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Paper short abstract:

Ethnography is often used in studies of commons in Nepal. This paper examines different uses of the concept of 'community' in such studies to determine if its use as a component of analyses of commons is warranted either in relation to the modern Nepalese nation-state or in other global contexts.

Paper long abstract:

The growth of community-based resource management in Nepal, particularly in relation to forests and radio broadcasting, is frequently identified as a cause for optimism about the country's future development, especially following the violence of civil war and the ensuing political turmoil of the new republican period. This growing literature on community management of scare resources has led to Nepal becoming a reference point for global studies of the community management of commons, and played an influential role in these studies through the provision of empirical case-studies to support contemporary theorisation of commons management. Ethnographic data from Nepal is often used as a component of such studies, which are also lauded as exemplars of interdisciplinary research. However, unlike other tropes that have dominated anthropological critiques of the construction of Nepal in the Western imagination―for example, mountaineering, the country's Gurkha troops, and tourism in the context of Orientalist fantasies of Shangri-la― the concept of 'community' has not yet been examined in detail to determine whether its deployment as a component of analysis in commons research is warranted in the context of the modern Nepalese nation-state or applicable in other contexts. This paper builds on previous critiques of Western social scientific research in Nepal by examining different uses of the concept of 'community' in commons research. In parallel to global critiques of development discourse, the paper examines assumptions about the trajectory of Nepalese development and modernisation, and looks at their contestation by different political actors, including Nepali anthropologists and other social scientists.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the implications of young people's gender justice work in Delhi for understandings of India's middle classes as 'anti-politics'. Their work represents a shift in the relationship between feminist politics and the state that has both depoliticizing and revolutionary potentials.

Paper long abstract:

A number of scholars have argued that as previously subordinated groups have entered democratic politics in India, the middle classes have become increasingly critical of politics and politically apathetic, and have sought to achieve their goals through other means, such as through civil society. It could be argued that the 2012 anti-rape protests considered alongside the anti-corruption protests led by Anna Hazare a few years earlier represent a return of the middle-class to the political. It could equally be argued, however, that this is a continuation - a social movement against politics. This paper explores the politics of young middle-class gender justice workers in Delhi. In many ways, their work represents a shift in the relationship between feminist politics and the state by moving away from a focus on legislative change, and demanding women's right to public space and the rights of all to freedom from gendered norms. I show that while in some cases this involves a radical politicization of the state's role in producing gendered violence and inequalities, in others it involves a rejection of the political and a focus on individual bodies as the locus of change. What, I ask, are the implications of the simultaneously revolutionary and depoliticizing potentials of this gender justice work for our understandings of middle-class politics in India?

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Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the after of the armed militancy (1989-2003) in Doda region of Jammu and Kashmir. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, it attempts to show how armed violence and its aftermath has enduringly changed the ways in which Hindus and Muslims conventionally related to each other.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses the after of the armed militancy in Doda region of Jammu and Kashmir. Aftermath, here, is not simply an assessment of the toll of militancy or quantum of damage nor indeed solely the degree of psychological impact of the violent phase, but, crucially the nature of interventions on the part of state in the name of development and its bearing on local and everyday Hindu-Muslim relations. It is during vulnerable state that a society is exposed to new ways of perceiving and acting. A crisis becomes an opportunity for various ideologies to play. These ideologies may range from political to religious. Militarization became a dominant feature of the region. Similarly, religious revivalists have also gained traction owing to insecurities on the part of locals. In a situation where one person's religious identity determined their loyalty to a nation-state, everyday nationalism became very salient. The idea of development has often been imagined as an alternative to separatism. Reduced violence resulted in the reemergence of political actors and parties. This led to revival of democratic process and the discourse of development as an antidote to incipient insurgency gained currency. By analysing the potentiality of development discourse, which emerged as a major counterinsurgency strategy in the post-armed conflict period, I have tried to show its interactions with the local through the processes of militarization, electoral-politics and religious-reform movements. This interplay of these forces, I argue, has resulted in the politicization of religious identity and routinisation of communal violence.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper is about ethnographic exploration of Punjabi society in Pakistan through the lens of human-animal relationship.

Paper long abstract:

In this talk, I analyse the emotional and experiential aspects of pigeon flying in Pakistan, and examine the flyers' ideology and social identity. I focus on their practical attachment to their pigeons, and the complexity of their commitment to this activity, often viewed with disdain by wider society. I argue that pigeon flying is a practice that enables the cultivation of the self, achieved through the culturally constituted notion of shauq. The Hindi/Urdu word shauq is usually glossed as personal inclination, passionate predilection, or enthusiasm, and used for different sociable activities of everyday cultural importance. Conceptualising the cultural idiom of shauq and contextualising it within the world of pigeon flying, I suggest it is productive to think about an "anthropology of enthusiasm", an idea I try to develop throughout this talk. Furthermore, a critical investigation of enthusiasm (or shauq) can have methodological implications for establishing relations of trust and mutual respect with interlocutors, and documenting the "emic" experiences of the self and other. This paper draws on 10-months of ethnographic fieldwork with pigeon flyers, which I carried out in South Punjab. It is part of a wider research project analysing human-animal relations in Pakistan.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper traces the role of the state in shaping the experience of higher education in India for marginalized caste groups, and how in current times this is contested or reified through diverse student politics/ activism in Universities through ethnographic study of a University campus.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I examine two inter-related aspects of higher education in India- the dominant state narrative that governs the higher education, and the student-politics/ activism that either tries to consolidate or challenge the state narrative, with a focus on caste. The paper concludes with a discussion on the implications of this complex interaction for better inclusion of marginalized caste groups through a transformation of the narratives the state deems 'worthy of discussion'.

The early formative period of a nation's educational system is crucial in understanding its evolution and impact on the society. In the context of Indian higher education, the state-led discourses of 'modernity' and 'merit' on which modern education was founded, normalized the dominant ideology masked as 'objective, scientific and progressive'. Using Bourdieu's theory of cultural reproduction, I discuss how this normalization of dominant ideology in the Universities systematically puts marginalized caste groups at a disadvantageous position in terms of their overall student life experience and mental health. Situating my arguments in the ethnography of a University campus in Maharashtra, I then discuss the activities of various student bodies active in the University, through an analysis of their protests, agenda of action, and mass student mobilization around issues of everyday life. The complex interaction of these student bodies, some of which represent national and state political parties, with each other, University administration and students of different caste and class backgrounds gives interesting insights into the transformation of state- students relationship through discursive contestation and consolidation of ideologies.