The Political Technologies of Caste: Manufacturing a Caste Certificate in a Mumbai Slum

Shinde, Pradeep Kumar

doi:10.1080/00856401.2015.1131168

Cited by 4 publications

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“…Another tactic involves the manipulation of paper identities and bureaucratic classifications (Shinde 2016;Sriraman 2018;Srivastava 2012). Villagers seek to adjust their paper identities to gain visibility and claim rights wherever possible.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…What do the poor and lower castes make of the paperwork, documents, and certificates that mediate their access to state bureaucracies and actors? How do they mobilize networks, affect, and identities in the process of making claims and pursuing meaningful citizenship (Bakewell 2007;Shinde 2016;Srivastava 2012)?…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, it is in the production and circulation of paperwork, signatures, and recommendations that political relations and actors are constituted. Whilst several studies explore the papers and files that circulate within bureaucracies (such as the British Foreign Office, the Islamabad bureaucracy, or the Indian state : Dittmer 2016;Hull 2003;Mathur 2012;, other research focuses on documents held by individuals and examines how they mediate individuals' relationships with state actors and institutions (Bakewell 2007;Chambers forthcoming;Cody 2009;Gordillo 2006;Shinde 2016).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Paperwork, patronage, and citizenship: the materiality of everyday interactions with bureaucracy in Tamil Nadu, India

Carswell

Neve

2020

Royal Anthropological Inst

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This article explores the material practices through which lower-caste and poor villagers engage with bureaucracy in contemporary India. We take documents and paperwork -such as ration cards and community certificates -as a 'lens' through which to explore how paper materiality is infused with the politics of power, patronage, and identity. The article brings ethnography from rural Tamil Nadu, South India, in conversation with two bodies of literature: one on the materiality of bureaucracy and one on the nature of political mediation in contemporary India. We demonstrate how everyday engagements with paperwork as well as processes of applying, form filling, and securing recommendations are constitutive of social and political relationships and, ultimately, of citizenship itself. Political mediation around paperwork and bureaucracy generates a hierarchy of citizens rather than equal citizenship for all, yet ordinary villagers transpire as anything but passive. Drawing on patronage networks, engaging in affective performances, and navigating a politics of identity, they actively negotiate access to the state in an attempt to claim their rights as citizens.In this article, we explore different material practices through which lower-caste and poor villagers engage with bureaucracy in contemporary India. We zoom in on the materiality of people's everyday interactions with bureaucracy by taking documents and paperwork -such as the cards and certificates that individuals hold or seek to hold -as a 'lens' through which to explore how people's routine interactions with the state bureaucracy are shaped through relations of power, patronage, and identity. We focus on how everyday engagements with cards and documents as well as processes of applying, form filling, and securing signatures are constitutive of social and political relationships and, ultimately, of citizenship.While existing scholarship provides us with insights into the many actors who provide political mediation in India (panchayat [village council] presidents, political brokers, netas, dalaals, and goondas), 1 many of whom operate as a state 'outside the state' (see Ghertner 2017), we still know relatively little about the material practices

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Paperwork, patronage, and citizenship: the materiality of everyday interactions with bureaucracy in Tamil Nadu, India

Carswell

Neve

2020

Royal Anthropological Inst

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“…These layers forge a social system based on order and hierarchy. Though scholars disagree on the extent to which these three elements are coterminous in describing caste, there is a broad consensus that caste is not a bounded rigid system, and historically had a greater fluidity than colonial accounts and surveys of South Asian caste systems allowed (Das, 2014;Fuller, 1996;Shinde, 2016;Waldrop, 2004;Witsoe, 2012). In post-Independence India, the fluidity of caste identities are now overlaid with a layer of state administration and ordering with categories of 'Scheduled Tribe' (ST), 'Scheduled Caste' (SC) and 'Other Backward Classes' (OBC) in resource-based opposition to 'Forward Castes' (Das, 2014).…”

Section: Names As Label and Signifiermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In post-Independence India, the fluidity of caste identities are now overlaid with a layer of state administration and ordering with categories of 'Scheduled Tribe' (ST), 'Scheduled Caste' (SC) and 'Other Backward Classes' (OBC) in resource-based opposition to 'Forward Castes' (Das, 2014). These latest caste identities have taken on new meaning linked to securing greater advantages and privileges, and have produced practices of caste consolidation and/or construction in a (re)politicisation of caste so that groups can secure access to caste-based quotas, reservations and affirmative action policies (see Shinde, 2016 andWitsoe, 2012). At the same time, caste and its meaning is also being reworked through processes of urbanisation (discussed below) and practices termed 'Sanskritisation'.…”

Section: Names As Label and Signifiermentioning

confidence: 99%

What is in a name? How caste names affect the production of situated knowledge

Patel

2017

Gender, Place & Culture

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Patel, Desai, Kothari … to those literate in the workings of caste these names describe a network and its power in relation to other networks, they infer the rules of engagement within and between network members, and they ascribe a geographical terrain to home. In research, rules of behaviour and assumptions of place that are coded into names can affect access to respondents, their disclosure of data and subsequent claims to validity. This paper explores the coded expectations of knowledge embedded in a name as seen by someone (me) fairly illiterate in the workings of caste by utilising the principle of Bourdieu's doxaa 'pre-reflexive intuitive knowledge' (Deer, 2012, 115)to untangle and explore the effect of names on the production of partial and situated knowledge. Drawing on fieldwork in Gujarat, India, I analyse reflexive accounts through the lenses of feminist geographers and critical race scholars to illustrate the effects of being unknowingly and unwillingly placed into a social hierarchy of power in the field, introduce the idea of 'us-ing' (an opposite of othering) to describe researcherrespondent relations, and explore how readers might interpret the presence or absence of data and claims to validity. These accounts make visible the effects of positionality on knowledge production in ways that speak to feminist-postcolonial research, and specifically to feminist researchers of colour conducting research away from 'home'.

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Stabilization and change under planning and everyday practices – the politics of becoming public space in Dharavi, Mumbai

Tang,

d’Auria

2024

Planning Perspectives

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The Political Technologies of Caste: Manufacturing a Caste Certificate in a Mumbai Slum

Cited by 4 publications

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Paperwork, patronage, and citizenship: the materiality of everyday interactions with bureaucracy in Tamil Nadu, India

Paperwork, patronage, and citizenship: the materiality of everyday interactions with bureaucracy in Tamil Nadu, India

What is in a name? How caste names affect the production of situated knowledge

Stabilization and change under planning and everyday practices – the politics of becoming public space in Dharavi, Mumbai

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