Everyday politics of care and exclusion

Conceptualising agency in rural south India

Bibliographic Data

ID4464817
AuthorsSanjeev Arora (0000-0001-8836-6821, University of Sussex, corresponding author), Saurabh Arora, Ajit Menon (0000-0001-8857-003X, Madras Institute of Development Studies), M Vijayabaskar (0000-0002-5763-4608, Madras Institute of Development Studies), Divya Sharma (0000-0002-1103-3137, University of Sussex), Gajendran (0000-0003-2789-270X), V Gajendran (Madras Institute of Development Studies)
Year2023
Volume6
Issue3
Pages1590-1613
Publication date2023-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning E Nature and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2514-8486 • E-ISSN: 2514-8494
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/25148486221135989
OpenAlexW4311952271
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited110

Confronting social exclusion is considered critical for grappling with poverty, livelihoods, inequality and participation in rural India. Studies highlight how exclusion is produced through hierarchical relations of caste, gender, class, religion, disability and ethnicity, while documenting people's agency to confront exclusions. However, the making of such agency through people's relations with ecologies and technologies is currently neglected. To address this neglect, we focus on different sociomaterial ways of relating - care and exclusion - which constitute people's agency. We argue that giving close attention to multiple ways of relating that coexist and interweave with each other, may be crucial for supporting grassroots transformations for justice and sustainability. To illustrate this ways-of-relating approach to agency, we rely on oral history narratives with three elderly people from rural Tamil Nadu, while building on insights from feminist scholars as well as science and technology studies. Central to the people's histories narrated in this article are uncertainties that yield non-linearities and loose ends. They foreground plural and flexible dimensions of each of our core concepts, from care and exclusion to intersections and relational agency. This open-ended plurality of dimensions, we conclude, may be crucial for concepts to find relevance in widely different settings

Agency (philosophy · Caste · Geography · Grassroots · Livelihood · Political science · Politics · Social exclusion · Social science · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Gender Studies · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Water Governance and Infrastructure

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access