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Empty Citizenship: Protesting Politics in the Era of Globalization Author(s): Ritty Lukose Source: Cultural Anthropology, Vol.
20, No. 4 (Nov., 2005), pp. 506-533 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3651541 . Accessed: 13/09/2013 10:37
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Empty Citizenship: Protesting Politics in the Era of Globalization

Ritty Lukose
Universityof Pennsylvania
During the mid-1990s, while conductingfieldworkamong college studentsin the Indian state of Kerala,I would walk to the college daily from the nearby student hostel where I lived only to find it closed and largely empty, a situationthatwas to last for months. Keralawas touted to be the "educationmiracle."Its nearly 100percent rates of literacy and high mass participationof both boys and girls at all levels of educationhadbecome exemplaryof the "Kerala model"of development.1 as of a mobilization of students and However, part larger political partiesagainst economic liberalization policies begunin theearly 1990s, studentstrikeshadclosed the college in protest over governmentattemptsto privatizehigher educationby authorizingthe expansionof privatelyfundedcolleges. At the end of the firstday, after most of the studentshad left, the teachers were still hanging about, reading the newspapers or gossiping. Unlike the students, they could not leave if they wantedto be paid. Shakingher head as she watched a political procession (jatha) of mostly male studentsmove throughthe corridors,shouting"Inquilab Zindabad" and Live the she said "it's not Revolution), (Long laughed cynically, democracy, its demo-crazy." This article is an explorationof the emptied college and its relationshipto India. Educationalinstitutionsare often concepts of citizenship in contemporary understoodto be key spaces for constitutingmodem public spheresand centralto the productionof citizens in modem nation-states.2Over the last century,within Kerala'sdevelopingnarrative of modernity,this public has come to be understood as a "politicalpublic,"drivenby the political agency of revolutionaryor revolutionizing young men. Educationhas become a key space (among others) for the constitutionof this "politicalpublic,"as well as its object,in ways thatexpressgenderedandgenerational practicesof inclusionandexclusion. Girlsand womenhave been includedto a very high degreein the public places of work in Kerala'shighly touted educationalsystem while also being excluded from this "politicalpublic."
CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Vol. 20, Issue 4, pp. 506-533, ISSN 0886-7356, electronic ISSN 1548-1360.
? 2005 by the AmericanAnthropologicalAssociation. All rightsreserved.Please direct all requestsfor permission

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My aim is to examine what happensto the politics and practicesof gendered democraticcitizenshipin an educationalsettingthatis being newly reconfigured as a commodityunderthe neoliberaleconomic reformsthatconstituteglobalization, focusing specifically on the politics of privatization.By privatization, I mean a set of discourses and policies thatportraythe state as pitted againstthe market,in which the state is understoodto be "public"and the marketis understoodto be Althoughprivatization "private."3 argumentsoften hinge on discourses of quality of services, supply,anddemand,I arguethatwhat is most at stakein debatesabout privatizationare competingnotions of the public and meaningsof citizenship. In Kerala, as elsewhere, transformationsassociated with globalization are often indexed by the expansion of the marketeconomy and a consumeristethos, often at the expense of state-centricformulationsof politics and citizenship. Debates about privatizationusually revolve around two competing arguments.On the one hand, some herald privatizationas the engine of economic growth and prosperity,relieving states and citizens of the drainingeffects of large state bureaucraciesand inefficiencies. On the other hand, those who oppose privatization arguethatthe withdrawalof the statefrom social services andthe concomitantrise of consumptionand marketideology lead to increasinginequality.What is often missed in these debates are the ways in which claims are made on the state by both sides of this debate. Moreover,althoughboth positions targetconsumerism, little attentionis paid to how discoursesof consumptionwork to reconfigurepoliis the subjectof this article. tics, citizenship, and democracy.This reconfiguration I examine the state-marketnexus that structuresthe educationalfield in Kerala, of the relationshipbetween trackingthe persistentyet transformed understandings and which the and functions of educationand citprivate public through meanings and In I are debated over. attention to discourses izenship struggled particular, pay about "politics"thatpervadecollege life in Keralaas a key site where citizenship is being reformulated throughdiscourses of consumerism. To trackthe relationshipbetween privatization and citizenship,I examine the of a trajectory historically importantmasculinist"politicalpublic" contemporary in Keralaas it intersectswith multipleunderstandings of the "private" in ways that demonstrate theirmutualandchangingentanglements.4 This entailsunravelingthe dense connections between Kerala'spostcolonial political and educationaltrajectories, given the centralityof educationalspaces and studentsto the constitution of this political public. The contemporarycontestations that mark this political field within Keralareveal a struggle over the meaning of democraticpublic life that opposes a political public, rooted in a traditionof anticolonial struggle and postcolonial nationalistpolitics, to that of a "civic public,"rooted in notions of efficiency and freedom to consume throughthe logic of privatization.A contrast between the civic and the political has been given renewed salience in the recent work of ParthaChatterjee(1998, 2000, 2004).5 The term civil society allows Chatterjeeto mark that domain of organizationsand norms of behavior that are understoodto conform to bourgeois Western,and secularizedChristianforms of
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associationallife, while pointing to anotherdomain, "political society,"in which other, nonelite practices of mobilization and participationin engagements with the state run counter to the norms of civil society. My discussion of a civic-as opposed to a political-public resonateswith this distinction,which I find useful. However,I am less interestedin a conception of political society that lies outside of the domainof civil society thanin the ways in which notions of the civic andthe political confronteach otherwithinan alreadyconstitutedpublic space of politics. Drawingon extensiveworkon the public-privatedichotomyin feminist scholarship,I suggest that the public that groundsthe confrontationbetween the civic and the political is groundedin masculineforms of sociality andmobility.The tension between the freedom to occupy and traversepublic spaces in the discourses of both a "civic public"anda "politicalpublic"is grounded,I argue,on competing masculinitiesthat are class inflected. I markthis contemporary momentof neoliberalismby demonstrating Further, how this "civic public,"which Chatterjeelinks to the emergence of middle-class bourgeois nationalism during the colonial period, articulateswith discourses of consumptionthat are tied to notions of the freedom of the market.The "private consumer"lays claim to the state by trying to constructa civic public, based on notions of efficiency and orderliness,in oppositionto a political public, deemed to be unruly,disruptive, andsometimesviolent, in ways thatarereconfiguring politics, democracy,and citizenship underconditions of globalization.Explicit discourses about "politics"(rashtriyam),its limits and characteristics,point to the ways in which self-conscious political activity among students is situatedwithin a wider social field of gender and generationalpractices that structurethis confrontation between a civic anda political public.In particular, these discoursesmarkthe ways in which notions of citizenshipare tied to anticolonialand postcolonial notions of politics and how they intersectwith neoliberalconceptions of consumption. of politics andcitizenshipwithin this new To comprehendthe reconfiguration moment of globalization, a focus on discourses of consumption is centrally important.Within the Indian context, several formulationshave markedthe rise of of citizenship in the globalizconsumptionas a new terrainfor the reconfiguration the nationaldevelopmentalcitizen of the postindependence ing 1990s, supplanting Nehruvianstate(Breckenridge1995;Deshpande1993;Niranjana1991, 1999). The anthropologyof globalization has also been markedby a focus on consumption (Appadurai1996; Ong 1999).6 The centralityof consumptionas a site for the explorationof globalizationdovetailswith the growing influence of culturalstudies (Hall and Jefferson 1976; Hebdige 1981; McRobbie 1991; Miller 1991) within anthropologythat has also privilegedconsumptionas an object of culturalanalysis. Much work in the culturalstudies and anthropologyof consumptionhas been devotedto exploringthis hithertoundervalued and neglected domainof social life, arguingits importancefor understanding identity formationunder the intersecting framesof colonialism, nationalism,and capitalism(Burke 1996; Hendrickson 1996; Tarlo 1996).
Rather than viewing consumption as a naturalized set of social practices that needs to be examined and deciphered, I would like to begin by examining the space of consumptionitself as something that needs to be actively produced throughdiscourse,practice,and imagination(Appadurai1996:42). As Beng-Huat Chuastates for East Asia, much theorizationandresearchon consumptionfocuses on identity politics and comes out of an argumentabout the importanceof consumption vis-h-vis debates about cultural distinction within the Euro-American context (2000:19). Although the politics of identity and cultural distinction are certainlyat stakein consumerpracticesglobally,especially for the culturalpolitics of youth, the cultural-ideologicalcontext within which that politics is played out has distinct histories in differentlocations. A focus on discourses of consumption reveals the specificity of these contexts, particularlywhen the politics of identity and culturaldistinctionare linked to discoursesof citizenship and politics. Within the privatizationdebates in Kerala,discourses of consumptioninsert themselves of politics emergingout of the culturalandideological terrain into dense narratives of postcolonial states strugglingwith the legacy of colonialism and anticolonial nationalismas they intersectwith a new global order.The terrainof consumption as "socialpractice"or "everydaylife" operatesin andthroughthese political fields. Joan Vincent has recently remarkedon a new engagement with questions of citizenship within anthropology(2002). The frameworkof citizenship has become a lens through which to explore the changing and dynamic processes of sovereignty, belonging, and politics at the interface between nation-states and transnationalmovements of capital, labor, media, and commodities (Appadurai 2002). This approachhas expandedthe notion of what constitutesthe properdomain of citizenship. Although a conventionallegal definition of citizenship rests on political rightsandobligationswith respectto a sovereignstate,anthropologists have emphasized the ambiguities of citizenship as these are lived in the cultural politics of everyday life (Holston and Appadurai1999; Ong 1999). Although the expansion of citizenship beyond the boundariesof the officially political is a useful and salutary move in studies of citizenship, I have found it useful to track definitionsof "the political"-more specifically, the how, what, when, and where of the political-to understandchanging conceptions of citizenship (Appadurai 2002; Butler 1992; Comaroffand Comaroff 2000).7 I examine a self-conscious discourse of politics and its limits in and throughvarious spaces of articulation focusing on the politics of privatizationin a college institution established for lower-caste students. The Public in Kerala Tracing a genealogy of the public in Kerala helps to illuminate how the politics of privatization is playing out in educational spaces. In July 1994, a group of middle-class businessmen belonging to a consumer organization staged a jatha down MahatmaGandhi Road in front of the State Secretariatin
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the capitalcity. Unlike most political processions, however, Thiruvananthapuram, they did not march on foot but drove cars, motorbikes, and scooters, not because they had the financial means to do so but, more pointedly, they did so to assert their "rightto use the roads."This was part of a largermobilization to iniculture"in the state (IndianExpress 1994). tiate what they called an "anti-bandh used Hindi word thatliterallymeans"closed,"butit can refer Bandhis a commonly more specifically to a general strike,usually called by a political party,in which and shops come to a standstill. A workplaces, schools, colleges, transportation, was Court also filed before Kerala's High petition asking that a court injunction be issued against the frequentbandhs initiatedby political parties. Although this was not initially successful, the KeralaSupremeCourtofficially bannedbandhsin 1997, andlaterthatyear,this rulingwas upheldby the SupremeCourtof India. In 2003, anotherpetition was filed before the KeralaSupremeCourtarguingthat the governmentand various other organizationswere getting aroundthe 1997 ruling by renamingbandhsas hartals (Hindu2003a). The wordhartal is often used interchangeablywith bandh,althoughit usuallyrefersto a strikethatis called suddenly, a moredelimitedformof protestin durationandscope. The petitioner,who was the presidentof an organizationcalled the International Society for the Preservation of HumanRights and the Rule of Law, arguedthatbandhsor hartals,however one chose to name them, violated the rightsof citizens based on the constitutionalright to "equalprotection"and the "rightto life." A conference was organizedin the city of Kochi to promotethis anti-bandh cultureunderthe auspices of the ConsumerProtectionMagazine and a civic organizationcalled the Kochi City Vigilance. Conference speakerscondemned the violence done to people and propertyunder the "cover of democratic dissent." Several pointed to the fact that at one time, general strikes were necessary and genuinely expressedthe "will of the people."They drew a distinctionbetween the genuine use of bandhs and hartalsduring the independencemovement and their India.The generalstrikein 1907 to protestthe arrestof abuse in postindependence nationalistleader Bal Gangadhar Tilak by British authoritieswas "spontaneous." ToMahatmaGandhi'sfasting and noncooperationmovement was "nonviolent." day's bandhs "victimized the public" and "[were] no credit to civilized society." Conferencespeakerscited the large sums of money lost because of propertydamage and the underminingof the work ethos caused by lost working days. People observe bandhsby not going to work or school andby closing down shops not because they always approveof the protestbut often because of fear of violence. By forcing people to stay indoors, bandhsare not an expression of democraticrights but end up violating the people's "fundamental rightto move aboutfreely,"hence, the "anti-bandh" jathato drivethe public roads of Thiruvananthapuram. Although the ruling United DemocraticFront(UDF) led by the KeralaCongress Partywas chastised for not doing enough to prevent the bandhs, the blame was squarely placed on the left parties. VeteranCommunist leader E. M. S. Namboodiripad, who was the leader of Left Democratic Front (LDF) headed by the Communist
Partyof India-Marxist(CPI-[M])that was the oppositionpartyat that time, fired back that bandhswere an expression of the people's fundamentalright to protest and that to ban them was "fascist"(Hindu 1994). Whetherthey were legal or not, he averred,such agitations would always take place. Asked about the violence associated with strikes,he statedthat it was a partof the struggleitself. After all, he contended,duringthe freedommovementmany had lost their lives. This ratherstrikingcontestationaboutthe forms of Kerala'spolitical culture brings to light a set of culturaland political strugglestied to notions of the public in which the space of politics (rashtriyam)is mostly understoodto be occupied by the left. At one level, this speaks to the history of Kerala as a bastion of the communistmovement in India. Therefore,many people in Keralabelieve that to be critical of politics is to be critical of the left, and to be critical of the left is to be critical of politics. In this way, the politics of anti-politicsis mappedonto a set of political distinctionsbetween left and right,8pitting middle-class businessmen whose use of the roads is illuminatedby the headlightsof their cars and scooters against the ordinaryfolk (sadharannakar)who walk on foot and carry burning torches.9 One way of gesturing towardthe history of what one might call a modern public in Kerala is by looking at the history of the jatha as a mode of political protest.The Punjabiwordenteredthe political vocabularyof Malayalam,the state language, in the 1920s, when a jatha of supporterscame from the north to join the Vaikom Satyagraha,a pivotal moment in the struggle to constitute an egalitarianpublic in Kerala (Menon 1994).10This nonviolent struggle (satyagraha) challenged the caste-based geography of space whereby lower castes could not enterthe templeor walk the roadsaroundit. The protestpitteda notionof a unified Hindu nationalistcommunity,defined in largely upper-casteterms, against caste regulations based on exclusion (Menon 1994). Caste regulations that produced not only untouchability butunapproachability' '-regulating the visibility anddistance between caste bodies-were challenged by the jatha, in which membersof of places, differentcastes marchedtogether,traversing caste-basedunderstandings to produce an egalitarianpublic space. The jatha became a potent political mode in the 1930s during agitationsover temple entry, salt marches, peasant protests, and various forms of civil disobedience. They challenged very specific meanings of body, mobility, and place around temples, but they were also central to the productionof Keralaas a regionalidentity.An importantseries of jathas mapped a regional cartographyfrom Malabar in the north to Trivandrumin the south. The "jathaidea," as the communist leader A. K. Gopalan called it, has become emblematic of Kerala'spolitical modernity(Jeffrey 1993:121).12 The politicalpublic,instantiated in thejatha,was also inextricablyintertwined with spaces of education,a key componentof Kerala'sclaim to developmentand The success of the educational system-spreading education at all modernity.13 levels to a wide spectrumof the population-occurs in and througha process in which education has historicallybeen both a key object of political contestation
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and a crucial space for the development and enactment of a vigorous political culture. One could not write the modern political history of Kerala, indeed the history of modernity in Kerala, without writing about education-either as an object and site of contestationor as an institutionthatproducedkey political actors (i.e., studentsand teachers).As Robin Jeffrey argues, "Most Keralanshave first encounteredgovernment-and, indeed, public politics-through a school system thathas become the heartof the new Kerala"(1993:153). Furthermore,the very political history of Kerala has a strong gender and The "youthfulness" narrative.14 of politics was one of its key features, generational but this was a youth understoodto be militant and masculine. For example, like E. M. S. Namboodiripad,the now-deceased veteran many of his contemporaries, leader of the CPI-(M) in Kerala, embarkedon a life of politics straightout of a successfulboycott of his historyclass, he left education college. Havingarranged for good. In 1932, he was arrested,and in his autobiographyhe writes: "With this my life had taken a new turn. My transformation from a boy... to a youth dedicatinghis entirelife to activepolitics becamecomplete"(Jeffrey1993:64).The story of Kerala'smodernityis writtenas a generationalone, with young militant sons draggingtheir elders into a new Kerala.The 1938 campaignfor responsible is a case in point that, many would argue, cemented governmentin Trivandrum the form thatpublic protestwould take on the Keralalandscape.Whatwas unique about this protest,the largestthat Keralahas ever seen, was that the elder uppercaste membersof the dignifiedLegislativeCouncil,who usuallydressedin western suits andties, had donnedhomespuncotton (khadi)to marchin thejathas,shouting slogans at the goading of student and peasant groups (Jeffrey 1993).15As such, youth as a space of masculinepolitical agency has been key to the articulationof public politics in Kerala.16 In 1924, the satyagraha in Vaikomfocused on the rights of lower-caste individuals to use the roads surrounding a temple. In a starkcontrastwith this earlier moment,the 1990s assertionby middle-classbusinessmenof theirrightsto use the roads was a self-conscious challenge to the prevailingconception of the political. The contemporarycontestation over the dominant forms of political culture in Keralatouches at the heartof Kerala'sself-identity as modem and revolutionary and reveals the largercontoursof a debate aboutthe very meaning of democratic politics and citizenship in these globalizing times. This struggleto define citizenship is also manifestingitself in spaces of educationandyouth as well, as I discuss in the next section. The political public, a conception of the public rooted within a traditionof public politics that emerged out of the colonial period, is now confrontedby a privatizedcitizenshiplinkedto a conceptionof a properlyfunctioning civic public.17 The idea of thepublicbeing contestedin thejathaof middle-classbusinessmen is both literaland conceptual.Literally,it is aboutthe functioningof roads, shops, schools, and workplaces. These public places are linked to the conception of a space of the public, conceptually,throughthe language of rights, democracy,the
people, property,and politics. Literal places are linked to contested conceptual notions of the public by the ways in which they are used and occupied. What is being contested here are two notions of the public, one civic and one political, both linked to the functioningof literal spaces deemed to express the natureof the and the use of which somehow expresses public thatconstitutesthem as "public," "fundamental rights."Crucialto the constitutionof a civic public is the erasure of the political throughthe assertionof the well-manneredand orderlyuse of this public space and throughthe respect for propertyby those deemed to be citizens. "The people" are disarticulatedfrom these places in the reconceptualizationof public space definedin termsof consumercitizenship. This new conceptionof the public defends the rights of its citizens to consume public space and to seeking These rights are definedin relationto being forced redressin a consumerforum.18 to stay indoors and not being able to "move aroundfreely" because of a fear of violence. In this conception,the public has been forcibly privatized-incarcerated in the home-by politics. Although the privacy of the home is an incarceration, the privacyof the marketis glossed as the freedomto choose. The privatizinglogic of the marketassertsits claims on the public throughthe logic of consumption.The freedom of consumptionis linked with the freedom to move in an uninhibitedway throughpublicplaces. In this way, the "publiccitizen" Forthe civic public,on the one consumer." articulates with the figureof the "private hand,the limit of a genuinely democraticpublic is violence and fear of violence. For the political public, on the other hand, violence is not a limit as such, but whenjustifiable,it lies at the very heartof politics. The public is not constitutedby lack of fear and well-manneredbehaviorbut by the "rightto protest"as a popular expression of political legitimacy.19 The Politics of Emptiness In this genealogy of the "politicalpublic"in Kerala,educationis a centrally importantspace for politics, and youth is defined as a category of masculinized political agency. Withinthe political cultureof the state, the space of the college is a particularly chargedand routinizedone. Studentpolitics is almost exclusively structured the largerpolitical culture,and the college system, and increasingly by of the official political otherkinds of schools as well, is integralto the reproduction culture.20Very often, the studentwings of the national parties were called on to do the hard labor of grassrootspolitical mobilization and education and to be at the forefrontof largerpolitical demonstrations.Student leaders and cadres were socialized into partypolitics, and they moved up into the ranksof theirrespective and routinizedways, colleges reflected parties.Therefore,in very straightforward and reproducedthe official political cultureof the state. within the college At the same time, the everydaylife of politics (rashtriyam) must be situated within the everyday contexts that young people occupy. Politics emerges from a terrainof gender and generationalpractices,particularlythe
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strugglesof young men as they restlessly navigatefun, friendship,and romancein the public. Masculineforms of sociality and mobility are centralto understanding ways in which public spaces of politics and citizenship, as constitutedin college life, are lived and contested. Elsewhere, I discuss the complex of practices that embody an unruly,restless masculinity,includingnotions of fun and style (Lukose in press). Withrespect to everydaypracticesof politics, I focus here on notions of the ways in which mobility throughpublic spaces as importantto understanding politics emerges within the college. The conditions of possibility of a jatha in the space of the college lie in the restless navigationof public space by young men.21 A contrast between feminine and masculine modes of navigating public space should be instructivehere. The emptiness of the classrooms does not mean that the college is not occupied. Just as with the street, the beach, or the bus stand,the classroombecomes a genderedspace of sociality. Women studentsstay inside theclassrooms,rarelytraversing the corridors andopenplaces of the campus. The goal-oriented,demure comportmentnecessary to traversethe public means that if thereis no class, women are expected to go home. This demurefemininity, rooted in the notion of a closed, containedbody moving towarda clearly defined destinationthroughpublic space, both enables andconstrainsa women's presence in public.22At times women studentsmay stay and hang out with their friends at school, then go shopping, or if really adventurous,they go to an ice cream parlor or the India Coffee House. They may also meet their "lines"(a slang word for a romanticinterest)on the roadbehindthe college where hopefully no one will see. In cases in which there is no official purposeto her being at the college, however, a woman's presence in public is precariousfor she cannot be "too free" in her movements.Being too free, of course, involves her sexualization. This constraintfor women may be contrastedto masculineforms of mobility, rooted in the notion of "wanderingabout"or "gallivanting" (karanguga),a mode of restless, aimless movementin searchof fun, romance,and friendship.For Biju, a particularlyenergetic young man, the emptiness of the college enabled all of these things. He relatedto me how he is everywherein the college, but never in the classroom.It did not matterto him whetherclass was conductedor not; it was all the same to him: I havebeenat thiscollegefor fiveyearsandneverhadone yearof full attendance. I havea verystrictschedule, butit is my own.I studyfrom10 p.m.to 1 a.m.at home. I knowthe syllabus, so I readon my own,takemy ownnotes.Thenthereis tutorial in ModemCollegeto helpme. ButI cometo collegeeveryday.I will wander about I will see whatis happening. I starton the top floorthenI come down [karangum]. ThenI'm on to the firstfloor.I neverstop,I just say hello to everyone, my friends. my way.By thattime,it's noon.Timeforlunch.I eatlunch,then,I leavethecollege. I go to thepubliclibrary I go to themovies.Or Sometimes to read.Okay, sometimes wherever my friends mightgo. I asked Biju how he could maintain such a poor attendancerecord because it was impossible to sit for end-of-the-yearexams withouthaving attendeda certain
percentageof classes. He said there were many ways of getting aroundthat, such as bribingthe office clerk who took attendanceevery day. The emptiness of the college is a differentkind of opportunityfor dedicated political workers.Sissan fits the typical profile of a supporterof the StudentFederationof India (SFI), which is the dominantstudentpolitical organizationin the college and affiliated to the CPI-(M). A first-generationcollege student from a poor peasant background,Sissan was a hard worker and unusually sincere and passionate in his dedication to the ideals of the party. Once I saw him running towardthe college and I told him he could stop, he was not late, a strikehad been called and there were no classes. The strike was part of a mobilization against the privatization of higher educationand the liberalizationof the Indianeconomy undertaken by left parties.He had come an hour and half by bus to get to college. He laughingly said, "It's only when there is a strike that it's worth it to come to college. That's when you must come to college." If there was nothing to do for the partyat the college, he would often go to the district office of the SFI and do whatever was requiredof him there or attend a few sessions at what are called "parallelcolleges" nearby to keep up with his class work. In the past 25 years, parallel colleges such as the Modern College, a privatetutorial center that Biju also attended,have sprungup all over Keralaas a set of institutionsfor tutoring, registering to take exams, and so forth. For many politically oriented students, recourseto a parallelinstitutionfor crammingtwo months before an exam allows them to turnthe college into an empty place where no formal learning happens. From the perspective of a civic conception of citizenship, colleges as spaces of civic virtue and public consumptionof services are held hostage, incarcerated by sometimes a as well strikes a a or month the endless that last week, day, politics: as fasts and demonstrations. AlthoughBiju's narrative emphasizeshis freedomto wanderabout,which he is one of dedicatedand disciassociates with fun andfriendship,Sissan's narrative plinedpolitical work.However,these formsof mobilityarenot easily disentangled. The masculinityof wanderingaboutfreely in an undisciplinedway is the condition of possibility for producinga masculinity in which movement is disciplined (as in the jatha). They are intertwinedin the everydaylife of the college. Incidentsof politics are rarelyseparablefrom a problemof unruly"(in)discipline."23 A good examOne form of indisciplineinvolves damageto college property. who before a disciplinary of an incident involves was such Prabhu, brought ple committee.He was chargedwith runningthroughthe corridorswith a bunchof his friends, shouting and slammingwindows, doors, and shuttersagainst the college walls. He was also accused of breakingthe blackboardin the botany department took off on his motorbike classroom.Whena teacherranintothe classroom,Prabhu but the teacherwas able to identify him. He was immediatelysuspendedbut petitionedto have his suspensionlifted. Prabhustood in frontof the seateddisciplinary committee composed of three teachers and two students; his head was bowed with eyes to the ground and hands clasped behind his back. Under questioning,
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it became clear that he came to college about once every three days to wander about instead of attending classes, and he had previously let the air out of the scooter tires of two teachers. However, he argued that he was wrongly accused because teachershad a grudgeagainsthim for being involvedin the StudentUnion and being an active memberof the SFI. He respectedteachersand the college and would have never done such things. He arguedthat he was a simple, humble boy (pawam).24 The problem of discipline is wrappedaroundthe problem of politics in that both are groundedin a form of masculine sociality that is reckless and restless. Although Prabhumight assert that his demeanoris pawam, it was clear that he is not understoodthat way. A troublemaker, he is one who recklessly wanders about,destroyingproperty, talkingbackto teachers,and letting the air out of their tires. However,because he was a prominentmember of the SFI unit on campus, once his suspension was lifted, many believed that he had gotten off because the did not want any more troublewith the party. administration More quotidianforms of fighting take on anothercharacter.As one teacher pointed out to me, the problem is often not political trouble but "girl trouble." Narrativesof these incidents proceed in a fairly structured way: a boy speaks to a girl in an inappropriate way, anotherboy gets upset about this (perhapsthe girl is his "line,"a cousin, or someone from his village) and fights with or attacksthe boy. One of them just happens to be associated with a particularpolitical party, the other with a rival party.This will then escalate as members of these groups will be drawn into furtherclashes. What is at stake in these narrativesis a male struggleover the honorand virtueof women thatalso manageswomen's sexuality by reinforcing the importancefor women of maintaininga demure presence in public. Politics confronts the public space of the college in the form of everyday problems of (in)discipline that are then understood to be the machinations of "outsideforces" (i.e., political parties).An angle of vision on the meaning of this politics, and the anti-politics that confronts it, can be ascertainedby examining the attemptsto produce a civic public within the space of the college. Both the college administrationand civic-minded students attempt to do this in several ways, most notably throughstudentassociations that are explicitly understoodto be antipolitical.Here,the student-citizenwho figuresas an agentof developmentis key. Withinthe discourse of development,this student-citizenmoves from being simply the object of the educationalprocess (and, therefore, in some senses an object of development)to being an agent of development. This notion of the student-citizen is institutionalizedon a national level in the National Service Scheme (NSS). The NSS is a nationwide organizationof college studentsthat has a unit in almost every state-affiliatedcollege. The NSS builds gardens, digs tube wells, runs blood drives, and conducts rural surveys. Sometimes they participateas census enumeratorsas well. Here, the studentcitizen does not destroy but builds. The organizationencouragesparticipation by
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giving extra points on year-end examinationmarks, making this a major draw. Students also like to join because it is relatively easy to excuse absences from class by producingcertificatessaying thatone was involved in some NSS activity. A majorprojectof the NSS unit in the college was the buildingof a gardenin the space between the college building and the campus wall. Full of tall weeds, it had been noted as a place of congregationfor the "badelements"in the college, as one teacherput it. Studentswould stay after class and come on Saturdaysto tend this space. Plants were obtained from the homes of teachers and parents, as the limitedbudgetdid not permitbuyingthem. The highlightof the gardenwas an area of well-tendedgreengrassin the shapeof territorial Indiathatthe studentsinvolved in the projectwere sure was going to win them a university-widecompetitionthey had entered.The teacherwho was in charge of the college's NSS unit described the intentionof the garden: forsustainable Forthisyear, thenewthemeis "youth yeartheNSShasa theme. Every Lastyearit was "youth for national Giventhatscheme, development." integration." thatgarden to thatscheme, we madea garden, thatyousee overthere. Yes,according A placeof youth. in everycollegethereshould be a garden, for theyouth[yuvakal]. An assembly fortheirday-to-day activities. Fortheir placeof youth,fortheirstudies, Thatis the kindof garden thatwe aregrowing, discussions. thatwe made.It is the of NSSsilver of trees,it hasbecome mainscheme thepreservation jubilee.Nowadays, to sit undera tree in a concernof youth.Also, in the ancientsystem,for students the old system, the shadeandstudy, therewasthatideaas well. In theVedicperiod, to play,to read, usedto situnder treesandstudy. Thenfortheircongregation, students forthebeautification of to sit,forall thata special place.Thenyougrowtrees,plants, thesurroundings. theenvironment, This "placeof youth"becamea spacefor the congregationof student-citizens, a space of associationalcivil society, freely congregatingin a developed land. It enacts the Nehruvianmodel of developmenton the part of student-citizens who are patrioticand productive(Deshpande 1993), but it was also understoodto be a resistanceto the "emptyplace"of youth thatthe college had become. The teacher the outlinedwhy he thoughtthe NSS could subsumethe politics that incarcerated "The is in the of this in the we have But NSS, college rashtriyam. college: grip [membersfrom] all [student]groups, KSU, ABVP, SFI. In the NSS there is no problemof politics. On Sundayswhen they work together,they work togetherside by side, handin hand."He went on to discuss the ways in which the NSS engaged in a kind of anti-politics:"When they come to the NSS, they must forget their politics. They have to forget all kinds of political beliefs, while remainingin NSS. NSS is over politics. We have a seminarandraise awareness.So we tell them as a main point, 'don't get violent.' They then spreadthe message to others." This strugglebetween his notion of a "place of youth"and the notion of the "emptyplace" of the college is a palpableone. Every year that the NSS has tried to build a garden,it has been destroyed: This year we mustmaintain this project.We have to deal with violence,agitated Thenwe gave a vandalized. students. Several hasbeendestroyed, times,ourgarden
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thekidsagainmadeit case to thepolice.Eventhough thecase didnotgo anywhere, andmadeit rightagain.... Wewill makeit all neat,neatfromthisend okay,worked to thatend.It is a tiresome job. Some students,highly criticalof all the rashtriyam in the college, were excited aboutthe gardenbecause they thoughtit would create the kind of public that they wantedto be a partof, a civic public full of opportunityandgrowth.As one active NSS memberstates:"Lookat this college. It is like a desert.It shouldbe charming He went on andbeautiful,full with plants.The gardenwill make it look different." to say that the college had few activities, nothing to "directthe youth."He added that in the activities he engaged in, there was "direction"and "equality." Even women participatedin the National Cadet Corp, studying first aid and signaling, while male studentsstudiedshipbuildingand sailing. Withinthe Nehruvianmodel of studentcitizenship, the studentis not a roaming,waywardyoung man. He has His activities are spatially arrangedin an orderly manner,directed "direction." toward his own future and that of his nation. Although this Nehruvian public presents itself as gender neutral,it links a middle-class masculinitywith the idea of a demurefemininitythatwill performits assignednurturing role (i.e., firstaid). The empty college is a product of the contestation between a civic and a political conception of the space of the college and the practices of democratic citizenshipthatdefineit. As with roads,shops, schools, andtransportation systems, the college is an embattledterrain,a technology of citizenship in which struggles over its properfunctioning constitutea struggle over the meaning of democratic citizenship.It is underwritten by genderandgenerationalpracticesof sociality and mobility thatconstitutethe everydaymodes of this struggle. Politics, Privatization, and Education The contestationbetween the civic and the political, so far located within a Nehruvianconception of service to the nation, takes on a renewed and transformed set of meanings underconditionsof neoliberalismand the new politics of it has generated.The "civic"is increasinglytied to discoursesof conprivatization sumptionand a free market.Nowhere is this more apparentthan when education itself becomes an object of politics. Since the initiation of economic reforms in the early 1990s, the reform of higher education has centered on its privatization.To understandthese shifts, I focus on the deployments of a distinction between private and public and its relationshipto the politics at stake in these debates. Despite the rhetoricof those who often arguethatprivatization is a new phenomenon, opposed to privatization, publicandprivatehistoricallyhavebeen entangled.Only by paying attentionto this priorhistory will it be possible to delineate the specificity of privatizationunder neoliberalregimes. Althoughquestionsof supply and demandand those of access and quality dominate privatizationefforts in education, it is equally important to pay attentionto the status of the political within these debates. Usually, this
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aspect of the debatecenterson how much blame for the crisis in educationshould be placed on the pervasivepresence of student (and teacher) politics, which are usually tied in varyingdegrees to the politics of majorpolitical parties.Generally, the argumentsagainst the "politicizationof higher education"are tied to causal explanationsthatlink it to the disruptionof a properacademiclife and, therefore, to the lowering of academic standards.25 At both levels, the distinction between privateand public has been central. In an era of neoliberalization,contestations over whethereducationis a public good or a privatecommodity are transforming conceptions of the public, citizenship,and democracy. The large number in Kerala of higher educational institutions within the The attemptto bring this private privatesector is somewhatuniquewithin India.26 sector of education within full public view through state regulation was at the heart of the student politics of the 1990s, in which education as a means for developing a productivecitizenry in service to the nation became entangled with the idea of educationas a commodity.One importantsectorof privateeducationis the very powerfuland widespreadsystem of educationalinstitutionscontrolledby churches.Along with severalschools anda college set up by the Maharaja Christian of Travancore, Westernmissionariesand Christianchurcheswere among the first to establish schools and colleges in the 19th century,to serve the long-standing Christian communityas well as lower-casteHinduconverts.The demandfor access to educationalso became a centralfeatureof popularstrugglesby anticastesocial reform movements, in particularthe Izhava-basedSree Narayanamovement.27 The strugglefor an egalitarianpublic (i.e., for the rights of lower-castegroups to walk on public roads,entertemples, go to school, andget government jobs), was a Within of mobilization. the volatile coalition-based majorobject political politics of the last several decades, grantingapprovalfor new schools and colleges for variousconstituencieshas been a majorway to attractvotes.28 The struggleto control these privateinstitutionshas been a majorfeatureof Kerala'spolitics for most of its history since the foundingof the state in 1956. The contestationsover the educationbill, which was intendedto regulatesalaries and admissions processes under the sponsorship of the first communist government of 1957-59, starklyreveal the dynamics of this persistentfeature within Kerala politics. The oppositionto this bill came primarilyfromthe Christianorganizations that opposed government interferenceand saw it as a threat to their rights as religious minorities. Schools were closed and students mobilized. In July 1959, after many deaths and arrests,rule by the central governmentwas imposed and the communist ministry was dismissed. Many of the provisions of the bill were not fully implementeduntil the early 1970s, when privatecolleges, throughtheir affiliationsto public universities,were broughtundermore statecontrol.This shift was largely because of the efforts of teachers' unions. From this brief sketch, it becomes clear that the private sector that dominates higher education is both privateand public. The privatehere is understoodto be primarilythe private of religious minoritiesand specific upper-and lower-castecommunities,which have
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some discretionover a portionof admissions and hiring. However,the degree to which they are strictly privateis underminedby the structureand extent of state thatthey affiliatewith the universitysystem through funding and the requirement which the governmentcontrols appointments, admissions, curricula,and salaries. This allows the state to set quotas for hiring and admission and to implementthe reservationsystem, used to redressdiscriminationagainstlower-castegroups. However,the marketis anotherrealmof the privatethatcolludes and collides with both the privateof communitiesdescribedabove and the public of the state. The privatemarketexists in the educationalfield in two senses. First, despite the controlthatthe stateexerts over privateeducationalinstitutions,privatedonations for job appointmentsand capitationfees for studentadmissions are rampantand common. Anotherkind of privatemarketfor educationis the widespreadpresence of parallel colleges. Completely outside the private sector of educationthat was described above are the privatetutorialcenters that Biju and Sissan could count on to get them throughexams while not attendingclass. Housed in a few rooms of a building or hut and often surrounding the regularcolleges to which they are these colleges emerged and expanded duringthe 1970s quite literally "parallel," as a result of policies intendedto addressa growing demandfor highereducation that the existing system could not meet.29 Therefore,the 1990s debates about the privatizationof higher education in Kerala must be placed within a prior context of a state-saturated private sector of education and an expanding parallel system of privateeducation. These contestations escalated in 1994-95 when the ruling pro-CongressUDF government attemptedto allow the establishmentof new colleges that would be entirely selffinancing and unsubsidizedbut under some measure of governmentregulation. The emergence of these new institutionswould markanotherdevelopmentin the entangledpublic-privatesectorrelationsin the educationfield. Mr.E. T. Basheer, who was at thattime the educationminister,arguedthatalthoughnearly40 percent of the statebudgetwas being spenton education,it was still insufficient.Although some had arguedthat self-financingcolleges were elitist and would exclude the poor, he disagreedand stated that those who could affordto pay should have the to do so andthis would lead to healthycompetitionandhigherquality. opportunity The pro-LDF studentand teacherorganizationsled by the SFI launched a broad andvigorous set of agitationsto oppose whatthey called the "commercialization of an "education bandh" that closed highereducation," including kept many colleges for months. was both similarto and differentfrom what had This process of privatization occurredearlier.If we look back to the agitations surroundingthe 1957 Kerala EducationBill, the privatespherethat opposed the governmentwas primarilythe Christian churches.However,a new actorhas now appeared on the scene: the NonResident Indian(NRI). Technically,NRI is a bankingcategory of the Indianstate intent on attractingthe capital flows of the Indian diasporic community.Within the culturalpolitics of consumptionin contemporaryIndia, the marketingof an
NRI lifestyle has become associatedwith the effects of marketliberalizationand the aspirationsof a globalizing middle class (Deshpande 1993). Within Kerala, international migrationhas been extensive especially to the PersianGulf since the 1970s.30Remittancesnow makeup about30 percentof Kerala'sdomestic product et al. 1999). The childrenof Gulf migrantsare unable to study abroad (Zachariah the citizenship requirebecause family visas are rarely given, and, furthermore, ments within Gulf countriesoften restrictaccess to higher education. There is a demandto open new colleges for the dependentsof NRIs, in which these parents could simply pay to have theirchildrenadmittedand circumventreservationquotas and other admissionsrequirements. Additionally,given their semiautonomous status, these colleges were perceived to serve better the global trajectoriesand reformand superiordiscipline, by aspirationsof NRI families throughcurriculum of the of education." free "politicization being Examining a courtcase broughtagainstthe governmentby the state generalsecretaryof the SFI revealsthe struggleover NRI fundingof education.Originally, the state had decided to allow the establishmentof several private engineering colleges that would have a quota system for admissions, similar to the one for caste groups. However, in addition to setting up quotas for groups defined as Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST), 40 percent of all admissions were to be reservedfor NRIs. As a result of much agitation and protest,this was reducedto five percent.The starkcontrastbetween a caste reservation categorylike SC-ST and thatof the more affluentNRI points to the increasingdemandmade on the state by social groups defined by their ability to consume. In a very palpable way, the privateconsumerwas making a claim on the public. An anti-politicsthat is redefiningeducationalinstitutionsas spaces of civic virtue in place of public politics is increasinglyassertedthrougha languageof freedomtied to the market. As with the attemptto ban bandhson the basis of rightto "consume"public places such as roads, the college becomes a space for a contestationbetween civic and throughdiscourses political conceptionsof citizenshipthatare being transformed of consumption. How the politics of anti-politics emerges in the college can be seen in the attemptby some studentsto create a debating society, something the college had never had before. On one of those days when a strike had been called and most of the students who had shown up for the day had left, I met Sujit outside the compoundwall where he told me with excitement to come to a meeting later that day. It was to be held at a parallelcollege located in a one-roomshack undera tree at the next junction. When I asked him what the meeting was about,he said they were going to try and starta new studentorganization,the Association for Open Discussion, to debatethe issues of the day. The meeting was attendedby about30 students,five of whom were women. Sujit spoke first.His talk rehearsedthe usual litanies about student politics and how it had corruptededucation. Rashtriyam prevented students from learning, from getting jobs, and from "doing service" to the country. Echoing the anti-bandhpolitics, he argued that rashtriyamwas
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not about serving the people, it was about personalgain and privatecareers.The purposeof the debatingsociety was to talk aboutsociety but to do so in a way that He went on to say that the act of debating was explicitly was "not rashtriyam." not politics because in a debatingsociety two opponentsargueaboutan issue and one may win or lose a debate but the issue is never decided. What is judged is the language. In a debating society, one did not have politicians (rashtriyakar) but orators(wagamar), men of flowing words; one would just have a continuous streamof language. He went on to say that rashtriyam began when a right and a had In there was no been established. a debate, wrong right and wrong, there was no conclusion, and thereforeit would not be explicitly political. Here, politics is closure, the end of talk, the stating of conclusions. An antipolitics discoursedeploys words and their never-endingflow against this closure. This kind of "free talk" did not happen within the space of the college. In fact, Sujit statedthatthey must not hold the meeting in one of the empty college classrooms. This must be something outside-in that "parallel"space, that space of consumption,outside the political public. Sujit's notion of "free talk" is located within a notion of a civic public forged by middle-class norms of talk anchored in a bourgeoisform of masculinitystrugglingto articulateitself against a politics rooted in a more unrulyform. It relies on a kind of proceduralism, focusing on and valorizingthe process of the productionof talk itself, ratherthan the actions that might derive from a process of talk. The latter is understoodto be rashtriyam,a logic of means and ends based on firmconvictions and conclusions. The discourse of anti-politicsthat underliesthis student'sattemptto createa debatingsociety in the college echoes the discourseof anti-politicsaboutcreatinga gardenin the college. The latter,I argued,was an attemptto instantiatea Nehruvian conception of a productive citizen in the face of what is seen to be a "hyperpoliticization"of the college. However,this Nehruvianconception of citizenship is now linked with discourses of consumption,in which free talk articulateswith the freedom to consume. This is a shift from an understandingof citizenship as building the nation to one in which one ought to be free to consume the nation. Conclusion The legitimacyof power is based on the people, butthe image of popular sovereigntyis linked to the image of an empty place, impossible to occupy, such that those who exercise public authoritycan never claim to appropriate it. -Claude Lefort,Democracy and Political Theory Claude Lefort's (1988) "image of an empty place" is his attemptto capture an indeterminacyat the heart of the social logic of democracy.His formulation is an attemptto link "the people" as a politically constituted community to the image of a place. However,just as "the people" can never be understoodoutside its political constitution,neithercan "place."Centralto the political constitution
of the "empty place" of democracy is a spatial distinction between private and public. The struggle about what constitutes politics happens through a struggle As such, I have tracedthe over literalplaces and theirconceptualunderstandings. or of as in which understandings places public private,for example a streetor ways the gardensof a college, become the groundson which official politics is contested. Mapped on to the spatial distinctions between public and private are discourses that pit the realm of the private as the market-specifically as a space of exchange and consumption-against public politics (rashtriyam).I have explored the ways in which consumption straddlesthis opposition between public andprivateand how the realmof the political becomes reconfiguredin this nexus. Needless to say, the realm of politics is articulatedin and througha dichotomized understandingof public and private that renders not only the market but also of politics depends on an alreadyexisting women as private.The reconfiguration the as an of ambivalentlygendered space in Kerala. Caste, understanding public class, and gendered notions of a "demure"femininity have included women in public spaces of work and education,what one might call the "civic public,"while in an expressly "politicalpublic." excluding them from full participation In discussing the trajectoryof civil and political society, Chatterjeesuggests that, in this latest phase of globalization, an opposition between the two might be emerging (2000:47). I have explored an instance of such an opposition, within an already constituted notion of a modem public, lived through various forms of masculine sociality and mobility. This has entailed examining discourses of politics and the anti-politics that confront it within debates about privatization. In this latest phase of globalization, the opposition between a civic public and a political public is being reconstitutedin andthroughthe deploymentof discourses of consumption. The freedom to move throughpublic spaces, as in the anti-bandhdemonstrations,and the freedom to consume public goods, such as education-a kind of freedomthatI have linked to the freedom of choice in consumption-confront the official political domain at its limits within this discourse of anti-politicsthat efforts.This freedomto consume public space groundedin underliesprivatization a middle-class masculinity that is respectable,orderly,and disciplined confronts anothermasculinitythatis equally orderlyanddisciplined if not quite respectable. The empty college emergesout of strugglesover the meaningsandfunctionsof the public in and throughpracticesof democraticcitizenship in educationalsettings. In this way, I have sought to explore how the consumptionthat constitutes by discourses of consumptionas an index of the new "everydaylife" is saturated must be situatedwithin the distinct culturaland ideorder therefore, and, global ological fields through which they navigate. Within postcolonial Kerala, these consumptiondiscourses intersectwith narrativesand practices of public politics thatemerged out of the colonial period and were consolidatedin the postcolonial era. This analysis pays as much attentionto the productionof discourses about consumptionand politics as it has to the fact of their everyday realities, linking
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the two in ways that track how globalizing discourses of consumption and politics intersect in particular cultural and ideological fields. Notes Acknowledgments. This article was presented in various versions as papers at the South Asia Seminar,Universityof Chicago;Asian Studies Association Meetings, the 91st Annual Meeting of the AmericanAnthropologicalAssociation, December 2-6, 1998; the AdvancedSeminaron AnthropologyandEducation;the Department of SpencerFoundation of the South Asia Yale and Minnesota; Anthropology,University Colloquium, University: the Centerforthe Studyof CultureandSociety in Bangalore,India.I thanktheparticipants of these forumsfor theirengagement.In particular, I thankCarolGreenhouseand G. Arunima for their insightful and helpful comments and David Scott for his extensive reading and suggestions. I gratefully acknowledge the FulbrightProgram,the American Institute of Indian Studies, and the Spencer Foundationfor supportingthe research and writing that contributed to this article. 1. The literature on developmentin Keralaandits statusas a "model"is vast andvaried. Fordiscussionsof the specificityof Kerala'sdevelopmentexperiencesee ChasinandFranke 1992, George 1993, Jeffrey 1993, andOommen 1993. Parayil(2000) providesa more recent overview, while Isaac andFranke(2002) discuss recentefforts in Keralato decentralizethe developmentexperience. For a critical assessment of the scholarly literatureon Kerala's 1998 and ensuing responses by Frankeand developmentexperience, see Tharamangalam Chasin(1998), among others.Foran assessmentof Kerala'sdevelopmentexperiencewithin a wider discussion of development,see Sen 1999. 2. The literature on the "publicsphere"has receivedrenewedattentionthroughcritical engagements with Habermas(1989), in which he lays out the conditions for the constitution of a liberal bourgeois public sphere, a normativeideal that he argues was historically constitutedin the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe. Historianshave challenged his emphasis on rationalcritical debate as the defining quality of discourse in democraticpublic spheres, suggesting it more as an ideal than a reality (Calhoun 1992; Eley 1992; Ryan 1992). Feminists have exploredthe issue of participation, examining the conditions of exclusion within liberal public spheres and the politics this has generated (Benhabib 1992; Fraser 1992). Scholars have also examined the natureof the public and public space in contexts (Appadurai1996; Breckenridge1995; Chakrabarty non-Western 2000; Chatterjee 2000; Kaviraj 1997). Drawing on this work, this article examines the explicit discourses and practicesof publicness to understand the reconfiguration of politics in the era of globalization, arguingthat issues of the natureand quality of public life are linked to questions of inclusion and exclusion. Emergent literatureon modem education and schooling has highlightedthe importanceof such sites for the constitutionof citizens in the public spheres of modem nation-states(Foucault 1977; Hall 2002; Levinson 2001; Levinson et al. 1996; Mitchell (1991) and Foucault Luykx 1999; Mitchell 1991; Stambach2000). In particular, (1977) focus on the school as a technology of modem governancethat sought to create autonomous,responsible, citizen-subjects. This article is interestedin the contradictions and tensions within such a normativeproject,as it intersectswith postcolonialhistories and of educationhave pointed to the everydaycontexts practicesof citizenship. Ethnographies of educationalspaces, theirdetermination by larger-leveldiscursivepracticesof citizenship, and the contradictionsthey engender(Hall 2002; Levinson 2001; Luykx, 1999; Stambach 2000). Drawingon this literature,I focus on the everydaypracticesof publicness and their circulatingdiscourses as they weave in and out of the site of a Keralancollege, focusing on the tensions between a civic and political conception of citizenship in the college.
3. By denoting the marketas private, I do not mean to suggest that the marketdoes not function within the public realmor that the state does not function within the "private" realm. My intent is to track the discursive construction of the market as "private"that confrontsthe "public"of the state within privatization discourses. 4. The public-privatebinaryhas received sustainedattentionand scrutinywithin feminist scholarship. Although early work saw the binary as the foundation of a universal gendered social organization,for example in the work of Michelle Rosaldo (1974), more contemporaryunderstandingsseek to understandits historical and cultural specificities in relationshipto capitalism, colonialism, and nationalism (e.g., Sangari and Vaid 1989). For an overview of recent feminist work on the public-private binary in the West, see Landes 1998. Drawing on this scholarship,I am less interestedin substantivedefinitions of what constitutespublic andprivateand more interestedin trackingtheirinvocationsand discourses of politics and citizenship in the context of deployments within contemporary neoliberalreforms. 5. ForChatterjee (2004), the distinctionbetween "civil society" and"politicalsociety" is a way of apprehending formsof contemporary politics on the partof subaltern populations who are enmeshed in the workings of the postcolonial state, understoodin Foucauldian of populations. This distinction displaces terms, as a process of the governmentalization that of the dualism between "tradition" and "modernity"in that, ratherthan seeing the modernor traditional, he arguesthatwe beginto politics of subaltern groupsas inadequately subaltern in societies as thoroughlymodern understand politics contemporary postcolonial while not conforming to the notions of modernity encompassed by Western bourgeois forms of civic associational behavior. Although Chatterjeeemphasizes political society as somethingoutside that of civil society, I am interestedin the mutualentanglementsand betweenelite andnonelite conceptionsof democracywithina self-conscious confrontations public political field definedby parliamentary democracywithin Kerala.Further, given my emphasis on the constitutionof public politics in Kerala,I see the genderednatureof this public as underwritingthe confrontationbetween the civic and the political. Chatterjee mentions gender as "the darkerside of political society,"and on mattersrelatedto gender, he states, "one can discernthe inescapableconflict between the enlighteneddesires of civil society and the messy, contentious, and often unpalatableconcerns of political society" (2004:77). This seems to conflate mobilizationsbased on gender with that of civil society ratherthan political society in ways that are left unexamined.I see the gendering of the civic and the political to be differentialyet nonetheless related. 6. This has led to significantoverlap-if not identity-between what one might call the anthropologyof globalizationand the anthropologyof consumption,althoughclearly, they are not reducibleto each other(Appadurai1988, 1996; Liechty 2003). In this sense, it is arguedthat consumptionis a privileged site for the study of globalization. 7. As Judith Butler states, the very act of delimiting the boundaries of a political field is a political act, and trackingcontestationsover what is political and what is not is a revealing moment for examining questions of citizenship and belonging (1992). More (2002) andComaroffand Comaroff(2000) focus attentionon the ways recently,Appadurai in which explicit politicaldiscoursesof democracyandcivil society operatewithin everyday contexts and in populardiscourses. 8. I borrow anti-politics from Ferguson (1994). However, the sense in which I use it here is somewhat different.Ferguson argues that developmentproduces anti-politics, a operations-namely the bureaucratizadepoliticizationthatmasksits own very instrumental tion and expansionof statepower-by turningpovertyinto a technicalproblemin Lesotho. The "politics"that Fergusonmarks as being "depoliticized"is renderedself-evidently as the workingsof political parties.In this way, what constitutes"politics"is naturalized.My
526 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY analysis uses the language of "politics"and "anti-politics"to examine a self-consciously its limits and possibilities. producedpolitical field within Keralaso as to understand 9. Kaviraj(1997) discusses whathe calls the "plebianization of the public"in Calcutta. He tracksthe changingvalences of publicspace in the city, markingthe ways in whichparks, for example, shift from being understoodas middle-class spaces to plebian ones. 10. Satyagraha,meaning nonviolent struggle, was a key weapon in the evolving language and practiceof Gandhianforms of protest.Jathas, bandhs,hartals, and satyagrahas became the languageof nationalistpolitics, with the VaikomSatyagraha being an important early example. 11. The uniqueness of unapproachability within the caste structureof the region has often been noted. See Dumont 1970. 12. This form of protest, with its regimentedmarching, slogans (usually, "Inquilab and the raised, clenched fist, enteredthe representational Zindabad") repertoirein the narrativeof Kerala'smodernityandin culturalproductionssuch as plays, songs, andposters,all of which werecrucialto the historyof politics andsocial transformation. Especiallyin plays, the breakwith the feudal, caste-riddenpast and the entry into revolutionaryconsciousness was usually represented by a lower-castePulayanor Perumacaste memberstandingbefore an upper-casteNayar or Nambudiribrahminlandlord, 10, 20, or 30 paces away, one hand over his mouth,the otheracrosshis chest, in a pose of servility and supplication.Thatsame man then proceeds to marchright up to a landlord'shouse, shouting slogans, fist clenched in the air (Zarrilli1996:xii). 13. High rates of male and female literacy,a widespreadsystem of school education, at every level of education,andone of the least expensive high ratesof female participation systems of higher education in India are key to the "KeralaModel of Development."The model, however, is contradictory.The success of primaryand secondary education has greatly increaseda demandfor higher educationduringthe last 25 years that the state has not been successful in meeting. Further, and this is a contradictionwithin the more general "KeralaModel,"the labormarketof the state has not been able to absorbthe vast numbers of graduatesof this system. Chronicand high unemploymentof the educatedis a persistent and centralfeatureof the Keralaeconomy (Mathew 1997). 14. In this article,I move easily betweenyouthandstudent,although,of course,thereis no necessarylink between the two. WithinKerala,therearealso political organizationssuch as the DemocraticYouthFederationof India (DYFI) thatprimarilycatersto young men in theirtwenties and early thirtiesoutside the educationalsystem. However,given the educational historyof Kerala,the relationshipbetween "youth"and "student" is clear andstrong. 15. For a discussion of the semiotics of khadi, see Cohn (1996) and Tarlo(1996). 16. "Youth"as a category of political and social agency is very much underwritten or revolutionizingyoung by a family romance,crucially tied to the idea of a revolutionary man. As Zarrilli(1995) and othershave argued,plays were centralto the spreadof the left movementin Kerala,perhapsthe most importantone being YouMade Me a Communist by TooppilBhaasi.Firststagedin 1952 by the KeralaPeople's ArtsClub,which was foundedby a groupof studentactivists intenton raisingpopularawarenessof sociopolitical issues such as landreformand caste inequality,the play has been stagedmorethan2,000 times since and continues to be staged today. Duringthe 1950s, it is estimatedthat it was regularlystaged four times a day. Although actors play the characterstoday, in the 1950s it was activists, many of them students,who played the variousroles. In 1957, when the firstfreely elected communistgovernment came to powerin Kerala,manyattributed the victory of thatelection to this play.Like manyplays of its kind, this one involveda transformation of consciousness on the partof a character. The centralcharacter in this play is ParamuPillai who is "madea He is an older man of a declining dominantNayarfamily whose son Gopalan Communist."
PROTESTING POLITICS 527 is alreadya communist.Variousstrugglesover land and the dishonoringof an untouchable girl form the plot of the long play. Another aspect of the play is the romance between Gopalan,the dedicatedcommunist,and Sumam,the daughterof the capitalistlandlordwho comes to see the evils of capitalismwhile falling in love. By the end, ParamuPillai asks to join the party.The play ends with him raising the red flag as the slogan-shoutingyouth march against anotherinjustice. The lower-caste female characteris understoodthrough her sexuality, which the communistyouths protect from dishonorby a capitalist landlord. The upper-castedaughterof the capitalistlandlordescapes her oppression(her fathertries to marryher off) throughromancewith the young communist.And the elderly upper-caste man is made to see the errorof his ways by the dedicated work of the communist youth. In all cases, the youthful agency at work here is a revolutionaryor revolutionizingyoung man. Often, this young man is an upper-castemale---eithera decadentyoung man who gets politicized, as in anotherof Bhaasi's plays entitled Prodigal Son, or an alreadypoliticized upper-casteyouth showing his elders the errorof their feudal ways. If the young man is not upper caste, the narrativepresents a lower-caste young man who moves from being servile and humbleto being aggressive,disciplined, and militant.The family romancethat structuresthis narration of the emergenceof a political public demonstratesboth a politics of youth and the youthfulnessof politics. 17. This is not to say that civic conceptions of the public did not exist during the colonial period and duringand within the nationalistmovement. Quite to the contrary,the origins of these conceptions are to be found in colonial and nationalistconceptions of civil society. I am looking at the articulationof this historically constituted conception with newer,circulatingdiscourses of consumptionwithin neoliberalregimes. 18. I do not want to imply here that all mobilizations of consumer discourses erase "politics."Consumeridentities have been mobilized to insert a language of politics into conceptions of citizenship. In the United States, the antisweatshopmovement mobilizes consumer identities in antiglobalizationpolitics. In India, movements against the raising of prices of essential goods have also mobilized consumer identities. Most importantly, the Swadeshi Movement-the economic boycott of foreign goods in favor of domestically producedgoods-politicized the consumptionof commodities in the name of anticolonial nationalistpolitics in India.For a discussion of the changed ideological meanings given to consumptionin the Swadeshi and contemporary period, see Deshpande(1993). Duringthe 1990s in Kerala,consumerforumsand magazines emergedto help consumersnavigate the increasinginflux of goods in the marketplace.Interestingly,they quickly became spaces to seek solutions to the difficulties of dealing with state services, such as getting telephone service and paying an electricitybill. Increasingly,these organizationsbegan to take on the movementdescribedabove, throughjoining with civic state, for example in the anti-bandh organizations. universalistlanguage of citizenship, politics, democracy,and 19. The gender-neutral, wheneverthe universalis equatedwith the masculine. rightsbelies its masculinistcharacter For a discussion of the ambiguousdeploymentof rightsdiscoursewithinthe Keralacontext, see Arunima 1995, 2003. 20. As I have indicated,the political cultureof the stateis dominatedby the opposition between the center-rightCongresspartyand left parties,the most dominantone being the CPI-(M). The most importantstudent parties are the SFI, the student wing of the CPI(M); KSU, the studentwing of the Congress Party;and the increasinglyprominentAkhil BharatiyaVidyarthiParishad(ABVP), a separatestudentpartywith strongties to the Hindu fundamentalistand nationalistparty,the BharatiyaJanataParty(BJP). 21. The literatureon masculinity has been helpful in shifting the study of gender genderrelations. beyond thatof women and femininityto processes of genderthatstructure
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Within the South Asian context, the work of Jeganathan(1997, 2000) and Dareshwarand Niranjana(1996) focus on nonelite forms and practicesof masculinitythatunderwritethe political. For a discussion of differentstyles of masculinityin the context of migrationand the cash economy in Kerala,see Osella and Osella 2000a. 22. Oudhukam is the termI gloss as demure,literallymeaning"closed"or "contained." Elsewhere, I situate a discussion of this type of embodied femininity within the cultural history of the emergence of the "New Indian Woman,"an embodimentof a modem yet Indianfemininity:virtuous,chaste, and of uppercaste and class. (Alwis 1998; Chatterjee 1990; Lukose n.d.; Sangariand Vaid 1989). 23. In 2003, the KeralaHigh Court,in the case of Sojan Francis vs. M. G. University, ruled against a 19-year-oldcollege studentwho was barredby his principalfrom taking a record.The college, in central college exam because he did not have the requisiteattendance Kerala,was unusualbecausethe principalhadbannedstrikes,meetings, anddemonstrations within campus walls unless those meetings were recognized by the college administration The studenthad arguedthatthis ban violated his constitutionalrights and that as "official." he was targetedby the principalbecauseof his participation in the SFI. Morethanupholding the decision of the principal,the ruling was widely discussed for its lengthy deliberation of the constitutionalityof barringpolitics from college campuses. In addition to citing other courtjudgmentsthat discussed the obstructionto learningand properfunctioning of institutionsby the presenceof politics, the courtlikened studentsto governmentemployees who are bannedfrom political activism in theirplaces of work (Hindu2003b). 24. Osella and Osella (2000a) discuss this style of masculinity,among others. 25. For an assessment of the "crisis in higher education"and the role of politics in institutionsof higher educationin India, see Beteille 1995. 26. Privatecolleges have grown to include those of the NayarService Society (NSS), The Sree NarayanaTrust(of the Sree NarayanaDharmaParipalana[SNDP] Yogam), and the Muslim EducationalSociety, among others. Along with this private sector of higher educationalinstitutions,there are four public universities to which most privatecolleges are affiliated. 27. This is the largestcaste in Kerala.Fora recentdiscussion of the experienceof social mobility of this formerlyuntouchablecaste, see Osella and Osella 2000b. For a discussion of the politics of the anticastemovement,see Isaac and Tharakan1985. 28. These constituencies include caste organizations,the most importantones being the Nayar Service Society (NSS), representingthe dominant Nayar caste, and the Sree NarayanaTrust(of the SNDP Yogam),representingthe formerlyuntouchableIzhaya caste. Otherimportantconstituenciesinclude religious organizationsrepresentingvarious Christiandenominationsand the Muslim EducationalSociety, among others. 29. Althoughthe statehas allowedthe numberof formaleducationalinstitutionsto exin the last 40 years,it has clearlynot been enough.Privateregistrants make panddramatically 40 of as much as the total student in enrollment (Mathew 1991). up percent regularcolleges 30. The lack of economic developmentwithin Keralacoupled with high rates of emigration, escalating in the 1970s to the Persian Gulf, has turnedKeralainto a remittance respects.This trafficof people andmoney, in additionto intersecting economy in important global flows of goods and images, has produceda situation in which the state is heavily dependenton the global economy.
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ABSTRACT Globalizationis often indexed by the rise of a consumerist ethos and the expansionof the marketeconomyat the expenseofstate-centric formulations of politics and citizenship. This article explores the politics and practices of gendereddemocraticcitizenship in an educational setting when that setting is newly reconfiguredas a commodityunder neoliberal privatizationefforts.This entails an attentionto discourses of consumption as they intersectpostcolonial cultural-ideologicalpoliticalfields. Focusing on the contemporarytrajectoryamong politicized male college students of a historically importantmasculinist "politicalpublic" in Kerala, India, the This enables article tracksan explicit discourse of "politics" (rashtriyam). an explorationof a struggle over the meaning of democraticcitizenshipthat opposes a political public rooted in a traditionof anticolonial struggle and postcolonial nationalistpolitics to that of a "civicpublic," rooted in ideas about thefreedom to consume throughthe logic of privatization. [politics,
consumption, education, neoliberalism, India]

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Empty Citizenship: Protesting Politics in the Era of Globalization Author(s): Ritty Lukose Source: Cultural Anthropology, Vol.

Empty Citizenship: Protesting Politics in the Era of Globalization

? 2005 by the AmericanAnthropologicalAssociation. All rightsreserved.Please direct all requestsfor permission

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