photo exhibition in the Museum of the village of Endé and some educational projects. Unfortunately, after the mass murder in March 2019 in the village of Ogossogou-Pel, where more than one hundred and seventy people were killed, events in the Dogon Country began to develop in the worst-case scenario: The incessant provocations after that revived the old feud between the Pel (Fulbe) pastoralists and the Dogon farmers. So far, this hostility and mutual distrust has not yet developed into a full-scale ethnic conflict, but, unfortunately, such a development now seems quite likely.

The Baluch, Sunnism and the State in Iran

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stéphane A. Dudoignon
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Local Democracy ◽  
Oasis Area ◽  
Shed Light

Since 2002, Sunni jihadi groups have been active in Iranian Baluchistan without managing to plunge the region into chaos. This book suggests that a reason for this, besides Tehran’s military responses, has been the quality of Khomeini and Khamenei’s relationship with a network of South-Asia-educated Sunni ulama (mawlawis) originating from the Sarbaz oasis area, in the south of Baluchistan. Educated in the religiously reformist, socially conservative South Asian Deoband School, which puts the madrasa at the centre of social life, the Sarbazi ulama had taken advantage, in Iranian territory, of the eclipse of Baluch tribal might under the Pahlavi monarchy (1925-79). They emerged then as a bulwark against Soviet influence and progressive ideologies, before rallying to Khomeini in 1979. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, they have been playing the role of a rampart against Salafi propaganda and Saudi intrigues. The book shows that, through their alliance with an Iranian Kurdish-born Muslim-Brother movement and through the promotion of a distinct ‘Sunni vote’, they have since the early 2000s contributed towards – and benefitted from – the defence by the Reformist presidents Khatami (1997-2005) and Ruhani (since 2013) of local democracy and of the minorities’ rights. They endeavoured to help, at the same time, preventing the propagation of jihadism and Sunni radicalisation to Iran – at least until the ISIS/Daesh-claimed attacks of June 2017, in Tehran, shed light on the limits of the Islamic Republic’s strategy of reliance on Deobandi ulama and Muslim-Brother preachers in the country’s Sunni-peopled peripheries.

scholarly journals Remittance Houses and Transnational Citizenship: Mapping Eritrea’s Diaspora–State Relationships

2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-80
Author(s):  
Milena Belloni
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Housing Projects ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Transnational Citizenship ◽  
A Site

Can diaspora houses be used as a site to explore transnational citizenship? Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Eritrea, this article shows that different kinds of remittance houses reify different categories of transnational citizens with various sets of rights and duties. Drawing on studies on state–diaspora relations and remittance houses, I illustrate the key role that housing plays in the Eritrean state’s efforts to build a loyal diaspora. By looking at housing projects (state-led and individual) over the last thirty years, the article shows how different groups of emigrants – based on their relationship to the state of origin as well as their status in their country of residence – have been more or less able to realise their aspirations to build a house back home. By doing this, I show the importance of considering remittance houses as not only transnational cultural artefacts but also political claims to membership.

Rag Doll Nations and the Politics of Differentiation on Arbitrary Borders: Karelia and Moldova*

2004 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 457-496 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Lawrence Schrad
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
The State ◽  
Ethnic Community ◽  
National Identities ◽  
The Other ◽  
Interesting Aspect ◽  
Territorial Boundaries ◽  
Shed Light

“Tell a man today to go and build a state,” Samuel Finer once stated, “and he will try to establish a definite and defensible boundary and compel those who live inside it to obey him.” While at best an oversimplification, Finer's insight illuminates an interesting aspect of state-society relations. Who is it that builds the state? How and where do they establish territorial boundaries, and how are those who live within that territory compelled to obey? Generally speaking, these are the questions that will be addressed here. Of more immediate concern is the fate of peoples located in regions where arbitrary land boundaries fall. Are they made loyal to the state through coercion or by their own compulsions? More importantly, how are their identities shaped by the efforts of the state to differentiate them from their compatriots on the other side of the borders? How is the shift from ethnic to national identities undertaken? A parallel elaboration of the national histories of the populations of Karelia and Moldova will shed light on these questions. The histories of each group are marked by a myriad of attempts to differentiate the identity of each ethnic community from their compatriots beyond the state's borders. The results of such overt, state-initiated efforts to differentiate borderland populations by encouraging a national identity at the expense of the ethnic, has ranged from the mundane to the tragic—from uneventful assimilation to persecution and even genocide. As an illustration of the range of possibilities and processes, I maintain that the tragedies of Karelia and Moldova are not exceptional, but rather are a consequence of their geographical straddling of arbitrary borders, and the need for the state to promote a distinctive national identity for these populations to differentiate them socially from their compatriots beyond the frontier.

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