Paper short abstract:

Drawing on online and offline ethnographies, this paper analyses the hashtag 'DalitLivesMatter' - first used on Twitter in 2014 - as the latest chapter in the history of cross-fertilisation between Dalit struggles and African American ones.

Paper long abstract:

First used on Twitter in 2014, #DalitLivesMatter is the latest chapter in the history of cross-fertilisation between Dalit struggles and African American ones. This paper examines the life of this hashtag and the production of a textual and visual narrative bringing together different events and leaders of the Civil Rights and Dalit Movements. Aided by extensive fieldwork on Dalit communities' identity politics in northern India, my research on #DalitLivesMatter reveals a commonality of intents and claims with those actors featuring in the above ethnographies. However, they also differ in significant ways: the hashtag is deployed by a heterogeneous group of users - both Dalit and non-Dalit -, featuring different topic choice, language and social media skills, and a miniscule minority if compared to the large body of Dalit citizens in India. Coleman has argued that 'ethnographic studies of digital media provincialize and thus particularize the role that digital media play in the construction of sociocultural worlds, group identities and representations' and this can be used 'against faulty and narrow presumptions about the universality and uniformity of human experience' (2010: 496-97). Thus, both offline and online ethnographies converge in exalting particularity, difference and context. A decolonised global anthropology in the digital age might well harness the standpoints returned by these ethnographies and place them in conversation through shared categories, ideas and goals - without privileging 'digital voices' and their spectacularism over others and taking into account the very limited social media use and skills in vast regions of the world.