Land, development and the political class
In a translocal 'Londoni' village
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3864723 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ashraf Hoque (Ashraf Hoque is at Department of Social Science, University College London, London, UK., corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 54 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 215-235 |
| Publication date | 2020-06-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Contributions to Indian Sociology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0069-9659 • E-ISSN: 0069-9667 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0069966720919239 |
| OpenAlex | W3034444982 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 24 |
This article expands Akhil Gupta's (1995, American Ethnologist, 22(2), 375-402) thesis of 'blurred boundaries' between 'the state' and 'society' in South Asia to incorporate the impact of historic labour migrations, which complicate established conceptions of the state in Bangladesh. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in an area of high migration to the UK, the article draws attention to a class of transnational politicians, and their intra-class conflicts of interest, in shaping local-level politics. The article supports Faguet's (2017, Modern Asian Studies 51(6), 1668-94) contention that the decentralisation of local government has led to the emergence of vernacularised political economies that operate in the shadow of the state, which are also intrinsically facilitated by it. It suggests that state actors appropriate symbols, offices and resources, together with traditional authority and kinship dynamics, to create an idiosyncratic polity. Aspiration towards power that might lead to the occupation of state offices are determined by either the aspirant's status as a British citizen (Londoni) or through intimate social and economic connections to Britain through kinship (gushti) networks. The article thus makes a broader contribution to the existing literature on the anthropology of the state, transnational politics and the nexus of power, money and migration in postcolonial contexts
Decentralization · Ethnography · Kinship · Nexus (standard · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Polity · Power (physics · Shadow (psychology · Sociology · State (computer science · Anthropology · Bangladesh Politics, Society, and Development · Law · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies
Microfinance and Its Discontents
Bangladesh
Personalizing the State
Degrees of Separation
Beyond Methodological Nationalism
Islamic NGOs in Bangladesh
Red Tape
Boundaries undermined
Power and influence in India
Translocality
Global Migrants, Local Lives
Local Political Consolidation in Bangladesh
Hartal as a complex political performance
Brushing with Organized Crime and Democracy
Transformation from Below in Bangladesh
Blurred Boundaries
Keeping connected
The Emergence of a Transnational Social Formation and The Mirage of Return Migration Among Dominican Transmigrants
Conclusion
| Highly cited | No |
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