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New Subaltern Politics presents a critical dialogue between the conceptual and analytical legacies of Subaltern Studies and the evolving forms of hegemony and resistance in contemporary India. From the struggles of the urban poor in Gujarat to the activism of sexual subalterns in eastern India and the mobilization of artisanal fishing communities in Tamil Nadu, the essays in this volume cover a diverse range of ongoing struggles against dispossession, disenfranchisement, and stigma that are unfolding in neoliberal India.
List of contents
- INTRODUCTION
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Reconceptualizing Subaltern Politics in Contemporary India
- Alf Gunvald Nilsen and Srila Roy
- I ENGAGING GRAMSCI
- 1. For a Historical Sociology of State
- Society Relations in the Study of Subaltern Politics
- Alf Gunvald Nilsen
- 2. Rethinking Hegemony- Caste, Class, and Political Subjectivities among Informal Workers in Ahmedabad
- Manali Desai
- 3. Recovering Caste Privilege
- The Politics of Meritocracy at the Indian Institutes of Technology
- Ajantha Subramanian
- II IMAGINATION, FAITH, AFFECT
- 4. Representing the Adivasi
- Limits and Possibilities of Postcolonial Theory
- Rashmi Varma
- 5. Can the Subaltern Be Secular?
- Negotiating Catholic Faith, Identity, and Authority
- in Coastal Tamil Nadu
- Aparna Sundar
- 6. Affective Politics and the Sexual Subaltern
- Lesbian Activism in Eastern India
- Srila Roy
- III CASTE AND COMMUNITY IN CIVIL/POLITICAL SOCIETY
- 7. Theorizing Thervoy
- Subaltern Studies and Dalit Praxis in India's Land Wars
- Luisa Steur
- 8. 'Community' and the Politics of Caste, Class, and Representation in the Singur Movement, West Bengal
- Kenneth Bo Nielsen
- 9. On the Edge of Civil Society in Contemporary India
- Subir Sinha
- POSTSCRIPT
- Subaltern Studies
- Then and Now
- David Arnold
- Bibliography
- Index
- Notes on Editors and Contributors
About the author
Alf Gunvald Nilsen teaches at the Department of Sociology, University of Bergen, Norway.
Srila Roy teaches at the Department of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.
Summary
New Subaltern Politics presents a critical dialogue between the conceptual and analytical legacies of Subaltern Studies and the evolving forms of hegemony and resistance in contemporary India. From the struggles of the urban poor in Gujarat to the activism of sexual subalterns in eastern India and the mobilization of artisanal fishing communities in Tamil Nadu, the essays in this volume cover a diverse range of ongoing struggles against dispossession, disenfranchisement, and stigma that are unfolding in neoliberal India.
The volume analyses the forms of collective agency that subaltern groups develop to negotiate with the workings of power from above. Foregrounding the imaginative, affective, and secular dimensions of subaltern agency, New Subaltern Politics interrogates the current relevance of Gramscian concepts of hegemony, subalternity, and the integral state in the contemporary Indian context. Bringing together path-breaking methodological and conceptual interventions in the study of subaltern politics, this volume will be invaluable to all those engaged as academics or as activists--in the struggle against unjust societies and unequal developmental trajectories.
