Hierarchy as a Democratic Value in India

An Informal Essay

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2229671
AutoresA Piliavsky (0000-0002-4885-2558, autor correspondente)
Ano2023
Volume64
Fascículo5
Páginas581-598
Data de publicação2023-10-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoCurrent Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0011-3204 • E-ISSN: 1537-5382
EditoraUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/727010
OpenAlexW4387397289
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas2
Referências citadas82

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 and touching on the history of democratic thinking in Europe, from Aristotle to Rousseau and Bernard Manin, the essay offers comparative reflections on the nature of "democratic values" in a bid for a more ethnographically grounded theory of democratic life

Conviction · Democracy · Epistemology · Ethnography · Hierarchy · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Value (mathematics · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Indian History and Philosophy · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · South Asian Studies and Conflicts