Navigating Social Exclusion and Inclusion in Contemporary India and Beyond: Structures, Agents, Practices (Anthem South Asian Studies) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0857283227 ISBN 13: 9780857283221

Verlag: Anthem Press, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

‘Navigating Social Exclusion and Inclusion in Contemporary India and Beyond’ contains a collection of lucid, empirically grounded articles that explore and analyse the structures, agents and practices of social inclusion and exclusion in contemporary India and beyond. The volume combines a broad range of approaches to challenge narrow conceptualisations of social inclusion and exclusion in terms of singular factors such as caste, policy or the economy. This collaborative endeavour and cross-disciplinary approach, which brings together younger and more established scholars, facilitates a deeper understanding of complex social and political processes in contemporary India.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Uwe Skoda is an associate professor of South Asian studies at Aarhus University, Denmark.

Kenneth Bo Nielsen is a research fellow at the Centre for Development and the Environment at the University of Oslo, Norway.

Marianne Qvortrup Fibiger is an associate professor in religious studies at Aarhus University, Denmark. 

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Navigating Social Exclusion and Inclusion in Contemporary India and Beyond

Structures, Agents, Practices

By Uwe Skoda, Kenneth Bo Nielsen, Marianne Qvortrup Fibiger

Wimbledon Publishing Company

Copyright © 2013 Uwe Skoda, Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Marianne Qvortrup Fibiger
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-85728-322-1

Contents

Acknowledgements, vii, 
List of Contributors, ix, 
1. Introduction: Navigating Exclusion, Engineering Inclusion Uwe Skoda and Kenneth Bo Nielsen, 1, 
Part I: Spaces and Values, 
2. Cosmopolitanism or Iatrogenesis? Reflections on Religious Plurality, Censorship and Disciplinary Orientations Kathinka Frøystad, 19, 
3. Dependent Husbands: Reflections on Marginal Masculinities Radhika Chopra, 41, 
4. Exclusion and Inclusion: Navigation Strategies among Hindus in the Diaspora - A Case Study from Denmark Marianne Qvortrup Fibiger, 55, 
Part II: Communities and Politics, 
5. In Search of Development: Muslims and Electoral Politics in an Indian State Kenneth Bo Nielsen, 73, 
6. Exclusion as Common Denominator: Investigating 'Dalit-hood' Guro W. Samuelsen, 97, 
7. Inclusion of the Excluded Groups through Panchayati Raj: Electoral Democracy in Uttar Pradesh Satendra Kumar, 119, 
8. Making Sikkim More Inclusive: An Insider's View of the Role of Committees and Commissions Tanka B. Subba, 135, 
9. Encountering 'Inclusion' and Exclusion in Postindustrial Mumbai: A Study of Muslim Ex-millworkers' Occupational Choices Sumeet Mhaskar, 149, 
Part III: Resources and Development, 
10. Dams, Development and the Exclusion of Indigenous Groups: A Case from Odisha Deepak Kumar Behera, 167, 
11. 'Solutions Emerge When Everyone Works Together': Experiences of Social Inclusion in Watershed Management Committees in Karnataka Devanshu Chakravarti, Sarah Byrne and Jane Carter, 189, 
12. The Death of Shankar: Social Exclusion and Tuberculosis in a Poor Neighbourhood in Bhubaneswar, Odisha Jens Seeberg, 207, 

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION: NAVIGATING EXCLUSION, ENGINEERING INCLUSION

Uwe Skoda and Kenneth Bo Nielsen

Social exclusion has in recent years received increasing attention from scholars and academics working on issues such as poverty, inequality and development. Indeed, already 15 years ago Else Øyen lamented the fact that the idea of social exclusion had made such rapid inroads into academia that scholars were now 'running all over the place arranging seminars and conferences to find a researchable content in an umbrella concept for which there is limited theoretical underpinning' (quoted in Sen 2000, 5). The present volume is the outcome of one such seminar, held in Aarhus in Denmark in the spring of 2010. The aim of the seminar was, however, not to provide further theoretical 'underpinnings' to the concept of social exclusion, but rather to examine its empirical applicability in contemporary India: How does an increasingly liberalized Indian economy contribute to processes of in- and exclusion? To what extent does the deepening of Indian democracy offer hitherto marginalized social groups new opportunities for pursuing strategies of inclusion through, or in opposition to, the state? And how does 'development' alter the social terrain on which inequalities are negotiated and played out? Finally, how are these processes intertwined? These and related questions emerged as focal points for discussion during the seminar, the spirit of which we seek to convey in this volume. The contributions contained here all seek to considerably expand the notion of social exclusion by applying it in the study of a broad range of cases. The chapters focus on issues ranging from kinship and gender, to censorship, elections, caste, labour, migration and more.

In this introduction we revisit the history of the interlinked concepts of social exclusion and inclusion, and examine how academic debates on these issues have played themselves out in the Indian context. We then adopt the metaphor of navigation to argue for an approach to social exclusion that is more sensitive to the interplay between structural changes and the agency of those social groups and actors, whose lived experience is embedded in relations of inequality. We also, following Karl Popper, introduce the notion of 'social engineering' to highlight how various strategic alliances can be formed in response to the experience of exclusion.

Social Exclusion: From Concept to Analytical Practice

Originating in the writings of René Lenoir (Borooah 2010, 31), the notion of social exclusion was initially promoted by a research project at the International Institute in the mid-1990s. Later, an Institute of Development Studies (IDS) Bulletin from 1998 focused on the subject (de Haan 2004, 4), and with the entry into the debate of Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, who authored an Asian Development Bank document on social exclusion the same year, the 'uncontrolled proliferation' (Borooah 2010, 31) of studies of exclusion was well on its way. Today, according to one observer, 'social exclusion' and its twin term 'social inclusion' are the two terms most widely used in recent years by both politicians and social scientists (Sonowal 2008, 123). If this is the case, one could reasonably ask: Why do we need yet another book on the topic? Our argument in this introduction is that there is a need to scrutinize the concept of social exclusion from an empirically grounded point of view. We feel that a large part of the scholarship on social exclusion has been too broad in its analytical ambition, and too narrow in its empirical application. In this volume we seek to address this imbalance by letting the empirical base dictate the scope of analysis. The chapters demonstrate that this opens up new avenues in the study of social exclusion and inclusion.

Amartya Sen's work on social exclusion has by now acquired an almost iconic status within the field. Sen introduced a series of distinctions that underpin his view of the social processes that either produce or mitigate social exclusion. For instance, people may be both unfavourably excluded and unfavourably included, that is, included on greatly unfavourable terms or conditions. Exclusion may similarly be either active or passive. It can be the result of deliberate attempts by social or political elites to deprive people of opportunities, or the outcome of more subtle and mundane everyday social practices embedded in local relations of power. Exclusion can be partial or complete, and its formal and informal forms may coexist (Oommen 2010, 22–3). The list of foundational distinctions is considerable and has continued to grow in the wake of the Sen's intervention. But as Sen points out, the real importance of the idea of social exclusion lies in its practical influence in emphasizing the role of relational features in deprivation (Sen 2000, 8); or, in Sukhdeo Thorat's (2011) terms, the importance of social relations in the analysis of poverty and inequality.

Yet, as more than a century of Marxist scholarship amply demonstrates, the argument that poverty and deprivation are relational and social phenomena is certainly not a recent invention. One could plausibly argue that the surge in popularity of the concept of social exclusion after the year 2000 has a lot to do with the fact that it seems to offer a Marxist- inspired approach to inequality and poverty, without the ideological baggage of a more- or-less discredited Marxism. While some see this as a dilution of the radical potential of a more...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Anthem Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0857283227
• ISBN 13: 9780857283221
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 240
• Herausgeber: Skoda Uwe, Nielsen Kenneth Bo, Qvortrup Fibiger Marianne
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland