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This paper undertakes an organizational analysis of villages that experiences sustained radical movements in the Telangana region of India. Focusing on organizational forms that create and sustain radical networks of the poor, the paper addresses the structural challenges faced by movements of the poor. Unlike workers in mass production, who by their location in the economic system, possess leverage, I investigate how the poor make demands of institutions over which they possess no structural power. Using the case of the Maoist armed insurgency in India, I find that areas of sustained radical networks of the poor emerged from specific organisational formations on the ground. I elaborate each of the organisational structures that emerge, tying them to the crucial aspect of relatively autonomy that appears to become central in the functioning of sustained radical movements of the poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In less than a decade, China built the world's largest high-speed rail network. In contrast, India has struggled to expand its railway network, which has become increasingly strained by rapidly growing social and economic demands. The railway sector in both countries is exclusively controlled by the state. Why does China exhibit such a high degree of state capacity for railway development compared with India? Differences in regime type and investment levels fail to fully explain this gap. Building on two years of in-depth fieldwork in China and India including interviews with state railway officials, this paper examines the institutional structures than underlie state capacity in these two countries. This paper argues that institutional structures characterized by "empowered accountability" where decision-making power and accountability are commensurate at the level of individual state actors yield higher levels of state capacity. In particular, "nodal" forms of institutional structure where authority and accountability are concentrated in key positions and state organizations exhibit greater "empowered accountability" and tend to result in relatively streamlined policy implementation. "Diffuse" forms, in contrast, tend to produce decision-making paralysis and a diffusion of responsibility. China's state railway institutions are better able to execute railway projects largely due to their nodal structure whereas the diffuse structure of India's railway institutions contributes to chronic project delays. A more detailed understanding of the relationship between institutional structure and state capacity has significant implications for improving for social well-being in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that in the struggle for indigenous land rights in India, women have been especially powerful as leaders in a movement that has been particularly active in using public interest litigation in the Supreme Court in support of their movement. The movement protests actively against government-led development projects that have been prioritized over indigenous rights, and has successfully built up international support for its cause. This paper specifically looks at the role of women in this movement as well as the relationship between the Indian Supreme Court and indigenous land rights. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the cultural construction of the basis of well being by examining well being amongupper-caste, middle-class Hindu men in India in the 1980s. The paper suggests that because of a in afamily structure characterized by joint-household living and an economic structure that limits economicindependence, men's well being is rooted in being nourished by group support. That these men alsofind well being in limited independence suggests that a balance between independence and groupguidance is cross-culturally necessary for people to experience well being. Considering changes inIndian family and economic structures since the 1980s suggests that it is social structure (rather than acultural or psychological orientation) that grounds standards of well being. Social change thattransforms social structure without a corresponding change in cultural orientation prompts threats towell being. Scholarly notions of well being have been unduly influenced by consumer, capitalist cultures. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I examine ways in which gender is framed on discourses on the social and cultural implications of call center growth in India. Based on a field study conducted in call centers in Gurgaon, India in the summer of 2005, the paper draws on interviews with 25 call center agents and examines ways in which women experience this work. I argue that there is a universalizing discourse on empowerment, for women that does not adequately account for dimensions of class, nation, and patriarchy. I propose an intersectional approach to examining gender issues and suggest dimensions of class, caste, age, nation and patriarchy which need to be incorporated in understanding the lived experiences of women experiencing processes of globalization. By 2007 India will have one million call center workers mostly predicted to be women. (Nascomm, 2005, Unesco 2003). Addressing the gap that exists in sociological literature on the surge in call centers in India and their implications I call for more attention to these transnational processes. A gender analysis that incorporates an intersectional approach to understanding women's lived experiences is vital to understanding processes of globalization taking place, today ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutions reflect the resources and power of those who made them and, in turn, affect the distribution of resources and power in society. This paper is about institutional change, how institutions evolve over time, and how to understand some of the forces that make institutional change happen or not. The main concern of this paper is the reasoning behind the government decision to end East India Company's monopoly in India trade in 1813. It seeks to examine government motives for the 1813 charter, and assess the significance of the manufacturers and private traders who challenged the monopoly. I argue that the Charter Act 1813 was the result of continuous modification of previous charters approved by government which reflect changing strategy in dealing with crisis, and eventually led to the institutions of free trade. I challenge the revolutionary concept in explaining institutional change which favor simple causal explanation. I argue that institutional change involves the recombination of old institutional elements and sometimes the introduction of new one as well. In other words, institutional change is a slow process of path-dependent evolutionary change within constraints. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between food and identity grows more complex everyday as globalization and the accompanying movement of peoples, cultures and capital define new ideological and sensory frontiers. The paper examines the changing gastronomic landscape of Bangalore, India during a period of sudden globalization through food writings on and in the city. The entry of transnational food companies have moved Bangaloreans away from tastes and eating practices of their agrarian ancestors in one decade. The paper suggests that culinary difference and gastronomic consumption are symbols of a changing Indian social order in which eating becomes a moral quest for a new self. The inquiry attempts an understanding of how the imagining of food and food writing shapes this moral searching, constructing shifting identities that are often conflicting, and that engages two paradoxical discourses of adventure and nostalgia through polysemic consumption choices. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Based on participant observation and ethnographic interviews this paper examines the ways in which the film business in India anticipates consumers of popular cinema. One of the major challenges for any film business that seeks the mass audience is the uncertainty of reception. The millions of dollars spent on audience research and marketing in Hollywood do not guarantee box-office success and those in the movie business are forced to deal with after-the-fact knowledge. This paper examines how a film business anticipates the popular audience in the absence of formal market research of the Hollywood variety. Through descriptive analysis it explores perceptions of the audience as consumer and investigates the practices employed to map the audience and the related construction of the heterogeneous audience in a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual urban setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the history of medical practices in India, between the late 19th and early 20th centuries Bengal. I argue that to fully understand the history of medicine and medical practice in India, one needs to look, not only at the clinic or the hospital, but the household. The household, in its real (architectural spaces, household commodities, medicines/drugs) and symbolic (representing hierarchies like for instance spaces for women/men, purity/impurity, exteriority/interiority, and those based on seniority) manifestations became the most important site for the emergence of an ethic of well being, which, though it evolved in the context of colonial/western ideologies, institutions, and spaces, and in a dialogue with them,was nonetheless based on a rationale, ingredients of which were already present in Bengali cultural repertoire. In this paper I have tried to show how these concepts interacted with those, which were labeled ?western?and gave rise to new forms of hygienic and health practices. I analyze two particular concepts like "care" and "cleanliness" as they exist in contemporary Bengali socio-cultural vocabulary and argue that these concepts helped create new ?modular? forms of hygiene, health, and well-being, which were imagined as part of a nationalist discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business Process Outsourcing: The U.S. and India in the New Global Market Margaret Abraham and Susan Manning Department of Sociology, Hofstra University ABSTRACT The last decade has witnessed the emergence of India as the center for ?business process outsourcing? (BPO) in the global market. The phenomena of business process outsourcing and globalization of information-technology-enabled services (ITES) have been well reported in news and business publications but have not been adequately analyzed in the academic literature. As part of a larger ongoing project, this preliminary paper focuses on the emergence of India as a vital hub for ?business process outsourcing? in the global market. Drawing from secondary sources and preliminary exploratory research by the authors, this paper does the following: ·..ASA-Provides a historical overview of the emergence of ITES in India. ·..ASA-Examines why large multinational corporations are using India as a primary hub for the business process outsourcing in the global market. ·..ASA-Examines the effects of this outsourcing on India and the United States. ·..ASA-Identifies some similarities and differences between previous trends in outsourcing manufacturing and the current trend of outsourcing services. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of organizing against outsourcing and some questions on the future direction of outsourcing and its implications for workers worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empowerment of women needs to be conceptualized as an ongoing process. Thus, at the heart of this paper is the question: what are some alternative dimensions of women’s empowerment measures and how are they linked to child health and survival? Using the 1998/99 India Demographic and Health Survey I examine how mother’s empowerment in India affects child nutrition and immunization. Multivariate analyses highlight the need to conceptualize empowerment as multi-dimensional and not restrict its measurement to traditional proxy variables. Furthermore, the dimensions most important for ensuring child nutrition are not as those necessary for ensuring infant immunizations. This latter finding suggests that women need to be empowered simultaneously along several different dimensions if they and their children are to benefit across the whole spectrum of their health and survival needs. The paper concludes with relevant policy recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper to attempts to provide a link between IT development in India to the cultural evolution of the IT professional with specific emphasis on Bangalore which is spearheading the highest investments in this sector in India.. The main argument that besides just being competitive in terms of cheap labor in this arena, the successes of IT professionals are also guided by a work ethic which I term as the ?neo traditional knowledge ethic? has been concurrent with the global spread of capital and labour in creating network societies in bridging the local culture of software developers to the global without negating traditions. This leads to my sociological quest in this paper which is based on research findings to understand what the social contributions are in making Indian software developers /entrepreneurs globally competitive despite the various social impediments of traditions, patronage etc which are still part of India?s modernizing society. I prepare the concept of ?the neo traditional knowledge ethic? to establish the foundations of the Indian IT professional within the rationalization of certain cultural values which I argue have restructured and not evicted Hindu notions of caste and kinship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper attempts to study this impact on the agricultural practices, policy making and on the farmers? way of life in India, a predominantly agricultural country. The paper contends that debates on the impact of globalization can be better analyzed by looking at what constitutes the modern ?environmental state?. We use the Foucauldian concept of governmentality to look at the possibilities of analyzing the regulatory reforms of the environmental state. The concept of governmentality is used to look at institutional structures and the role of policy actors, the political culture of the new ?environmental state? and its impact on policy-making, ?expert? knowledge base or scientized knowledge of transnational agents and its linkages with power relations along with the displacement of ?local? knowledge and finally we look at the processes of ?normalization? with the use of governmental apparatuses. We use the above framework to look at the case of the introduction of genetically modified Bt. Cotton in India in recent years and its impact on farmers? way of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, based on ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that the Hindu nationalist movement in India uses paramilitary camps for women as key sites for the mobilization and embodiment of emotions consonant with a Hindu nationalist habitus. Here, under the guise of empowering and promoting the interests of ?Hindu? women, the movement uses ideological indoctrination and physical training programs to emotionally socialize its activists into the habitus of a ?feminine siege mentality? wherein camp participants end up feeling besieged and threatened as targets of imminent sexual violence by Muslim men. This feminine siege mentality is constituted by and through two key practices at the paramilitary camps (the main focus of the paper being the second): 1. Discursive practices which use two intertwined discourses ? a discourse of victimization and a discourse of empowerment - to communalize sexual violence against women in the public sphere (i.e. hold Muslim men responsible for it); 2. Embodied practices which inscribe the discourse of victimization onto the habitus of the Hindu nationalist women ? specifically a physical training program which masquerades as a program training women to physically defend themselves, but actually heightens their feelings of vulnerability to sexual attack by Muslim men. The aim of this paper, at a macro level, is to highlight how the reciprocal relationship between emotions and embodiment plays out in social movements. I use my ethnographic data to explain: how the movement uses embodied and discursive practices to mobilize emotions; how these mobilized emotions become embodied in the process of doing physical activities; and how a macro-level discourse becomes hegemonic at the micro level ? i.e. gets translated into embodied, gut level commonsense convictions. I focus, in particular, on the physical training during these paramilitary camps as a text and a medium through which various ideological messages are inscribed onto and assimilated into the emotional habitus of the activists. The paper is divided into 3 sections ? in the first I provide a brief background of the Hindu nationalist movement, describe the movement?s discourse of Hindu vulnerability and discuss how the Hindu nationalist siege mentality is gendered; in the second section, I briefly describe Hindu nationalist paramilitary camps for women, particularly their physical training programs; and finally in the third I proceed to critically analyze the contribution of physical training program to the mobilization and embodiment of the feminine siege mentality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Export-oriented industrialization (EOI) is a common strategy for economic development in developing economies that can be achieved by increasing exports in large manufacturing sectors or smaller-scale, cluster-based industries. A key component of the EOI strategy, whether in the context of large- or small-scale production, is technological upgrading of manufacturing practices to facilitate exports and boost worker earnings. While the literature has recognized the salience of technological upgrading, it has focused predominantly on successful cases, thus overlooking problems in the implementation and adoption of such technology that could impede exports. In this paper, I draw on an ineffective export-driven mechanization initiative in a handicraft cluster in southern India to illustrate how key stakeholders might adopt incompatible "technological frames" in making sense of new technology, thus hindering the expansion of exports. I describe how government officials in this case viewed the technology brought into the sector through the frame of "status," workers perceived the technology using a "creative control" frame, whereas capitalists saw the same technology as being a source of "profits." These mismatched frames led to discordant actions by the stakeholders, resulting in limited adoption of the technology, weak exports and little improvements in worker earnings. By highlighting a key condition under which export-driven technology projects might fail, namely when key stakeholders' technoogical frames are misaligned, this paper draws important implications for the many developing economies using EOI as their primary industrialization strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: According to the World Health Organization, rates of older adult depression worldwide rest between about 4% and 20%, however the variation in prevalence is culturally and contextually dependent. Although rates of older adult depression are similar for Asian, American, and European nations, how these rates compare between countries of Asian and Indian descent has been relatively understudied. China and India both have strong traditions of family support expectations (filial piety and seva respectively). Both nations are characterized as high Human Development Index (HDI) nations, whereby rapid changes in economic growth and demands of full-time employment affects the amount of time spent with extended family in an effort to focus on the nuclear family. Objectives: Drawing on modernization theory, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the differences in rates of older adult depression in China and India, and how these differences vary by rural and urban residences, as well as family interaction. Methods: Using nationally representative data from the WHO Study on Global AGEing and Adult Health (SAGE): Wave 1, 2007-2010 analyses will be conducted using nested logistic regressions. Findings: We expect to find that depressive symptoms will vary by country of origin, place (rural vs urban), and by family interaction. These findings would suggest the need for a better understanding of the importance of parent-child relationship quality as it relates to mental health for these countries, and how the development of interventions for older adult care should be sensitive to cultural variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As small, uncollateralized loans targeting women have become integrated into the global financial system, microfinance institutions (MFIs) have become a key conduit of global finance capital. Yet, we understand little about how MFIs integrate previously uncreditworthy groups into the global financial system. This paper focuses on everyday interactions between MFI clients and their employees in India, the world's largest commercial microfinance market. I argue that the work of making good loans and creditworthy women underpins the continued growth and expansion of global finance. This relational work--simultaneously social and economic, intimate and procedural--allows us to understand microfinance as neither inherently empowering nor inherently exploitative. Rather, MFI organizational procedures, in conjunction with their employees' ad-hoc navigation of clients' complex social worlds, together accomplish relational work. MFI workers establish relationships of trust, reciprocity, and familiarity while also successfully extracting timely repayment. Drawing on ethnographic work and interviews, I identify the standardized, audited procedures that MFIs create to establish trust between clients and fieldworkers, as well as the ways in which fieldworkers and clients leverage intimate knowledge of one another to skirt standard procedures when needed. These twin processes suggest that the expansion of microfinance in India is embedded in relationships of trust and mutuality built between clients, MFI staff, and financial institutions, with implications for our theorizations of global finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In India today, the term "land mafia" is used widely and vaguely to refer to those engaged in various forms of land-related "corruption." Mafia thus joins a constellation of terms--corruption, crony capitalism, and patronage--that are meant to signal deviations from liberal capitalism and good governance. What remains unclear is the precise sociological phenomenon to which the term "mafia" is so widely applied, and what its prevalence indicates about capitalism, state formation, and violence in contemporary India. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the state of Rajasthan, combined with analysis of court cases and newspaper articles, my project seeks to explain the structure, causes, and consequences of India's land mafias. In this paper, I advance three hypotheses: 1) that "land mafia" refers to ad-hoc and informal networks of public and private individuals that collaborate to dispossess land, but do not self-identify as "mafias"; 2) that land mafia activity is enabled not by poor governance and insufficient reform, but by neoliberal policies intended to commodify land in conjunction with a pro-business state and the social capital of diversifying rural elites; and 3) that land mafias facilitate--rather than obstruct--growth while contributing to inequality. In sum, I suggest that land mafias are informal public-private partnerships that harness social capital for economic growth. As such, they are the apotheosis of--rather than deviations from--neoliberal capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various forms of violence have become a part of many women's everyday life. Starting from intimate partner violence, sexual harassment, rape, acid mutilation, dowry deaths to female infanticide and sex-selective abortion, violence against and violation of women seem to have exacerbated in contemporary times. The aim of this paper is to explore how violence against women, namely rape, is normalized in India, reasons why there is such low reporting of crime while evaluating the actions of various actors in the criminal justice system. Additionally, I will discuss possible policy, cultural and social solutions to combat the existing rape culture in India. The victim-blaming remarks blame "western" influence for rape as it encourages girls and women to fight for their right to education, right to work, right to choose a life on their own accord. Due to the myth of misuse of rape and false allegations by women to shame men, doctors in India still carry out "two finger test" on rape victims. In villages, a lot rape cases occur as women have to go defecate in the fields or in the jungles during late nights or early mornings. This is subjected to the lack of sanitation facilities at home. Thus, increasing education and safe spaces for women is a priority in rural India. Overall, in the fight for gender equality and justice for women, it is essential for males to speak out along with women, as they play a crucial role in rape prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering India's fast change in socioeconomic environment, its population change would be an important driving factor of global population trajectory. While many of well-known studies for fertility decision have focused on husband-wife relationship as a unit of decision making in micro-level study and regional sociocultural factors in macro-level, there are some difficulties to apply these ideas into India's extended and hierarchical family structure. In this paper, I discuss how family member other than a couple, such as senior-male and senior-female, has an effect on having children by analyzing India Human Development Survey. 14,168 of women, who are currently married, still living together with husbands' family, and age between 15~49, were analyzed with multivariate regression model. According to the result, there is a statistically significant effect on having additional children when senior female of the family most say about the number of children with holding other variables in constant. When senior female most say about the number of children, a couple may have 0.13 more children compare to a case when respondent (wife) most say about number of children. In Poisson model, this coefficient is equivalent to 6% more children when senior female most say about number of children, and it has statistically significant as well. This result gives a sense of importance of understanding other family member's influence on fertility decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low wage service workers employed in large transnational firms in India undergo forms of training in which they are taught to transform their bodies through "grooming" protocols, the proper use of uniforms and the adoption of hair and nail styles defined as "professional" as per the standards of transnational corporate settings. This training can be categorized in two ways. First, it can be seen as a mechanism through which the poor rural men are transformed into appropriate low-wage service workforces traditionally comprised of women. Through civilizing discourses reminiscent of colonial imperialism work is constructed as professional and mechanized such that feminized, low status, dirty work is redefined as modern and appropriate for men. Second, such body training can be seen as a re-feminization of labour whereby both male and female workers are expected to work on their bodies to convey docility and be aesthetically pleasing to others while they receive very low wages. In this paper, we explore the body training of low wage service workers (specifically cleaners and security guards) employed at high-tech, architecturally lavish transnational corporations in India. Through interviews with housekeepers and security guards, as well as their employers, we explore their accounts of the training they receive in light of the two narratives above. We explore the ways in which labour practices within transnational firms lead to the gendering of work in new ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is motivated by the recent resurgence of interest in the economic development of raw material rich countries. The rapid increase in raw material demand from China and India has revived the debate about the costs and benefits of raw material extraction in resource rich countries, but with an emphasis on the new dynamic of South-South trade and investment. While the debate has been prominent in the popular press, it has not been grounded in empirical studies or linked to theories on resource wealth and development. This paper thus has two objectives. The first is to provide a critical assessment of the idea that there is a 'resource curse' such that countries with economies that rely heavily on raw material production are economically disadvantaged relative to other countries in the world economy. The second is to employ the world systems perspective to develop a cohesive analytical framework for understanding how raw material wealth is linked to economic outcomes. The intention of this analysis is to support subsequent informed predictions about how changes in the structure of trade relations between southern countries might change the future economic prospects of raw material rich countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how countries are linked to and move up the global animation value chain, one of the fast growing cultural industries, by comparing South Korea and India against the backdrop of its evolving geographical and technological landscapes. First, the recent changes in the global animation production have increased domestic original production in Korea and strengthened the global connection of India's animation industry. Second, the state had shaped the industry through censoring animation in Korea and supporting its public use in India, until recently presenting itself as an industry supporter in both countries. The industry has been socially reconstructed since the mid-1990s as a cultural industry by the Korean state and as new outsourcing opportunities for the Indian IT sector. This paper calls for attention to the roles of the social embeddedness of cultural production and the ideational dimension of industrial policy in promoting cultural industries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains the processes occurring in the making of one of Asia's newest "world cities," Bangalore, India. The analysis is two-fold: first, to demonstrate that the global/world city literature downplays the important dynamics within world-cities-in-the-making that unfold between the rural and urban, and across interlinked southern cities (ie, Dubai, Shanghai, Bangalore), and second, to expand our thinking on how new economic booms (such as the IT boom) are being sustained through systemic shifts in governance and state practices, fueled in large part through real estate speculation and dispossession. This paper suggests a set of problematic trends occurring worldwide, that target specific business sectors in select cities as catalysts for national economic transformation, with potentially devastating implications for social equity and justice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent ethnographies of the state study the latter from the eye of the subjects. They focus on the everyday practices where state and subjects intersect, thus making the concept of the state "relational" and sometimes, "interactional". Taking the cue from that scholarship, this paper studies how participants in a militant labor movement recall the state in their experiences of thirty years of struggle. Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha emerged in 1977 as a trade union of the manual workers employed in the state-owned iron-ore mines in central India. It struggled with the mine management demanding to be officially recognized as labor. The narratives of the participants in the movements were recorded during my ethnographic research in the mining township in the summers of 2003 and 2004, and spring of 2006. Most of the interviewees were small leaders (mukhiya) in the movement.This paper finds that the participants experienced and perceived two different states: they regarded the "developmental" state with respect, and feared and ridiculed the "network" state. The experiences were interactional: they countered the developmental state as the mine management, national political leaders and office bearers, and the network state as the state government, local political leaders, bureaucracy and police. Through choosing the case of participants in a labor union of contract workers, this paper captures the state as it appears to its subjects in situations of conflict. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the possible demographic factors which contribute toward HIV awareness and beliefs among women in a southern state of India. The assumption is once the threats of AIDS are recognized and group consciousness raised, there is some hope that agency will be cultivated among women. The data for this paper comes from National Family Health Survey-2, collected in 1999. The survey administered by International Institute of Population Studies, Mumbai includes a sample of 4,032 women, married at least once in their lifetime, in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Logistic regression was used to predict the effects of education, relationship to head of household, age, religious beliefs, ethnicity, basic economic status and place of residence on AIDS awareness and beliefs. Overall findings suggest the importance of education, economic status, ethnic origin and religiosity in contributing toward AIDS knowledge and beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on globalization and governance over the past two decades has shed light on the implications of global city formation and the globalization of urban space for local democracy and democratic accountability. This research has generally clustered around two poles: one arguing that globalization is creating the conditions for city-based democratic movements and greater public accountability and the other decrying the rise of globally-oriented neoliberal governance as a threat to local democracy. While concern about the democratic implications of global city formation has produced a wealth of research, few studies have examined the conditions under which globalization either creates or hinders opportunities for local democratic accountability. This paper, based on a case-study a housing and infrastructure mega-project designed to attract global investment to Mumbai, seeks to push past the polarization and specify these conditions. The paper concludes that greater public input may be an unintended consequence of local government's efforts to court global real estate investment. Recognizing that opponents to Mumbai's development schemes have the potential to obstruct or delay projects with direct agitations and lengthy court proceedings, local administrators have made efforts to engage residents and activists in the project's early planning phases in order to instill confidence in risk-adverse investors. Although such participation is tenuous and may be interpreted as cooptation, this paper argues that amidst efforts to globalize urban development in Mumbai, the development process may be becoming more democratic than under earlier, state-administered schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indian society has long been stratified along the axes of caste, ethnicity and religion. A large number of studies report inequalities in various outcomes along the caste, ethnicity and religion. Not surprisingly, this inequality is reflected in educational attainment too. However, the precise mechanisms through which inequality in educational attainments manifests itself remains open to debate with a variety of hypotheses being advanced such as poverty, child labor, lack of access to schools, teacher discrimination and lack of parental interest in education. Unfortunately, there is little empirical research examining these hypotheses. Nor are the processes through which social disadvantages manifest themselves, clearly articulated. This paper utilizes a newly collected nationally representative survey data from over 41,550 households to examine social inequality in children's educational outcomes. The focus is on 8 to11 year old children's reading and mathematical skills.As expected, the paper documents substantial differences in reading and arithmetic skills between children from different caste, ethnic and religious backgrounds in India. However, these differences persist even after controlling for current school enrollment, grade completion and parental socio-economic status. This suggests that the differences in educational attainment between people of different social strata are not simply due to difference in enrollment rates. Even when children from disadvantaged groups attend school, they fail to learn as much as their peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I address the question of how to comprehend and explain contemporary witch hunts in the tea plantations of India. I aim towards an explanation of what structures the social action of individuals involved in instigating witch hunts. In the course of this explanation, I discuss what social factors lead to the hunts in the plantation and "who" qualifies as a "credible deviant/witch" in the community. The paper relies on qualitative methods such as interviews with accused witches, the accusers and victims of witchcraft and data from the police and newspaper archives, to explore how the fear of the scourge of the evil eye leads the entire village to participate in the hunt. Theoretically, the paper frames it arguments from theories of deviant behavior and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the changes in size and reward structure for various occupational groups in India between 1983 and 1999-2000. Using data from four large household surveys over this period, the paper argues that government officials, managers and professionals have benefited disproportionately over this period as compared to other occupational groups. India began a liberalization program in 1985 that was further accentuated following structural adjustment in 1991. This liberalization involved specific changes in government policies that are directly responsible for the growth in incomes for these middle classes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the social impact of microfinance programs on women based on interviews with four hundred female participants in India. More specifically it asks, what are the mechanisms through which microfinance programs increase women's agency? These programs are small-scale loan and savings programs targeted at fostering financial self-sustainability of the poor and have gained global popularity as a development strategy since the nineties. They follow a group-based lending approach targeted towards female clients and provide collateral-free loans to the poor. One of their central premises is that giving credit to women, rather than men, leads to women's empowerment by increasing their economic contribution to the household. However, I find that this financial mechanism has very limited influence in increasing the agency of women in male-headed households. Instead, I find that a majority of the women gain agency from the associational mechanism of the group, i.e., from their participation in group meetings and leadership training sessions, their access to an expanded network through the group, and their institutional link with civic organizations. This paper explains how the associational mechanism increases women's agency under optimal operating conditions and how it produces group-based collective actions.This calls for a more sociologically informed analysis of these financial programs and more attention to the social dimensions of interventions geared towards bringing economic development. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the gendered dimension of HIV stigma within the particular social context of India. Building up on the multiple status contingencies of women in India based on class, caste or geographical location, women's lived experiences with HIV is not the same. Using John Braithwaite's "Shaming Theory" and Pierre Bourdieu's notion of "Cultural Capital" this paper introduces the gendered, culture and community aspects of lived experiences of HIV within a local milieu, therefore providing foundation for fundamental analogies and contrasts with the global parlance for future research. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the process by which a consensus was reached and approval was garnered for the Dharavi Development Project, a billion dollar initiative to redevelop Mumbai's most infamous residential and industrial squatter settlement. Initiated in the context of neoliberal politics and devolved municipal governance, technocratic planning schemes - with their roots in both the British Civil Service and Nehruvian Soviet-style planning - are no longer political viable and a certain degree of local support, if not direct community participation, is required to secure both state backing and private investment. Employing a cadre of Community Development Officers (CDOs), the state government recognized neighborhood-level political support to be a prerequisite for the project's successful implementation. Utilizing the neighborhood's institutional infrastructure - including ward-level politicians, social service providers, and professional and worker collectives - CDOs spent more than three years convincing constituents and making side payments to build consensual support for the project. Although a certain amount of resistance remains, the opposition has been marginalized as institutional support expanded. This paper examines both the rationale and the process by which this consensus was secured for Dharavi's current redevelopment. It uses this case to examine the prevailing practices and theories of authoritarian development, on one hand, and participatory planning, on the other, and identifies the rise of "negotiational politics" as a political third way. Drawing upon Selznick's classic study of the Tennessee Valley Authority, this paper argues that "negotational politics" (similar to what Selznick called cooptation) remain an important, though currently under-theorized, aspect of development. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the contrasting efforts of the Communist Parties in South Africa and Kerala, India to translate their novel visions of socialist democracy into practice. While both Parties have understood socialist democracy in a broadly similar manner in which pluralistic, participatory democracy is placed at the center, they have tended to emphasize different politics and practices in their efforts to realize this vision. In particular, the SACP has tended to enlist hegemonic politics and mass mobilizing where the emphasis is on mass actions and high profile events, while the CPI(M) has given much emphasis to counter-hegemonic politics and participatory organizing, which highlights local-level capacity building and empowerment. The paper explores the conditions under which the SACP and CPI(M) worked to translate their transformative aspirations into practice and explain why they diverged. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rejecting civilizational and identity-based approaches to political Islamic movements, this paper focuses on globalization and dislocation as shaping the politics of Muslim communities. Given that nearly 40% of the world's Muslims reside as minorities, there is increasing interest in Islam in non-Muslim countries. This paper is based on a comparative ethnographic study of Lyon, France and Hyderabad, India. In both countries, Muslims comprise the largest minority populations and are among the poorest sections of society. I argue that the two cases are converging in terms of hostile relations between the state and the religious Muslim community and forms of conservative religiosity as well as political withdrawal among working-class Muslims. But the forms of politics are also divergent based on political-economic contextâ?”specifically, different models of minority integration and state welfare. Turning to Nancy Fraser's analytic framework of political movements under postsocialist conditions, I place Hyderabad's political Islam in a context of Fraser's ideal type of cultural recognition and Lyon's in the context of economic redistribution. I argue that the cases reveal limitations of Fraser's framework, for overlooking the complexity of political context, working-class withdrawal from the state, and the possibility of the state itself as based on ethnic exclusion. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increased prominence of a "new" India, which is "global" and yet, distinctively "Indian," has captured the imaginations of economists, politicians, and market professionals both in India and abroad. These images project a reshaped vision of national identity, in which class and gender are marked in prominent ways. Rejecting older notions of "Indian" and "Western" as mutually exclusive categories, this hybrid vision of nationalism aims to be a "global Indian," a sensibility that implies a range of associations with particular "global" kinds of professional work and the consumption of global goods. These professional and consumer lives, however, are ultimately rooted in a strong identification with the Indian nation, which is often expressed through gendered scripts of national belonging. This study uses interview data to theorize the ways in which individuals fuse national and global meanings to legitimate the aims of global capital, and the ways in which scripts of nation and culture are lived out through gendered restraint in terms of consumerism and sexual norms. By focusing on the everyday practices in which individuals constitute the Indian nation and the global economy, this paper brings gender and class concerns to the center of globalization theorizing. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1994 Potawatomi Indians have held an annual festival to celebrate the Nation's shared history, a remarkable event given the Potawatomi Nation's dramatic fragmentation over the century and a half since forced removal. While early Potawatomi Gatherings lasted a few days and attracted several hundred participants the event now draws more than a thousand participants per year and is a significantly larger, more complicated commemoration. Rather than ask if the Potawatomi Nation is imagined, this paper instead inquires what are the symbols and discourses engaged to articulate the Nation. I examine the three rhetorical tropes most commonly used to describe the Gathering of the Potawatomi Nation: Gathering as family reunion, Gathering as powwow, Gathering as county fair. It finds that these discursive frames are complimentary rather than contradictory expressions of the Nation's collective memory. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A survey of the literature on collective violence reveals a predominant emphasis on institutions, dichotomized in terms of that the ever-lasting question of political sociology - "state or society?." State weakening, in particular, forms a central explanation of collective violence. Aside from an element of tautology where increasing violence is itself part of the definition of state weakening, the concept holds up an idealized image of an autonomous, rational bureaucracy against the weak, illegitimate state, said to be axiomatic of non-western, primarily post-colonial states. The argument of this paper is that Weber's definition of the modern state is at odds with the actual experience of colonial and post-colonial states, whose origins lie in a distinctly illegitimate process of territorial seizure and occupation. It examines historical episodes of Hindu-Muslim violence in western India through the lens of state formation theory to put forward a new, albeit preliminary theoretical framework for understanding ethnic violence. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Caste permeates all aspects of Indian life. However, gender is one of the primary axis on which caste stratification rests, particularly in modern India with hierarchies of caste often articulated through gender. Using unique data collected by the authors for 40,000 households all over India, this paper distinguishes between public and private performance of gender to show that belonging to a Brahmin caste has a substantial effect on the public behavior of women but little impact on their behavior inside the household. Brahmin families are far more likely to show a nod of deference to the dictums of obedience and chastity in their public behaviors by insisting on limiting premarital contact between the bride and the groom, limiting women's visits to their natal families, insisting on women not going out alone in public and following a dress code which includes veiling. However, in private, Brahmin women have as much authority in the household decision making as women of other castes. We argue that this Brahminical code of gender-performance has implications for the public discourse surrounding gender in India which is used to justify a variety of oppressive actions and institutions, particularly violence against women of lower castes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigators do not have access to the "real thing'', only a speaker or writer's narrative representation of past events; complex issues follow for qualitative inquiry. The paper draws on data collected in research interviews with childless women in South India to map methodological problems that connect interviewing, transcription, translation, and interpretation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept, policies, and application of affirmative action continue to engage multiethnic countries around the world in debate. This paper compares the origins, evolution, and outcomes of affirmative action policies in the U.S. with those in India, looking specifically at rationales for affirmative action. Applying Tummala's (1999) four key justifications of Compensatory Justice, Distributive Justice, Social Utility, and Responsiveness to both American and Indian affirmative action programs, I assert that an overall difference in justifications has led to divergent outcomes in these countries. Specifically, I find that India's dependence on equality principles as the foundation for affirmative action has led to increasing social equality through these programs there, while equality has not been achieved and should not be expected in the U.S. where the primary justification for affirmative action rests on diversity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The argument that maternal education is critical for reducing gender differentials in child health is commonplace in academic and policy discourse, although significant facets of the relationship remain empirically and theoretically challenged. Evidence remains mixed and while some analyses consistently suggest that maternal education reduces gender bias in child health outcomes, another body of literature argues that education can make mothers more effective in discriminating against daughters in strongly gender inequitable culture. This study contributes to the debate by examining the contextual effects of women's education on children's health in rural districts of India. Multilevel analyses of data from the 1994 Human Development Profile Index and the 1991 district-level Indian Census will be used to demonstrate that a positive and significant relationship exists between the proportion of female literates in a district and reduced gender bias in child health within that district, above and beyond the child's own mother's education as well as district-level socioeconomic development and healthcare amenities. However, results also indicate that the effect of maternal education cannot be downplayed. The paper concludes by discussing study limitations and policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distinct family laws governing India's major religious groups saw important changes over the last generation, primarily through judicial initiative and secondarily through legislation. The paper discusses the patterns of change in Muslim matrimonial law, compares the changes in Muslim and Christian law, and identifies the major reasons for these changes. Although the judiciary enjoyed much autonomy in adjudicating Muslim law since India's decolonization, significant judicial reform emerged only from the 1970s when visions in policy communities changed. The growth of mobilization and litigation to promote gender equality made some judges and legislators inclined to provide women easier redress in matrimonial cases. An increased awareness of reforms in some Muslim-majority countries helped judges find justifications for gender-equalizing reform in Islamic normative repertoires. The resulting legal changes addressed only some gender inequalities in family law, although the Indian constitution justified more far-reaching changes. The perceived need for justification in group normative repertoires and the weakness of legal and political support structures restricted gender-equalizing reform. The limited executive commitment to the implementation of such reforms and the presence of community courts as alternative dispute resolution fora further limited the consequences of judicial reform in state courts for gender relations and family life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distinct family laws governing India's major religious groups saw important changes over the last generation, primarily through judicial initiative and secondarily through legislation. The paper discusses the patterns of change in Muslim matrimonial law, compares the changes in Muslim and Christian law, and identifies the major reasons for these changes. Although the judiciary enjoyed much autonomy in adjudicating Muslim law since India's decolonization, significant judicial reform emerged only from the 1970s when visions in policy communities changed. The growth of mobilization and litigation to promote gender equality made some judges and legislators inclined to provide women easier redress in matrimonial cases. An increased awareness of reforms in some Muslim-majority countries helped judges find justifications for gender-equalizing reform in Islamic normative repertoires. The resulting legal changes addressed only some gender inequalities in family law, although the Indian constitution justified more far-reaching changes. The perceived need for justification in group normative repertoires and the weakness of legal and political support structures restricted gender-equalizing reform. The limited executive commitment to the implementation of such reforms and the presence of community courts as alternative dispute resolution fora further limited the consequences of judicial reform in state courts for gender relations and family life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this paper is domestic violence among rural women in India. The question asked by this study is: How do regional, family, and personal characteristics of a woman affect her likelihood of being hit by her husband? Using logistic regression on the 1999 DHS data for India, we found clear regional and religious variability in the reported rates of domestic violence. As expected, higher levels of socio-economic status and education are powerful forces that dissuade violence against women. Contrary to predicted results, however, being in a nuclear family structure, having greater decision-making power, and labor force participation increased the risk of women being assaulted by their husbands. These surprising findings, taken together, suggest that the relationship between patriarchy and violence is not a clear-cut one. One would expect that more patriarchal contexts should produce a higher incidence of violence against women. In this study however, the joint family system with its rigid male hierarchical system and role expectations seems to be less prone to violence than nuclear families that are relatively less rigid. The anomalous findings could be explained if one assumes that violence is used to control women only after all other means of control have failed. A deeper understanding of the conditions under which violence is used by patriarchal families to control recalcitrant women will enable feminists and researchers to more fully comprehend the ways in which patriarchy controls women?s lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The trade union movement emerged in India, basically as a reaction to the state interventionist or state pluralism model. The economic reforms? package (emphasis on privatization, liberalization and austerity measures) introduced in India in mid-1991 can be viewed as providing some kind of conducive environment for the trade unions in the public sector to engage in greater industrial disputes but what is being observed is that there is increasing dissension or fragmentation within the trade union movement itself. There has also been a decline in trade union activity over the years. The present study is an attempt at understanding the dynamics of the trade union movement, of the organized sector in the public sector units (PSUs), against privatization in India. The political opportunity framework and three of its core dimensions, namely divided elites, shifting alignments and influential allies have been used. The issues of framing and bargaining in the collective behavior literature have been incorporated into the study. Also, the historical-comparative approach has been used in terms of historically analyzing the emergence of trade unionism in India and comparing the activities of trade unions across different states in India, more so because the State governments as well as the trade unions have different political affiliations. The central thesis of this paper is that there are increasing political opportunities for the trade unions to participate in industrial disputes in the post-reform period but we find that this is not happening because there is simultaneous dissension or fragmentation within the trade union movement itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The framing activities of African-American predecessors of King enabled the Gandhian repertoire’s transnational diffusion from a Southern to a Northern social movement. To explore the framing-transnational diffusion nexus, this paper starts with a brief review of existing social movement theories. Then it discusses three specific ?moments? of interaction between African-American intellectuals and Gandhians in India, and their effects on African-American frames and applications of the Gandhian repertoire in the United States. The final section considers the theoretical relevance of my empirical findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India has used both the legislative and judicial systems to advance legal innovations that espouse human rights and social justice. This paper examines how the higher judiciary has utilized its powers, in particular through public interest litigation, to protect the land rights of India?s vast indigenous population. The inclusion of indigenous land rights as a development issue is especially salient in the Indian case. With the largest indigenous population in the world, India has often done little to protect the rights of these groups that have worked and lived off of communally shared forest lands for thousands of years. The Supreme Court of India has touted Public Interest Litigation -- PIL, also sometimes called Social Action Litigation -- as an effective tool for protecting the rights of the disadvantaged, especially indigenous groups. While this litigation is the judicial equivalent of class action suits in the United States, there are important differences. The Indian Court specifically has focused on the fundamental rights to life and equality. Fundamental rights guaranteed to all Indian citizens include life and equality. The Supreme Court has interpreted these two rights to include the right to work and live with dignity and liberty. Procedurally, the Court?s practice of PIL has relaxed the rules of ?standing.? It has effectively allowed persons or groups not personally involved in cases to bring suit on behalf of others, which makes for greater openness of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bollywood films increasingly portray the life-worlds of India's urban middle class and their transnational connections. Characters in the Hindi-language films use English phrases, cell phones and computers, celebrate Valentine's Day and are seen to frequent exercise clubs and shopping malls. The non-resident Indian, or NRI, symbol of the diaspora, is now a fixture in the films, often the hero and portrayed as part of the familial world and social circle of the urban middle classes. This combined with a large portion of the films depicting settings outside India, in Switzerland, Mauritius, the UK and north America have led critics to question the Indian-ness of the films. This paper examines the deterritorialized narrative of the Bollywood film for its communication of globalization and transnationalism. More specifically it investigates the fate of the local in this communication arguing that the films use the local in multiple ways: to achieve a dialogue with habituated audiences and to communicate a sense of place as feeling rather than geography or territory. Study of the films therefore informs broader debates in the study of transnationalism such as the significance of the local in a postnational world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two central ideas in economic sociology are embeddedness and the social construction of economic institutions. Based on data from women’s thrift cooperatives established in villages in Andhra Pradesh, India, the paper identifies a paradox in the creation of new economic institutions. Such institutions are both constrained by and sustained by what existed before their arrival, and their survival is dependent on how they adapt to the existing social structure. Their transformative capacity is contingent on their ability to survive, but also to challenge the existing social structure. The data suggest that the thrift cooperatives have enabled some women to alter the gender relations within their households, but that the cooperatives seem to be reproducing caste structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]