Historian and political scientists of South Asia have been dealing with the ascent of postcolonial state and the form of citizenships in South Asia. The meteoric rise of postcolonial theory, subaltern school of historiography to be precise made efforts in bringing the role of ideas and culture in shaping state, community and political narratives. Notwithstanding these insights still this literature failed to bring in one very important thing; a comparative lens to study informal politics in the region. The social transformation and process of democratization has appeared to be inching ahead across the region from Nepal to Bangladesh. Therefore, increasingly a cross country perspective is required combining interdisciplinary approaches and methodologies (qualitative, quantitative) to develop a comparative perspective of way social and cultural factors influence informal politics in South Asia.

Argument

Historian and political scientists of South Asia have been dealing with the ascent of postcolonial state and the form of citizenships in South Asia (Chatterji, 2012; Chattha, 2016; Zamindar, 2007). The meteoric rise of postcolonial theory, subaltern school of historiography to be precise made efforts in bringing the role of ideas and culture in shaping state, community and political narratives (Chatterjee, 2004, 2013; Kaviraj, 2005, 2010).

These new trends rightfully questioned and pointed out the limitation of previous modernization driven perspectives of social change and political development that were mostly sticked with studying politics from an institutional lens. It had also side stepped the social-structuralist perspectives and underscored the need to include the everyday engagements, intermediary actors, cultural ideas and language of claims that also were playing an important role in shape state-society relations in India.

Accordingly, the ‘everyday’ become a new site to explore the tensions, coordination and contestation reflecting the tensions between imaginaries (and processes) of post-colonial state and community of citizens. This trend latter fueled scholarly interest in studying informal politics by using heuristics of  patron-client relations to comprehend the working logics of politics and public policy in India  (Berenschot, 2011, 2018; Bussell, 2019; Kruks-Wisner, 2018). Notwithstanding these insights still this literature failed to bring in one very important thing; a comparative lens to study informal politics in the region[1]. The social transformation and process of democratization has appeared to be inching ahead across the region from Nepal to Bangladesh.

Therefore, increasingly a cross country perspective is required combining interdisciplinary approaches (Auerbach, 2019; Banerjee, 2021; Mohmand, 2019) and methodologies (qualitative, quantitative) to develop a comparative perspective of way social and cultural factors influence informal politics in South Asia. This panel hopes to play a small role of reducing this gap by inviting theoretical and empirical contributions on themes such as :

• Everyday Governance and citizenship
• Political parties and Electoral Machines
• Brokerage and Leadership
• Social Mobilizations and Representative claims
• Social & Political imaginaries

[1] The Indian Sociologist Andre Beteile has emphasized the importance of comparative method to understand the social and political issues (Beteille, 1990).

Submission guidelines

The contributions could be a country specific or envisage a comparison between two countries. This panel intends to build a working group to develop long term research partnership to study social and political change in South Asia. Please send your contributions at

asadrehman@umt.edu.pk

Timeline

• Abstract Submission: 30 May

• Full Paper Submission: 31st August
• Conference days: 26-27 October

Scientific Committee

• Dr. Asad ur Rehman Assistant Professor Department of Political Science and IR, UMT Lahore Pakistan.
• Jose Egase, Doctoral Candidate EHESS, CEIAS, Paris.

Bibliography

Auerbach, A. M. (2019). Clients and Constituents: Political Responsiveness in Patronage Democracies. India Ink. https://www.guindiaink.org/clients-and-constituents

Banerjee, M. (2021). CULTIVATING DEMOCRACY: Politics and Citizenship in Agrarian India. Oxford University Press.

Berenschot, W. (2011). Political fixers and the rise of Hindu nationalism in Gujarat, India: Lubricating a patronage democracy. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 34(3), 382–401.

Berenschot, W. (2018). The political economy of Clientelism: A comparative study of Indonesia’s patronage democracy. Comparative Political Studies, 51(12), 1563–1593.

Beteille, A. (1990). Some observations on the comparative method. Economic and Political Weekly, 2255–2263.

Bussell, J. (2019). Clients and Constituents: Political Responsiveness in Patronage Democracies. Modern South Asia.

Chatterjee, P. (2004). The politics of the governed: Reflections on popular politics in most of the world. Columbia University Press.

Chatterjee, P. (2013). Lineages of political society: Studies in postcolonial democracy. Columbia University Press.

Chatterji, J. (2012). South Asian histories of citizenship, 1946–1970. The Historical Journal, 55(4), 1049–1071.

Chattha, I. (2016). The Long Shadow of 1947:Partition, Violence, and Displacement in Jammu & Kashmir. In A. Singh, N. Iyer, & R. K. Gairola (Eds.), Revisiting India’s Partition: New Essays on Memory, Culture, and Politics (p. 143).

Ekman, J., & Amnå, E. (2012). Political participation and civic engagement: Towards a new typology. Human Affairs, 22(3), 283–300. https://doi.org/10.2478/s13374-012-0024-1

Kaviraj, S. (2005). On the enchantment of the state: Indian thought on the role of the state in the narrative of modernity. European Journal of Sociology.

Kaviraj, S. (2010). The imaginary institution of India: Politics and ideas. Columbia University Press.

Kruks-Wisner, G. (2018). Claiming the state: Active citizenship and social welfare in rural India. Cambridge University Press.

Mohmand, S. K. (2019). Crafty Oligarchs, Savvy Voters: Democracy under Inequality in Rural Pakistan. Cambridge University Press.

Zamindar, V. F.-Y. (2007). The long partition and the making of modern South Asia: Refugees, boundaries, histories. Columbia University Press.