Nandini Sundar
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 109466 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Nandini Sundar |
| NOMBRES | Nandini |
| APELLIDO | Sundar |
| FIRMA | SUNDAR N |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Delhi |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3218-058X |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 30 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 160 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 30 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1995 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 9 |
Seeing, speaking and trawling like an authoritarian state
Seeing like a State continues to hold valence today, reminding us of the dangers of high modernist schemes that aim to improve the human condition but end up simplifying and flattening diversity. In this article, the author looks at how contemporary authoritarian states have improved on the power held by these former regimes, co-inhabiting with digital capital to nestle ever deeper into the lives of citizens and transform them
Inside Modi's Assault on Academic Freedom
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's Hindu supremacist ideology along with anti-intellectual hostility has resulted in a dramatic decline in India's academic freedom. Since 2014, students and faculty critical of the regime have been vilified, physically attacked and arrested, books and seminars banned, standard historical narratives rewritten, and foreign scholars denied visas. Three overlapping but distinct phases in this takeover are visible: th…
When Victors Claim Victimhood
From the mid-20th century onwards, diverse groups - whether formerly enslaved populations or victims of mass atrocities - have demanded reparations as part of a wider struggle for justice. However, in the current global climate of right-wing resurgence, both the recognition of victimhood and demands for justice are in danger of being subverted and hijacked. These developments create additional obstacles to addressing genuine reparations demands. …
The Supreme Court in Modi’s India
Twenty-first-century elected right-wing regimes share many similarities apart from being led by “authoritarian populists” who centralize power in themselves and represent ethnic or religious majorities at the expense of other citizens. Since higher judiciaries are key to ensuring executive accountability and the separation of powers in a liberal democratic constitutional setup, they are on the front lines of authoritarian attempts at institutiona…
We Will Teach India Democracy’
The framing of the Indian Constitution (1946-50) was a pivotal moment in the history of indigenous communities (colloquially adivasis, officially scheduled tribes) and their relationship with the state. This essay makes three interventions. First, I contest the prevailing emphasis in Indian history and sociology on seeing indigenous politics as primarily in opposition to state institutions and laws. Instead, drawing on representations from indige…
Sliding from majoritarianism toward fascism
While the Modi regime in India shares many exclusionary features in common with authoritarian populists elsewhere, one distinguishing feature is its umbilical relationship to the semi-fascist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), whose long-term goal has been the establishment of a Hindu rashtra (nation). One of the major instruments for achieving this has been education, with the RSS seeing cultural hegemony as more foundational than political cont…
K arve, I rawati (1905–70)
This entry highlights the contributions of India's first woman anthropologist, Irawati Karve, to the study of kinship and caste from a sociological and anthropometric perspective, as well as the range of her work, which included both literary essays and socioeconomic surveys
Hostages to Democracy
This article explores the aporias of democracy to show how both procedural and substantive democracy, or at least certain constructions of “need,” operate to render the lives of sections of the citizenry precarious. More specifically, in the context of an ongoing civil war in central India between Maoist guerillas and the Indian state, I argue that, far from being a palliative for or alternative to insurgency, Indian democracy as practiced today—…
From Delhi to Iran via America
Snakes and ladders
The question of social mobility in a terrain of increasing inequality has gained particular urgency in post-reform India. We approach social mobility not as a one-way ascent toward the top, rather as a risk-laden enterprise prone to fluctuations that include both incremental gains and the possibility of sliding downwards. We argue that to ‘move up the ladder’ is not merely a matter of individual choice or hard work in the face of odds as free-mar…
In times of civil war
This article addresses some of the dilemmas that sociologists in the Global South face - how does one choose between the demands of the public moment, the university as a space of work and struggle, and our duty to our 'disciplines'? How do we engage in practically extending the democracy and equality that we routinely learn and teach about and yet seize the time and space required for reflecting and producing research that is valued to the exten…
Mimetic sovereignties, precarious citizenship
This contribution explores the way in which the Indian state and the incipient Maoist state in central India mimic while repudiating each other. As against theories of sovereignty which see it either as authored from below (contract theory) or scripted from above (domination), or irrelevant to the extent that subject and state are co-constituted by regimes of power (cf. Foucault), I argue that in civil war, the display and practical exercise of s…
Reflections on civil liberties, citizenship, Adivasi agency and Maoism
Nationbuilding, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia
Nationbuilding, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia Bina D'Costa London and New York: Routledge, 2011 246 pp., US $130.00 (hbk) Compared with the voluminous literature on the Partition of India, th
Winning Hearts and Minds
Exploring an ongoing civil war between Maoist guerrillas and the Indian government, this article looks at how emotions are mobilised, conscripted and engendered by both sides. The focus is, however, on the state's performance of emotion, including outrage, hurt and fear-inducing domination, as part of its battle for legitimacy. Intrinsic to this is the privileging of certain kinds of emotions-fear, anger, grief-and the emotions of certain kinds o…
The rule of law and citizenship in central India
This article argues that the ‘rule of law’ has become a central goal in popular struggles the world over, and it is citizenship struggles which infuse the rule of law with substantive, as against a thin procedural, meaning. This is especially true in post-colonial societies like India, with a tradition of inherited colonial law designed for subject-hood rather than citizenship, growing inequality which affects both the enactment and interpretatio…
Educating for Inequality
This report deals with the contradictions and dilemmas concerning education faced by adivasis, the preferred local term for 'indigenous people,' in central India. Adivasis constitute some 84 million people, making up over eight percent of India's population. The adivasi are officially known as scheduled tribes (ST), since under Article 342 of the Indian constitution, these communities are listed in government schedules or lists for the purpose of…
Vigilantism, Culpability and Moral Dilemmas
■ The recent resurgence of vigilantism in India connects both to the neo-liberal project of outsourcing security, as well as to a longer history of porous boundaries between states and powerful elements in society. When practiced by subaltern groups, it also reflects the failure of the judicial system. This article explores the moral plurality evoked by different forms of vigilantism and their relationship to the state, as well as the different t…
For a Sociology of India
As part of an ongoing engagement with the sociology of India, CIS will profile the life and work of senior sociologists. This interview was conducted over three sessions at Professor Saberwal's home, on 6, 11 and 26 August 2008. We also requested Mrs. Edith Saberwal to contribute to the discussion regarding their personal life. The interviews were laced throughout with Professor Saberwal's characteristic humour-which unfortunately, we cannot full…
Politics of Piety
Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject by Saba Mahmood. Princeton, NJ, and Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press, 2005. xvii. 233 pp. (Cloth US$55.00; Paper US$17.95)
Missing the ethical wood for the bureaucratic trees
Toward an anthropology of culpability
Anthropologists concerned with political violence and justice must engage in a comparative examination of culpability for past and ongoing crimes. When powerful states use reparations, truth commissions, or war crime tribunals to attribute culpability to others, including their past selves, they often, paradoxically, legitimize ongoing injustices. As against culturalist explanations for mass violence, which set up a hierarchy of cultures, we need…
A Move From Minor to Major
"Indigenise, nationalise and spiritualise"- an agenda for education
Is Devolution Democratization
Toward an anthropology of culpability
Anthropologists concerned with political violence and justice must engage in a comparative examination of culpability for past and ongoing crimes. When powerful states use reparations, truth commissions, or war crime tribunals to attribute culpability to others, including their past selves, they often, paradoxically, legitimize ongoing injustices. As against culturalist explanations for mass violence, which set up a hierarchy of cultures, we need…
Is Devolution Democratization
Unpacking the 'Joint' in Joint Forest Management
This article examines the concept of 'jointness' in India's Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme, understood as an engagement between the state (in this case the Forest Department) and people organized into 'communities', with NGOs, where available, acting as the interface. By examining the commonalities between older examples of joint or co-management of resources and current practices of joint forest management, the article challenges the no…
The rule of law and citizenship in central India
This article argues that the ‘rule of law’ has become a central goal in popular struggles the world over, and it is citizenship struggles which infuse the rule of law with substantive, as against a thin procedural, meaning. This is especially true in post-colonial societies like India, with a tradition of inherited colonial law designed for subject-hood rather than citizenship, growing inequality which affects both the enactment and interpretatio…
Mimetic sovereignties, precarious citizenship
This contribution explores the way in which the Indian state and the incipient Maoist state in central India mimic while repudiating each other. As against theories of sovereignty which see it either as authored from below (contract theory) or scripted from above (domination), or irrelevant to the extent that subject and state are co-constituted by regimes of power (cf. Foucault), I argue that in civil war, the display and practical exercise of s…
Sliding from majoritarianism toward fascism
While the Modi regime in India shares many exclusionary features in common with authoritarian populists elsewhere, one distinguishing feature is its umbilical relationship to the semi-fascist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), whose long-term goal has been the establishment of a Hindu rashtra (nation). One of the major instruments for achieving this has been education, with the RSS seeing cultural hegemony as more foundational than political cont…
Winning Hearts and Minds
Exploring an ongoing civil war between Maoist guerrillas and the Indian government, this article looks at how emotions are mobilised, conscripted and engendered by both sides. The focus is, however, on the state's performance of emotion, including outrage, hurt and fear-inducing domination, as part of its battle for legitimacy. Intrinsic to this is the privileging of certain kinds of emotions-fear, anger, grief-and the emotions of certain kinds o…
Vigilantism, Culpability and Moral Dilemmas
■ The recent resurgence of vigilantism in India connects both to the neo-liberal project of outsourcing security, as well as to a longer history of porous boundaries between states and powerful elements in society. When practiced by subaltern groups, it also reflects the failure of the judicial system. This article explores the moral plurality evoked by different forms of vigilantism and their relationship to the state, as well as the different t…
"Indigenise, nationalise and spiritualise"- an agenda for education
In times of civil war
This article addresses some of the dilemmas that sociologists in the Global South face - how does one choose between the demands of the public moment, the university as a space of work and struggle, and our duty to our 'disciplines'? How do we engage in practically extending the democracy and equality that we routinely learn and teach about and yet seize the time and space required for reflecting and producing research that is valued to the exten…
Snakes and ladders
The question of social mobility in a terrain of increasing inequality has gained particular urgency in post-reform India. We approach social mobility not as a one-way ascent toward the top, rather as a risk-laden enterprise prone to fluctuations that include both incremental gains and the possibility of sliding downwards. We argue that to ‘move up the ladder’ is not merely a matter of individual choice or hard work in the face of odds as free-mar…
Reflections on civil liberties, citizenship, Adivasi agency and Maoism
Debating dussehra and reinterpreting rebellion in bastar district, central india
This article unpacks the history of a 'tribal' region in Central India to show that the current appearance of 'two-dimensionality' or stark opposition between the people and the state is a product of colonial and post-colonial policies rather than a pre-colonial relic. It challenges the idea of 'coercive subordination' as an adequate explanation for kingship in this area, as argued by the late Alfred Gell. Instead, this article uses the same phen…
Educating for Inequality
This report deals with the contradictions and dilemmas concerning education faced by adivasis, the preferred local term for 'indigenous people,' in central India. Adivasis constitute some 84 million people, making up over eight percent of India's population. The adivasi are officially known as scheduled tribes (ST), since under Article 342 of the Indian constitution, these communities are listed in government schedules or lists for the purpose of…
Divining Evil
This article examines witchcraft accusations in Bastar, a predominantly adivasi or 'tribal' area in central India. In the European witchcrazes of the 16th and 17th centuries, which set the tone for much work on witchcraft, witches were predominantly women. In other Indian adivasi areas like Jharkhand or the Dangs, witch accusations have effectively been used to dispossess women, often widows, of land. In Bastar, while belief in witchcraft and sor…
Caste as Census Category
In recent years, the inclusion of ascriptive categories like race, ethnicity or caste in national censuses has become a matter of considerable debate. This article focuses on the Indian debate over the inclusion of caste in the 2001 census, in the light of three broad questions: whether official classifications merely reflect or actively transform social identities; who benefits from certain classifications; and the implications of such official …
We Will Teach India Democracy’
The framing of the Indian Constitution (1946-50) was a pivotal moment in the history of indigenous communities (colloquially adivasis, officially scheduled tribes) and their relationship with the state. This essay makes three interventions. First, I contest the prevailing emphasis in Indian history and sociology on seeing indigenous politics as primarily in opposition to state institutions and laws. Instead, drawing on representations from indige…
The dreaded Danteswari
Missing the ethical wood for the bureaucratic trees
The dreaded Danteswari
Unpacking the 'Joint' in Joint Forest Management
This article examines the concept of 'jointness' in India's Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme, understood as an engagement between the state (in this case the Forest Department) and people organized into 'communities', with NGOs, where available, acting as the interface. By examining the commonalities between older examples of joint or co-management of resources and current practices of joint forest management, the article challenges the no…
Caste as Census Category
In recent years, the inclusion of ascriptive categories like race, ethnicity or caste in national censuses has become a matter of considerable debate. This article focuses on the Indian debate over the inclusion of caste in the 2001 census, in the light of three broad questions: whether official classifications merely reflect or actively transform social identities; who benefits from certain classifications; and the implications of such official …
Is Devolution Democratization
Divining Evil
This article examines witchcraft accusations in Bastar, a predominantly adivasi or 'tribal' area in central India. In the European witchcrazes of the 16th and 17th centuries, which set the tone for much work on witchcraft, witches were predominantly women. In other Indian adivasi areas like Jharkhand or the Dangs, witch accusations have effectively been used to dispossess women, often widows, of land. In Bastar, while belief in witchcraft and sor…
Debating dussehra and reinterpreting rebellion in bastar district, central india
This article unpacks the history of a 'tribal' region in Central India to show that the current appearance of 'two-dimensionality' or stark opposition between the people and the state is a product of colonial and post-colonial policies rather than a pre-colonial relic. It challenges the idea of 'coercive subordination' as an adequate explanation for kingship in this area, as argued by the late Alfred Gell. Instead, this article uses the same phen…
"Indigenise, nationalise and spiritualise"- an agenda for education
A Move From Minor to Major
Toward an anthropology of culpability
Anthropologists concerned with political violence and justice must engage in a comparative examination of culpability for past and ongoing crimes. When powerful states use reparations, truth commissions, or war crime tribunals to attribute culpability to others, including their past selves, they often, paradoxically, legitimize ongoing injustices. As against culturalist explanations for mass violence, which set up a hierarchy of cultures, we need…
Missing the ethical wood for the bureaucratic trees
Politics of Piety
Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject by Saba Mahmood. Princeton, NJ, and Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press, 2005. xvii. 233 pp. (Cloth US$55.00; Paper US$17.95)
For a Sociology of India
As part of an ongoing engagement with the sociology of India, CIS will profile the life and work of senior sociologists. This interview was conducted over three sessions at Professor Saberwal's home, on 6, 11 and 26 August 2008. We also requested Mrs. Edith Saberwal to contribute to the discussion regarding their personal life. The interviews were laced throughout with Professor Saberwal's characteristic humour-which unfortunately, we cannot full…
Educating for Inequality
This report deals with the contradictions and dilemmas concerning education faced by adivasis, the preferred local term for 'indigenous people,' in central India. Adivasis constitute some 84 million people, making up over eight percent of India's population. The adivasi are officially known as scheduled tribes (ST), since under Article 342 of the Indian constitution, these communities are listed in government schedules or lists for the purpose of…
Vigilantism, Culpability and Moral Dilemmas
■ The recent resurgence of vigilantism in India connects both to the neo-liberal project of outsourcing security, as well as to a longer history of porous boundaries between states and powerful elements in society. When practiced by subaltern groups, it also reflects the failure of the judicial system. This article explores the moral plurality evoked by different forms of vigilantism and their relationship to the state, as well as the different t…
The rule of law and citizenship in central India
This article argues that the ‘rule of law’ has become a central goal in popular struggles the world over, and it is citizenship struggles which infuse the rule of law with substantive, as against a thin procedural, meaning. This is especially true in post-colonial societies like India, with a tradition of inherited colonial law designed for subject-hood rather than citizenship, growing inequality which affects both the enactment and interpretatio…
Nationbuilding, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia
Nationbuilding, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia Bina D'Costa London and New York: Routledge, 2011 246 pp., US $130.00 (hbk) Compared with the voluminous literature on the Partition of India, th
Winning Hearts and Minds
Exploring an ongoing civil war between Maoist guerrillas and the Indian government, this article looks at how emotions are mobilised, conscripted and engendered by both sides. The focus is, however, on the state's performance of emotion, including outrage, hurt and fear-inducing domination, as part of its battle for legitimacy. Intrinsic to this is the privileging of certain kinds of emotions-fear, anger, grief-and the emotions of certain kinds o…
Reflections on civil liberties, citizenship, Adivasi agency and Maoism
In times of civil war
This article addresses some of the dilemmas that sociologists in the Global South face - how does one choose between the demands of the public moment, the university as a space of work and struggle, and our duty to our 'disciplines'? How do we engage in practically extending the democracy and equality that we routinely learn and teach about and yet seize the time and space required for reflecting and producing research that is valued to the exten…
Mimetic sovereignties, precarious citizenship
This contribution explores the way in which the Indian state and the incipient Maoist state in central India mimic while repudiating each other. As against theories of sovereignty which see it either as authored from below (contract theory) or scripted from above (domination), or irrelevant to the extent that subject and state are co-constituted by regimes of power (cf. Foucault), I argue that in civil war, the display and practical exercise of s…
Snakes and ladders
The question of social mobility in a terrain of increasing inequality has gained particular urgency in post-reform India. We approach social mobility not as a one-way ascent toward the top, rather as a risk-laden enterprise prone to fluctuations that include both incremental gains and the possibility of sliding downwards. We argue that to ‘move up the ladder’ is not merely a matter of individual choice or hard work in the face of odds as free-mar…
K arve, I rawati (1905–70)
This entry highlights the contributions of India's first woman anthropologist, Irawati Karve, to the study of kinship and caste from a sociological and anthropometric perspective, as well as the range of her work, which included both literary essays and socioeconomic surveys
Hostages to Democracy
This article explores the aporias of democracy to show how both procedural and substantive democracy, or at least certain constructions of “need,” operate to render the lives of sections of the citizenry precarious. More specifically, in the context of an ongoing civil war in central India between Maoist guerillas and the Indian state, I argue that, far from being a palliative for or alternative to insurgency, Indian democracy as practiced today—…
From Delhi to Iran via America
Sliding from majoritarianism toward fascism
While the Modi regime in India shares many exclusionary features in common with authoritarian populists elsewhere, one distinguishing feature is its umbilical relationship to the semi-fascist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), whose long-term goal has been the establishment of a Hindu rashtra (nation). One of the major instruments for achieving this has been education, with the RSS seeing cultural hegemony as more foundational than political cont…
Political science (23 obras) · Sociology (23 obras) · Law (21 obras) · Politics (16 obras) · Law (12 obras) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (11 obras) · South Asian Studies and Conflicts (10 obras) · History (8 obras) · Computer Science (7 obras) · Democracy (7 obras)