Civic Engagement and Differentiated Citizenship: Politics of Service Provision in the slums of Calcutta, India

Majumdar, Shruti

Full Metadata

Overview

Year:: 2012
Contributor:: Majumdar, Shruti (creator); Heller, Patrick (Director); , (Director); Baiocchi, Gianpaolo (Reader); Chorev, Nitsan (Reader); Varshney, Ashutosh (Reader); Suchman, Mark (Reader); Brown University. Sociology (sponsor)
Genre:: theses
Subject:: Everyday democracy; Urban Poverty; Development; Citizenship; Economic development
Extent:: ix, 196 p.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0Q81BCS

Files

Description

Abstract:: The main goal of this dissertation is to explore differentiated citizenships within the urban poor in India. This research is based on the assumption that in order to understand the dynamics of any democracy, both in its inception as well as in its subsequent unfolding, we must first understand and disaggregate the nature of engagement between the state and the poor, and the various forms its takes. Based on a year of fieldwork in four different slums and squatters in Calcutta, I explore how residents make claims on the state, particularly when it comes to accessing two of the most politically contested and scarce resources in the city i.e. water and land. Drawing from the ethnography, I highlight four different modes of engagement – clientelism, active citizenry, brokerage and disengagement. Alongside establishing these varying modes of engagement within the urban poor, I also attempt to explain this variation by exploring the conditions that give rise to certain forms of engagement versus certain others. I argue that three different rights and practices are significant in our understanding of the modes of engagement – associational autonomy, the right to vote and property rights. There is fair amount of scholarly agreement on their significance, but their role in facilitating or inhibiting access to state has rarely been understood, or even carefully historicized. By taking a historical perspective on claim-making, I delineate how the three variables matter – in particular with regard to their sequencing vis-à-vis each other, as well as to the specific conditions under which all of these rights are guaranteed.
Notes:: Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2012)

Content

Access Conditions

Rights: In Copyright
Restrictions on Use: Collection is open for research.

Citation

Majumdar, Shruti, "Civic Engagement and Differentiated Citizenship: Politics of Service Provision in the slums of Calcutta, India" (2012). Sociology Theses and Dissertations. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0Q81BCS

Relations

Collection:

Sociology Theses and Dissertations

Theses and Dissertations for the Sociology department.
...