The righteous and the rightful: The technomoral politics of NGOs, social movements, and the state in India
Dados Bibliográficos
AUTOR(ES) | |
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AFILIAÇÃO(ÕES) | Department of Anthropology Wesleyan University 281 High Street Middletown CT 06459, Department of Anthropology University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee PO Box 413, Sabin Hall 390 Milwaukee WI 53201 |
ANO | 2016 |
TIPO | Artigo |
PERIÓDICO | American Ethnologist |
ISSN | 0094-0496 |
E-ISSN | 1548-1425 |
EDITORA | Sage Publications (United States) |
DOI | 10.1111/amet.12264 |
CITAÇÕES | 22 |
ADICIONADO EM | 2025-08-18 |
MD5 |
02ade3be4447bfe5d112525b89028284
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Resumo
Civil society groups today are honored and relied on by governments, as well as tightly regulated and scrutinized for challenging state policies and agencies. In contemporary India, political dynamics of collaboration and confrontation between state and nonstate actors increasingly unfold in legal‐social fields, taking 'technomoral' forms. Mixing technocratic languages of law and policy with moral pronouncements, these actors assert themselves as virtuous agents, marking their political legitimacy as keepers of the public interest. Using ethnographic research with Indian NGOs, social movements, and a political party, we show that as civil society groups interact with state bodies, they redefine institutional boundaries and claim moral authority over public stewardship. Technomoral strategies are neither depoliticized nor antipolitical, but constitute a righteous and rightful form of politics. [NGOs, state, India, morality, activist politics, neoliberalism, law]