A Piliavsky
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 56416 |
|---|---|
| NOME | A Piliavsky |
| PRENOMES | A |
| SOBRENOME | Piliavsky |
| ASSINATURA | PILIAVSKY A |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4885-2558 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 12 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 98 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 12 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2011 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2023 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
Hierarchy as a Democratic Value in India
What are India's democratic values? Metropolitan common sense tells us that democracy is an essentially egalitarian political form and that to be good democrats, people, wherever they are and whoever they may be, must espouse equality as a political value. In this essay I challenge this conviction by suggesting that hierarchy is a pivotal value in India's democratic life. Drawing on 15 years of ethnographic work conducted across northern India an…
Towards a critical ethnography of political concepts
This special section approaches “politics” from a specifically ethnographic point of view. It does this by privileging ethnographically derived political concepts rather than more familiar preestablished and supposedly universal categories of political analysis. This introduction offers a general theoretical framework for doing this, and establishes a shared language of analysis. It situates current developments in relation to the history of poli…
India’s Little Political Tradition
The wrong kind of freedom? A Review of David Graeber’s The Utopia of Rules
Everybody hates bureaucracy-even bureaucrats hate bureaucracy (who likes stamping forms all day long?)-butDavid Graeber hates it more than most.He hates it with an anarchist's hate.The Utopia of Rules is a clever, freewheeling, readable, and frequently entertaining collection of essays (some previously published and some new) about bureaucracy as a violent force.Bureaucracy, Graeber tells us, has swallowed the modern world whole.If 40 years ago, …
Why do we read the classics
Debates on the epistemological, ethical, and historical constitution of the anthropological corpus are one of the reasons why anthropology has always thrived. Whether in terms of the complex relation between the production of anthropological knowledge and the political systems in which it takes place, or the proliferation of the language of "mutual constitution" as a way to bypass questions of causality, the question of the "suffering" vs. the "g…
The ethics of efficacy in North India'sgoonda raj(rule of toughs)
This study of goondas (gangsters or toughs) in North Indian politics comes by way of a comment on intellectual method in the anthropology of moralities. More especially, it offers critical remarks on the recent adoption of 'virtue' as the cardinal moral co-ordinate of human life. Drawing on field research conducted across northern India, we show that when people celebrate goondas as leaders, they do so not because they see in them virtuous men, b…
India's human democracy
This narrative examines the demotic idiom of political bonds in the world's largest democracy
Patronage and community in a society of thieves
Patronage is a structural pivot of social life in South Asia. Drawing on the ethnography of relations between a caste of professional thieves in rural Rajasthan, known as Kanjars, and their patron-goddesses, I show that patronage is also, crucially, a normative formula which encompasses a set of values. I examine the nature of these values, and why the Kanjars value them such a lot, to show an alternative sense of hierarchy, based neither on subs…
The 'Criminal Tribe' in India before the British
This paper challenges the broad consensus in current historiography that holds the Indian stereotype of criminal tribe to be a myth of colonial making. Drawing on a selection of precolonial descriptions of robber castes-ancient legal texts and folktales; Jain, Buddhist and Brahmanic narratives; Mughal sources; and Early Modern European travel accounts-I show that the idea of castes of congenital robbers was not a British import, but instead a lab…
Where Is the Public Sphere
The public sphere has been centre stage in celebrations of India's political triumphs. Leading commentators tell us that the astonishing post-independence surge of democracy has been contingent on the rise of a new kind of sociopolitical formation: the public sphere. This article takes a closer look at the popular deliberative terrain in North India to question this claim. Drawing on research conducted in a provincial town in the North Indian sta…
The Moghia Menace, or the Watch Over Watchmen In British India
This paper contributes to the history of 'criminal tribes', policing and governance in British India. It focuses on one colonial experiment-the policing of Moghias, declared by British authorities to be 'robbers by hereditary profession'-which was the immediate precursor of the first Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, but which so far altogether has passed under historians' radar. I argue that at stake in the Moghia operations, as in most other colonia…
A Secret in the Oxford Sense
Common sense commodifies the secret, alienating the value of its content from its social context. But a secret perfectly kept dies in its circle of initiates. Few secrets, however, are dead on arrival, since their seduction lies precisely in their revelation. Most things said to be hidden are in fact nurtured through the processes of calculated concealment, allusion, and revelation, the secrets propagating themselves through circles of conspiracy…
The ethics of efficacy in North India'sgoonda raj(rule of toughs)
This study of goondas (gangsters or toughs) in North Indian politics comes by way of a comment on intellectual method in the anthropology of moralities. More especially, it offers critical remarks on the recent adoption of 'virtue' as the cardinal moral co-ordinate of human life. Drawing on field research conducted across northern India, we show that when people celebrate goondas as leaders, they do so not because they see in them virtuous men, b…
The 'Criminal Tribe' in India before the British
This paper challenges the broad consensus in current historiography that holds the Indian stereotype of criminal tribe to be a myth of colonial making. Drawing on a selection of precolonial descriptions of robber castes-ancient legal texts and folktales; Jain, Buddhist and Brahmanic narratives; Mughal sources; and Early Modern European travel accounts-I show that the idea of castes of congenital robbers was not a British import, but instead a lab…
A Secret in the Oxford Sense
Common sense commodifies the secret, alienating the value of its content from its social context. But a secret perfectly kept dies in its circle of initiates. Few secrets, however, are dead on arrival, since their seduction lies precisely in their revelation. Most things said to be hidden are in fact nurtured through the processes of calculated concealment, allusion, and revelation, the secrets propagating themselves through circles of conspiracy…
The Moghia Menace, or the Watch Over Watchmen In British India
This paper contributes to the history of 'criminal tribes', policing and governance in British India. It focuses on one colonial experiment-the policing of Moghias, declared by British authorities to be 'robbers by hereditary profession'-which was the immediate precursor of the first Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, but which so far altogether has passed under historians' radar. I argue that at stake in the Moghia operations, as in most other colonia…
Why do we read the classics
Debates on the epistemological, ethical, and historical constitution of the anthropological corpus are one of the reasons why anthropology has always thrived. Whether in terms of the complex relation between the production of anthropological knowledge and the political systems in which it takes place, or the proliferation of the language of "mutual constitution" as a way to bypass questions of causality, the question of the "suffering" vs. the "g…
Patronage and community in a society of thieves
Patronage is a structural pivot of social life in South Asia. Drawing on the ethnography of relations between a caste of professional thieves in rural Rajasthan, known as Kanjars, and their patron-goddesses, I show that patronage is also, crucially, a normative formula which encompasses a set of values. I examine the nature of these values, and why the Kanjars value them such a lot, to show an alternative sense of hierarchy, based neither on subs…
Where Is the Public Sphere
The public sphere has been centre stage in celebrations of India's political triumphs. Leading commentators tell us that the astonishing post-independence surge of democracy has been contingent on the rise of a new kind of sociopolitical formation: the public sphere. This article takes a closer look at the popular deliberative terrain in North India to question this claim. Drawing on research conducted in a provincial town in the North Indian sta…
Hierarchy as a Democratic Value in India
What are India's democratic values? Metropolitan common sense tells us that democracy is an essentially egalitarian political form and that to be good democrats, people, wherever they are and whoever they may be, must espouse equality as a political value. In this essay I challenge this conviction by suggesting that hierarchy is a pivotal value in India's democratic life. Drawing on 15 years of ethnographic work conducted across northern India an…
India's human democracy
This narrative examines the demotic idiom of political bonds in the world's largest democracy
India’s Little Political Tradition
A Secret in the Oxford Sense
Common sense commodifies the secret, alienating the value of its content from its social context. But a secret perfectly kept dies in its circle of initiates. Few secrets, however, are dead on arrival, since their seduction lies precisely in their revelation. Most things said to be hidden are in fact nurtured through the processes of calculated concealment, allusion, and revelation, the secrets propagating themselves through circles of conspiracy…
Where Is the Public Sphere
The public sphere has been centre stage in celebrations of India's political triumphs. Leading commentators tell us that the astonishing post-independence surge of democracy has been contingent on the rise of a new kind of sociopolitical formation: the public sphere. This article takes a closer look at the popular deliberative terrain in North India to question this claim. Drawing on research conducted in a provincial town in the North Indian sta…
The Moghia Menace, or the Watch Over Watchmen In British India
This paper contributes to the history of 'criminal tribes', policing and governance in British India. It focuses on one colonial experiment-the policing of Moghias, declared by British authorities to be 'robbers by hereditary profession'-which was the immediate precursor of the first Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, but which so far altogether has passed under historians' radar. I argue that at stake in the Moghia operations, as in most other colonia…
India's human democracy
This narrative examines the demotic idiom of political bonds in the world's largest democracy
Patronage and community in a society of thieves
Patronage is a structural pivot of social life in South Asia. Drawing on the ethnography of relations between a caste of professional thieves in rural Rajasthan, known as Kanjars, and their patron-goddesses, I show that patronage is also, crucially, a normative formula which encompasses a set of values. I examine the nature of these values, and why the Kanjars value them such a lot, to show an alternative sense of hierarchy, based neither on subs…
The 'Criminal Tribe' in India before the British
This paper challenges the broad consensus in current historiography that holds the Indian stereotype of criminal tribe to be a myth of colonial making. Drawing on a selection of precolonial descriptions of robber castes-ancient legal texts and folktales; Jain, Buddhist and Brahmanic narratives; Mughal sources; and Early Modern European travel accounts-I show that the idea of castes of congenital robbers was not a British import, but instead a lab…
The ethics of efficacy in North India'sgoonda raj(rule of toughs)
This study of goondas (gangsters or toughs) in North Indian politics comes by way of a comment on intellectual method in the anthropology of moralities. More especially, it offers critical remarks on the recent adoption of 'virtue' as the cardinal moral co-ordinate of human life. Drawing on field research conducted across northern India, we show that when people celebrate goondas as leaders, they do so not because they see in them virtuous men, b…
The wrong kind of freedom? A Review of David Graeber’s The Utopia of Rules
Everybody hates bureaucracy-even bureaucrats hate bureaucracy (who likes stamping forms all day long?)-butDavid Graeber hates it more than most.He hates it with an anarchist's hate.The Utopia of Rules is a clever, freewheeling, readable, and frequently entertaining collection of essays (some previously published and some new) about bureaucracy as a violent force.Bureaucracy, Graeber tells us, has swallowed the modern world whole.If 40 years ago, …
Why do we read the classics
Debates on the epistemological, ethical, and historical constitution of the anthropological corpus are one of the reasons why anthropology has always thrived. Whether in terms of the complex relation between the production of anthropological knowledge and the political systems in which it takes place, or the proliferation of the language of "mutual constitution" as a way to bypass questions of causality, the question of the "suffering" vs. the "g…
Towards a critical ethnography of political concepts
This special section approaches “politics” from a specifically ethnographic point of view. It does this by privileging ethnographically derived political concepts rather than more familiar preestablished and supposedly universal categories of political analysis. This introduction offers a general theoretical framework for doing this, and establishes a shared language of analysis. It situates current developments in relation to the history of poli…
India’s Little Political Tradition
Hierarchy as a Democratic Value in India
What are India's democratic values? Metropolitan common sense tells us that democracy is an essentially egalitarian political form and that to be good democrats, people, wherever they are and whoever they may be, must espouse equality as a political value. In this essay I challenge this conviction by suggesting that hierarchy is a pivotal value in India's democratic life. Drawing on 15 years of ethnographic work conducted across northern India an…
Sociology (11 obras) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (10 obras) · Law (10 obras) · Political science (10 obras) · Law (7 obras) · Philosophy (7 obras) · Politics (7 obras) · Anthropology (6 obras) · Ethnography (5 obras) · Philosophy (5 obras)