Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses how 'property' becomes a focus of the reordering of social relationships under conditions of neoliberlaiism

Paper long abstract:

Neoliberalism and the attending withdrawal of the state from society leads to a reordering of all social relationships, including the most intimate ones. Whilst India's urban middle-class families are said to be winners of liberalisation, not all sections of the middle class are benefitting in equal measure, as neoliberalism promises individual success and opportunities for those willing to take risks, whilst earlier solidarities disappear.

Bengali middle-class families in Calcutta often experience these tensions and ambiguities in terms of downward social mobility, which makes for precarious presents and uncertain futures. Thus, the post-liberalisation period is marked by moral ambiguity, ie in intra-generational and gender relations, or the devaluing of 'community'.

The paper will focus on 'property' in these debates and discusses how central ideas about the moral dilemmas experienced are articulated in discourses around rights in and ownership of real estate, a new and powerful trope to connect meaningful pasts, criticize the present and imagine futures possibilities.

As new circuits of value emerge at the confluence of local histories, the state and global imageries, many middle-class families are struggling to come to terms with the lure of unimaginable potential riches, to be realised in the form of real estate, and the way property relations challenge existing ideas about appropriately gendered subjectivities.

Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic data collected over twenty years in rural and urban Kerala, as well as in a number of Gulf countries, the paper focuses on the affective and intimate lives of migrants and how these are represented and discussed in both Kerala and the Gulf.

Paper long abstract:

In both Kerala and the Gulf, migrants' moral orientations and practices are persistently scrutinized, in the public sphere as much as within families and communities. Migrants are found morally lacking, regularly accused of demanding extravagantly high dowries, cheating friends and relatives over money, printing fake currency, lending money at extortionate interests, consuming too conspicuously, failing to support, or even abandoning wives and children, and so on. Whilst migration has been endowed with the capacity of causing all the "social ills" allegely affecting modern Kerala, migrants' sexuality is a particular concern. "Sex parties" with alcohol and prostitutes, pornography, extramarital affairs, excessive masturbation and homosexuality appear to be the staple diet of male migrants, both in the Gulf and when they return to Kerala.

The paper argues that concerns about the 'immorality' of Gulf migrants underscore wider predicaments and ambiguities that inevitably disrupt the production of a Kerala modern constituted around the redefinition of masculinities and femininities in the context of a neo-patriarchal, and firmly heterosexual, nuclearised family. The apparent moral panic surrounding migrants' sexual practices reflects the crisis of an idealised bourgeois conjugal life that for many (non-middle class) Malayalis either remains beyond reach or generates substantial ambiguities. The centrality of migration to the production of modern subjectivities and practices makes it inevitable that blame is being laid at the door of those who are employed in the Gulf. However, it is working

Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic research in Tiruppur, a booming garment centre in Tamil Nadu, this paper explores contemporary practices and discourses of love marriages. It analyses moral discourses that surround such marriages and considers 'money' as a key trope through which moral evaluations are made.

Paper long abstract:

The post-liberalisation era in India has produced a wealth of opportunities for large sections of the rural and urban population. Developing industries and rapidly growing urban regions have enriched many urban groups and attracted rural migrants to town. Rapidly developing urban centres, however, are replete with moral evaluations of the changes that their populations are undergoing. Many such evaluations dwell on the changing sphere of the intimate, the family, and not in the least changing marriage patterns and conjugal relationships.

Based on long-term ethnographic research in Tiruppur, a booming garment export centre in Tamil Nadu, south India, this paper explores how love marriages and the weakening of the extended family among workers are deplored by locals as a sign of a more general degeneration of society and loss of morality. The paper considers love marriages and changing marriage practices, the ways in which these are talked about and evaluated, and the negotiations and compromises that surround them. Moral discourses surrounding love marriages are mobilised by local and high caste communities to distinguish themselves from both poorer fellow caste members and working-class migrants. Money, it appears, is central to marriage discourses, especially in terms of financial support. Whether in relation to dowry in arranged marriages or financial hardship in love marriages, financial considerations are the very trope through which moral evaluations are made and expressed. In the neo-liberal era, love marriages are denounced as irresponsible as they risk undermining 'family support', which remains much needed to increase chances of doing well in post-liberalisation India.

Paper short abstract:

Pakistani Punjabis blame their fellow Muslims’ immorality, and lack of adherence to ‘true’ Islam, for all the social evils and natural disasters afflicting Pakistan and the broader Muslim world. It is said that things and people lack the fertility/vitality (barkat) that they once possessed when people were less selfish (khudgarz) and remembered God. But now food is no longer nutritious and people are small and weak. My paper explores the relationship between this discourse and the decline of local community ties resulting from elite withdrawal, the decline of village crafts and the growth of a rural footloose proletariat. It explores how Sufi pirs and their followers try to regain access to God’s power and bounty, and to recreate communities based on trust.

Paper long abstract:

This paper suggests that the mutual interdependence that once characterised patronage relations has been undermined by the landed elite's gradual withdrawal from village life, a trend that appears to be widespread throughout South Asia. Both patrons and clients may still appeal to the images of the generous patron and the loyal client, but their relationship is increasingly restricted to contractual, one-off exchanges in which generosity, protection and loyalty are no longer central. Although they appeal to the morality of patronage, particularly during elections, both parties know that morality is for the birds; that what really counts is power and money. This means that electoral candidates win elections not because they are generous, honest or pious but because they are powerful or even feared. My informants see this as problematic and blame the increasingly coercive and commercial nature of political relations for what they perceive as a decline in vitality/strength in both people and the food they eat.

Paper short abstract:

In order to interrogate the relevance of self-transforming regimes of morality in ‘modern’ life, the paper focuses on the Rajavamshi peasants of Bengal. Codes of Kshatriyaizing ethics produced by peasant elites are analyzed, along with the subsequent ambivalent response of lower-class peasants.

Paper long abstract:

Relatively little scholarly attention has been paid until now to the ways in which moral codes have influenced, and been contested by, the everyday life of peasants in Bengal. By focussing on the Rajavamshi community, which constitutes the largest Scheduled Caste group in present-day West Bengal, I interrogate how for over a century, peasants have created codes of morality for enhancing their status. Utilizing governmental as well as community records, I demonstrate how specific soul-mind-body transformation techniques have been practised by the Rajavamshis, focussing on the cultivation of rajoguna as the proper this-worldly as well as soteriological goal for becoming the governor of one's self, society, and the cosmos. Practice of rajoguna and kshatriyatva include inculcation of self-awareness of oneself as a Kshatriya 'ascetic', moral education predicated on the differentiation of 'virtue' and 'vice', and changes in ceremonies, liturgical texts, diet, and forms of social and political organization. These techniques for 'asceticizing' the peasant have sometimes been rejected by lower-class peasants, particularly when they have been felt to be too economically or psychologically demanding, or when they have not addressed agrarian grievances. At other moments, the moral codes have nurtured a strong sense of communitas for the peasants against elite Indian (and particularly Bengali gentry) power, and provided bases for the growth of ideas of social justice. The Rajavamshi case serves as a point of departure for a broader theorization about the role of moral codes in constructing 'modernity' as a project for 'asceticizing' and 'ethicalizing' everyday life.

Paper short abstract:

The paper shows how a reputed middle class school in a South Indian city conveys highly contradictory ideas about the meaning of being a modern Indian citizen in the global era

Paper long abstract:

Focusing on a middle class school in metropolitan Ernakulam, South India, this paper unravels the work of one of the city's dominant educational projects. It is an attempt to investigate how the institution's rhetoric, practices, and legacy, reworked through India's integration into the global economy, converge into the 'ideal' Indian citizen for a global era they aim to produce. Specific focus is on the schools' self-representational project, concentrating on its Annual Day celebration as a special instance in which the school displays its status and gives concrete expression to their vision on the relationship between the school's educational project, India, and the modern world. With respect to the values and skills the school tries to instil in youth, it is argued that far from conveying a coherent message they constitute a site where contradictory ideas about the meaning of being a modern Indian citizen are played out. The paper shows how the school's messages oscillate between encouraging individual competitiveness while valorising a reworked nationalist consciousness, or between advancing 'international' culture while urging for a more entrenched notion of 'tradition', with a high caste morality touch.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore the ways that anti-corruption activism, which aims to discipline the state and inculcate bureaucratic ethics in officials, itself works through informal relationships and connections to political, bureaucratic and media power. Drawing on ethnography of the lives and practices of anti-corruption activists I will consider the extent to which the organisation of anti-corruption activism prefigures the changes that activists want to see in the world, and how the conceptual boundaries between state, market and civil society that activists would police are actually penetrated and blurred by activist practice.

Paper long abstract:

Recently a surge of anti-corruption activism has caught the imagination of the Indian public, in particular the middle classes. After the efflorescence of public protest against corruption in mid 2011 excited comparisons have been made with the Arab Spring, the struggle for independence from Colonial rule, and mass movements against corruption such as that led by Jayaprakash Narayan in the 1970's. Anti-corruption activism is a site through which ideas about the moral development of the nation and the ethics of active citizenship are debated and reproduced. Celebrating saintly politics on the one hand and system rationality on the other it brings together disparate actors interested in promoting moral, legal and technological schemes to change the relationship between citizen and state. But what is it like to make a life working within the activist scene? Behind the moral and technological rhetoric, and media hype, lies a social world of practices where individual activists have to negotiate the personal relationships and connections through which activist work is done. This presentation will explore the ways that activism, which aims to discipline the state and inculcate bureaucratic ethics in officials, itself works through informal relationships and connections to political, bureaucratic and media power. Drawing on ethnography of the lives and practices of anti-corruption activists I will consider the extent to which the organisation of anti-corruption activism prefigures the changes that activists want to see in the world, and how the conceptual boundaries between state, market and civil society that activists would police are actually penetrated and blurred by activist practice.