Manuela Ciotti's Books

Retro-modern India

Forging the Low-caste Self

By: Manuela Ciotti

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Retro-modern India

Forging the Low-caste Self

By: Manuela Ciotti

Firmly situated within the analytics of the political economy of a north Indian province, this book explores self-fashioning in pursuit of the modern amongst low-caste Chamars. Challenging existing accounts of national modernity in the non-West, the book argues that subaltern classes shape their own ideas about modernity by taking and rejecting from models of other classes within the same national context. While displacing the West — in its colonial and non-colonial manifestations — as the immanent comparative focus, the book puts forward a unique framework for the analysis of subaltern modernity. This builds on the entanglements between two main trajectories, both of which are viewed as the outcome of the generative impetus of modernisation in India: the first consists of the Chamar appropriation of socio-cultural distinctions forged by 19th-century Indian middle classes in their encounter with colonial modernity; the second features the Chamar subversion of high-caste ideals and practices as a result of low-caste politics initiated during the 20th century. The author contends that these conflicting trends give rise to a temporal antinomy within the Chamar politics of self-making, caught up between compulsions of a past modern and of a contemporary one. The eclectic outcome is termed as ‘retro-modernity’. While the book signals a politics of becoming whose dynamics had previously been overlooked by scholars, it simultaneously opens up novel avenues for the understanding of non-elite modern life-forms in postcolonial settings. The book will interest scholars of anthropology, South Asian studies, development studies, gender studies, political science and postcolonial studies.

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Page Count

275

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1136704418

ISBN 13

9781136704413

Retro-modern India

Forging the Low-caste Self

By: Manuela Ciotti

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Retro-modern India

Forging the Low-caste Self

By: Manuela Ciotti

On the changing perrspective of Chamars in modern times; a study.

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309

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1136704426

ISBN 13

9781136704420

Political Agency and Gender in India

By: Manuela Ciotti

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Political Agency and Gender in India

By: Manuela Ciotti

This book explores the distinctive forms of women¿s political engagement in democratic politics in contemporary India. It focuses on women from historically marginalised strata of society whose spaces for political participation opened up as a result of the explosion of low-caste identity politics in India since the 1990s, and the introduction of women¿s reserved quotas in local governance bodies. The book draws on extensive fieldwork in the male-dominated political landscape of the large state of Uttar Pradesh. This includes research on women party activists of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), women activists in other political parties, women Members of the regional Legislative Assembly (MLAs), former women Members of Parliament (MPs), women elected in urban and rural local government bodies by virtue of reserved quotas, and women active in informal village politics. The author presents a new comparative framework to analyse women in politics in settings where unfavourable living conditions and restrictive gender regimes are in place. She argues that issues of gender and politics raised by western political scientists need to be reassessed. Rather than considering Indian women¿s political agency and performance as a poor imitation of those of women in more ¿advanced¿ western democracies, she considered them as political subjects in their own right. Furthermore, the idea of an ¿idiosyncratic democracy¿ ¿ the encounter between political activities and South Asian political institutions ¿ is put forward to show that the process of globalisation of politics and institutions might result in a different models of democracy in the Global South. The book provides an example of how women have adapted to the modern political climate in which underdevelopment and inaccessibility of state institutions often make this role essential in everyday life. It will be of interest to academics working on South Asian Studies, International Politics and Women in Politics.

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Page Count

224

Published Date

ISBN 10

0415482739

ISBN 13

9780415482738

Book's by Manuela Ciotti

Retro-modern India

Retro-modern India

Retro-modern India

Retro-modern India

Political Agency and Gender in India

Political Agency and Gender in India

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