The practices, policies, and politics of transforming inequality in South Asia

Abstract

This is the introduction to a special section of Focaal that includes seven articles on the anthropology of affirmative action in South Asia. The section promotes the sustained, critical ethnographic analysis of affirmative action measures adopted to combat historical inequalities around the world. Turning our attention to the social field of affirmative action opens up new fronts in the anthropological effort to understand the state by carefully engaging the relationship between the formation and effects of policies for differentiated citizenship. We explore this relationship in the historical and contemporary context of South Asia, notably India and Nepal. We argue that affirmative action policies always transform society, but not always as expected. The relationship between political and socioeconomic inequality can be contradictory. Socioeconomic inequalities may persist or be refigured in new terms, as policies of affirmative action and their experiential effects are intimately linked to broader processes of economic liberalization and political transformation.

Nepal's Ongoing Political Transformation: A review of post-2006 literature on conflict, the state, identities, and environments

“…The 'Public Debate Phase', as Bhattachan characterizes the post-1990 era, remains a relevant designation for current preoccupations with identity-based claims for federalism, reservations (affirmative action), equal opportunity, and access. 148 After the conflict ended in 2006, studies of identity in Nepal have begun to move beyond debates about the validity of a politics of identity to explore the content and impact of such politics in Nepal today. This transition is itself a reflection of the burgeoning implementation of policies, such as affirmative action, which give empirical traction to the study of a politics of identity.…”

Reframing Ethnicity: Academic Tropes, Recognition beyond Politics, and Ritualized Action between Nepal and India

“…There, groups have received benefits on the basis of categorization as Scheduled Tribes (ST), Scheduled Castes (SC), and Other Backward Classes (OBC) since the colonial era within a primordialist regime of recognition that continues to rely on anthropological validation (Middleton ). These categories themselves constitute a vaunted object of political aspiration, desired for the economic and symbolic benefits they are presumed to entail (Shah and Shneiderman ). To their despair, when the Thangmi organization in India first applied for ST status in the late 1990s, they received a rejection letter from the State Tribal Welfare Department with a note that “total ethnographic material” was lacking.…”

VCD Crossovers: Cultural Practice, Ideas of Belonging, and Santali Popular Movies

“…Recent research on the communities concerned has avoided the existing preoccupation with either a primordial or deconstructivist stance by bringing a globally influential research paradigm on "indigeneity" as a concept of global advocacy into the discussions (Kuper 2003;BarNarD 2006;KarlssoN and Subba 2006;Ghosh 2006;MerlaN 2009;Shah 2010;MCCormaCk 2011;RyCroft and Dasgupta 2011;Shah and ShNeiDermaN 2013). Indeed, a debate produced the idea that due to the multiple migrations of the communities discussed in India, any claim to a literal "first" settling in an area hardly holds true for any of the groups there.…”