Alf Nilsen | University of Pretoria (original) (raw)

Books by Alf Nilsen

Pluto Press, 2019

With contributions from Sandipto Dasgupta, Anupama Rao, Sunil Puroshotham, Ajay Skaria, Siddharth... more With contributions from Sandipto Dasgupta, Anupama Rao, Sunil Puroshotham, Ajay Skaria, Siddharth Varadarajan, Nandini Sundar, Dolly Kikon, Subir Sinha, Ajantha Subramanian, Kathinka Froystad, Manali Desai, Kavita Krishnan, Raka Ray, Srila Roy, and an introduction by Alf Gunvald Nilsen, Kenneth Bo Nielsen, and Anand Vaidya.

More than 70 years after its founding, with Narendra Modi's authoritarian Hindu nationalists in government, is the dream of Indian democracy still alive and well?

India's pluralism has always posed a formidable challenge to its democracy, with many believing that a clash of identities based on region, language, caste, religion, ethnicity and tribe would bring about its demise. With the meteoric rise to power of the Bharatiya Janata Party, its solidity is once again called into question: is Modi's Hindu majoritarianism an anti-democratic attempt to transform India into a monolithic Hindu nation from which minorities and dissidents are forcibly excluded?

With examinations of the way that class and caste power shaped the making of India's postcolonial democracy, the role of feminism, the media, and the public sphere in sustaining and challenging democracy, this book interrogates the contradictions at the heart of the Indian democratic project, examining its origins, trajectories and contestations.

In Adivasis and the State, Alf Gunvald Nilsen presents a major study of how subalternity is both ... more In Adivasis and the State, Alf Gunvald Nilsen presents a major study of how subalternity is both constituted and contested through state–society relations in the Bhil heartland of western India. The book unravels the historical processes that subordinated Bhil Adivasi communities to the everyday tyranny of the state and investigates how social movements have mobilised to reclaim citizenship. In doing so, the book also reveals how collective action from below transform the meanings of governmental categories, legal frameworks, and universalising vocabularies of democracy. At the core of the book lies a concern with understanding the dialectics of power and resistance that give form and direction to the political economy of democracy and development in contemporary India. Towards this end, Adivasis and the State contributes a sustained and nuanced Gramscian analysis of hegemony in order to interrogate the possibilities and limits of subaltern political engagement with state structures.

- A fine-grained and engaged historical ethnography of the making of subalternity and citizenship in Adivasi communities in rural India
- Develops and deploys an innovative Gramscian approach to the study of how subalternity is constituted and contested in state–society relations
- The book is written in an engaging style that will be accessible to non-specialist readers and a wide readership beyond the disciplinary confines of South Asia studies

How is subalternity constituted and contested in Indian society? This is the question at the cent... more How is subalternity constituted and contested in Indian society? This is the question at the centre of this collection of essays, which draws on Antonio Gramsci’s work to investigate the dynamics of hegemony, subalternity and resistance in India, both past and present. Engaging in a critical dialogue with the Subaltern Studies project, the first part of Politics From Below develops a historical-sociological approach to the study of hegemonic processes and subaltern politics. At the heart of this perspective is a concern with deciphering the enablements and constraints that subaltern groups confront as they mobilize in and through the social condensations of hegemony – and in particular in and through regnant state-society relations. In the second part of the book, this perspective is put to work in developing analyses of social movements in rural India. Drawing on the author’s extensive fieldwork, Politics From Below presents detailed ethnographic studies of the movement against dam building in the Narmada Valley and Adivasi mobilization to democratize the local state in western India. The book will be relevant to students and scholars with an interest in social movements and the political economy of development and democracy in India, as well as to activists and engaged members of the public more generally.

The introductory chapter of the recently published "Social Movements and the State in India: Deep... more The introductory chapter of the recently published "Social Movements and the State in India: Deepening Democracy" (Palgrave, 2016).

We live in the twilight of neoliberalism: the ruling classes can no longer rule as before, and or... more We live in the twilight of neoliberalism: the ruling classes can no longer rule as before, and ordinary people are no longer willing to be ruled in the old way. Pursued by global elites since the 1970s, neoliberalism is defined by dispossession and ever-increasing inequality. The refusal to continue to be ruled like this - "ya basta!" - appears in an arc of resistance stretching from rural India to the cities of the global North. From this movement of movements, new visions are emerging of a future beyond neoliberalism. 'We Make Our Own History’ responds to this crisis. The first systematic Marxist analysis of social movements, this book reclaims Marxism as a theory born from activist experience and practice. It shows how movements can develop from local conflicts to global struggles; how neoliberalism operates as a social movement from above, and how popular struggles can create new worlds from below.

Three chapters available under "Papers", below. ""Marxism and Social Movements is the first su... more Three chapters available under "Papers", below.

""Marxism and Social Movements is the first sustained engagement between social movement theory and Marxist approaches to collective action. The chapters collected here, by leading figures in both fields, discuss the potential for a Marxist theory of social movements; explore the developmental processes and political tensions within movements; set the question in a long historical perspective; and analyse contemporary movements against neo-liberalism and austerity.

Exploring struggles on six continents over 150 years, this collection shows the power of Marxist analysis in relation not only to class politics, labour movements and revolutions but also anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles, community activism and environmental justice, indigenous struggles and anti-austerity protest. It sets a new agenda both for Marxist theory and for movement research."

Download flyer for 25% discount offer."

New Subaltern Politics presents a critical dialogue between the conceptual and analytical legacie... more New Subaltern Politics presents a critical dialogue between the conceptual and analytical legacies of Subaltern Studies and the evolving forms of hegemony and resistance in contemporary India. From the struggles of the urban poor in Gujarat to
the activism of sexual subalterns in eastern India and the mobilization of artisanal fishing communities in Tamil Nadu, the
essays in this volume cover a diverse range of ongoing struggles against dispossession, disenfranchisement, and stigma that are
unfolding in neoliberal India.

The volume analyses the forms of collective agency that subaltern groups develop to negotiate with the workings of power
from above. Foregrounding the imaginative, affective, and secular dimensions of subaltern agency, New Subaltern Politics
interrogates the current relevance of Gramscian concepts of hegemony, subalternity, and the integral state in the contemporary Indian context. Bringing together path-breaking methodological and conceptual interventions in the study
of subaltern politics, this volume will be invaluable to all those engaged—as academics or as activists--in the struggle
against unjust societies and unequal developmental trajectories.

We live in the twilight of neoliberalism: the ruling classes can no longer rule as before, and or... more We live in the twilight of neoliberalism: the ruling classes can no longer rule as before, and ordinary people are no longer willing to be ruled in the old way. Pursued by global elites since the 1970s, neoliberalism is defined by dispossession and ever-increasing inequality. The refusal to continue to be ruled like this - "ya basta!" - appears in an arc of resistance stretching from rural India to the cities of the global North. From this network of movements, new visions are emerging of a future beyond neoliberalism. We Make Our Own History responds to these visions by reclaiming Marxism as a theory born from activist experience and practice. This book marks a break both with established social movement theory, and with those forms of Marxism which treat the practice of social movement organising as an unproblematic process. It shows how movements can develop from local conflicts to global struggles; how neoliberalism operates as a social movement from above, and how popular struggles can create new worlds from below.

Marxism and Social Movements is the first sustained engagement between social movement theory and... more Marxism and Social Movements is the first sustained engagement between social movement theory and Marxist approaches to collective action. The chapters collected here, by leading figures in both fields, discuss the potential for a Marxist theory of social movements; explore the developmental processes and political tensions within movements; set the question in a long historical perspective; and analyse contemporary movements against neo-liberalism and austerity.

The popular classes of the global South are up in arms. From Soweto to Buenos Aires to Bhopal, so... more The popular classes of the global South are up in arms. From Soweto to Buenos Aires to Bhopal, social movements are making demands for social justice and human dignity against the multiple processes of dispossession that are the hallmark of neoliberalism. Through practices of resistance, these movements transform the direction and meaning of postcolonial development. Popular struggles in the global South suggest the need for the development of new and politically enabling categories of analysis as well as new ways of understanding contemporary social movements in the global South. This book brings together theoretically informed and empirically grounded contributions that interrogate the ways in which social movements in Africa, South Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East politicize development in an age of neoliberal hegemony.

This book deals with the controversies on developmental aspects of large dams, with a particular ... more This book deals with the controversies on developmental aspects of large dams, with a particular focus on the Narmada Valley projects in India. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and research, the author draws on Marxist theory to craft a detailed analysis of how local demands for resettlement and rehabilitation were transformed into a radical anti-dam campaign linked to national and transnational movement networks.

The book explains the Narmada conflict and addresses how the building of the anti-dam campaign was animated by processes of collective learning, how activists extended the spatial scope of their struggle by building networks of solidarity with transnational advocacy groups, and how it is embedded in and shaped by a wider field of force of capitalist development at national and transnational scales. The analysis emphasizes how the Narmada dam project is related to national and global processes of capitalist development, and relates the Narmada Valley movement to contemporary popular struggles against dispossession in India and beyond.

Conclusions drawn from the resistance to the Narmada dams can be applied to social movements in other parts of the Global South, where people are struggling against dispossession in a context of neoliberal restructuring. As such, this book will have relevance for people with an interest in South Asian studies, Indian politics and Development Studies.

Papers by Alf Nilsen

Oxford University Press eBooks, Jul 9, 2015

If searched for a book New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualizing Hegemony and Resistance in Conte... more If searched for a book New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualizing Hegemony and Resistance in Contemporary India in pdf form, then you've come to correct website. We furnish the full version of this book in PDF, ePub, doc, txt, DjVu formats. You may reading New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualizing Hegemony and Resistance in Contemporary India online either download. Besides, on our site you can read the manuals and another artistic eBooks online, or load them. We will to invite your regard that our website not store the book itself, but we provide ref to website whereat you can download or read online. So if have necessity to download New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualizing Hegemony and Resistance in Contemporary India pdf, in that case you come on to the right website. We own New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualizing Hegemony and Resistance in Contemporary India PDF, ePub, txt, doc, DjVu forms. We will be glad if you will be back us more.

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and The Middle East, May 1, 2022

With the rise of Hindu nationalist statecraft under the Modi regime, India finds itself at a peri... more With the rise of Hindu nationalist statecraft under the Modi regime, India finds itself at a perilous conjuncture that compels a critical rethinking of the political economy of the world's largest democracy. In this article, we propose a conceptual framework for doing so, centered on a Gramscian rethinking of the relationship among law, social movements, and state formation in the longue durée of Indian democracy. Working across three hegemonic transitions in Indian democracy, we argue that social movements and the state have constituted each other across this longue durée, and that this co-constitution has been both mediated by and inscribed in law. Crucially, we focus on the making and unmaking of compromise equilibriums between dominant and subaltern social forces in state-society relations in and through law and legal formations from the transition to independence, via the unravelling of the Nehruvian state, to the present moment of neoliberalization and authoritarian populism. The article is organized around three analytical concerns—law and hegemony, state formation as a hegemonic process, and the dialectic of power and resistance in passive revolution. In the conclusion, we bring our reflections to bear on the current conjuncture in Indian democracy.

The Oxford Handbook of Political Participation

This chapter discusses the contributions of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and later Marxists to un... more This chapter discusses the contributions of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and later Marxists to understanding political participation. It argues that Marxism is fundamentally historical, so that rather than assuming a fixed and general institutional situation across states and periods, the Marxist contribution can best be expressed as empirical questions about popular participation in specific contexts. The expectation is one of popular attempts to assert participation in decision-making, with institutional forms shaped by the outcome of such struggles between social movements from below and the agency of the powerful. This argument is illustrated with examples from the struggle for democracy in Europe since the nineteenth century, the changing nature of political participation in postcolonial India, “the world’s largest democracy,” and popular politics in the age of austerity.

Decolonize this? After three long years as a Cambridge English student, the thing that is most me... more Decolonize this? After three long years as a Cambridge English student, the thing that is most memorable about my degree and the thing that has caused me the most frustration is just how unbearably white the curriculum is. Myself and countless others have written at length about the ways in which a white curriculum is nothing more than the maintenance of structural and epistemological power. Decolonising the curriculum is a process – a process that requires thought and consideration. It means rethinking what we learn and how we learn it; critically analysing whose voices are given priority in our education and for what reason. It is not an easy process and why should it be? So began an open letter, written by Cambridge student Lola Olufemi, which reflected on what it would entail to move beyond scholarly and literary canons defined by Eurocentric frames. Her critique echoes an ongoing churning that has animated campus activism across the North-South axis for several years now

The Sociological Review, Nov 18, 2016

Something remarkable has happened in the Anglophone countries where neoliberalism first came to p... more Something remarkable has happened in the Anglophone countries where neoliberalism first came to power. After over two decades of popular resistance to trade deals, from the Zapatistas' 1994 rebellion against NAFTA and the 1999 Seattle WTO summit protest, the US has elected a candidate openly opposed to such deals, and TTIP may not survive the experience. Meanwhile, the UK-where conventional wisdom has had it that state economic policy always takes its lead from the City of London-now has a government attempting to set its course for "hard Brexit". Of course neoliberalism is not yet over, and the power of existing money will no doubt find ways to make itself heard in the Trump administration as well as in Brexit-land. But the social and electoral coalitions which Thatcher and Reagan stitched together to push through a monetarist revolution are no longer delivering what for the past third of a century has seemed an unstoppable neoliberal juggernaut, experimented in the global South and later expanded across Europe. As recently as 2014, when we wrote We Make Our Own History: Marxism and Social Movements in the Twilight of Neoliberalism, the subtitle was one of the main points where activists and scholars alike disagreed with us, arguing that neoliberalism was here to stay. We had written "In our view, whether neoliberalism is ending is perhaps not the main question we should now be asking. Such hegemonic projects have relatively short shelf-lives, induced by their declining ability to meet the interests of the key members of the alliances which underpin them. The real question is more one of how much damage neoliberalism will do in its prolonged death agonies; and, even more importantly, what (or more sociologically, who) will replace it and how." Our argument has three steps. Firstly, capitalist accumulation strategies, and the hegemonic projects which are needed to keep them in power, have historically come and gone. The high point of organised modernity-expressed as postwar Keynesianism in the west, state socialism in the east and national-developmentalism in the South-lasted perhaps three decades; fascism outside Iberia lasted at most two. The analysis can be extended back to the sixteenth century. On historical grounds alone, there is no good reason to project neoliberalism indefinitely into the future. Secondly, already in 2014 the power and effectiveness of neoliberalism as a social project was visibly on the wane. We noted the spread and alliance of popular movements against neoliberalism; the increasing constraints on the US' geopolitical reach; neoliberalism's declining ability to deliver the goods to its core supporters and its inability to articulate a longer-term strategy in the crisis; and its increasing delegitimation-marked not least by the spread of the word itself as a term in critical discourses.

Conflictividad Social y Política en el capitalismo contemporáneo. Antagonismos y resistencias (I)... more Conflictividad Social y Política en el capitalismo contemporáneo. Antagonismos y resistencias (I) número 35 (primer semestre 2017)-number 35 (first semester 2017) Conflictividad social: categorías, concepciones y debate Revista THEOMAI / THEOMAI Journal Estudios críticos sobre Sociedad y Desarrollo / Critical Studies about Society and Development

Routledge Handbook of Autocratization in South Asia, 2021

Political scientists have rightly considered the government of the right-wing Hindu nationalist B... more Political scientists have rightly considered the government of the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which first came to power in the 2014 general election and then consolidated its position in the subsequent general election in 2019, as constituting a watershed in the political life of the Indian republic. Milan Vaishnav and Jamie Hintson (2019) argue that the 2019 elections ushered in India's fourth dominant party system, centred on the BJP and its politics. Christophe Jaffrelot and Gilles Verniers (2020: 143) go further, and argue that the 2019 elections brought about a new political system, as Modi 2.0 has "radically changed gears and used the legislative and executive route to transform India into a de jure ethnic democracy" (see also Nilsen, Nielsen and Vaidya 2022). "Indeed", Achin Vanaik (2017: 29) writes, "the scale of BJP hegemony today can bear comparison to that of the Indian National Congress party in the first decades after Independence, under Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter, Indira Gandhi." But how do we explain the politics of this new hegemonic order in India? In this chapter, we focus on how Modi's authoritarian populism has come, increasingly, to mobilize the law in order to align the nation with the core tenets of Hindu nationalism. We see Modi's authoritarian populism as a form of conservative politics that constructs a contradiction between common people and elites, and then uses this contradiction to justify the imposition of repressive measures by the state (Hall 1988). We also see it, crucially, as a populism that draws a line between "true Indians" and their "anti-national" enemies, and subjects the latter to coercion in order, supposedly, to protect the former (Müller 2016). In line with the core tenets of Hindu nationalism, this line is defined in large part by religion-the ominous Other that authoritarian populism depends on in order to frame a unitary conception of the nation and national culture is, in Modi's India, the Muslim (see Nilsen 2021a, 2021b). In this chapter, we analyze how this religiously defined dividing line is being codified into law in order to align the nation with the core tenets of Hindu nationalism. We refer to this particular enactment of the BJP's political agenda as Hindu nationalist statecraft-that is, as a strategy centred on legally locking in claims that India is and should be a Hindu rashtra in ways that make it exceedingly difficult to reverse such claims in the future (see Nilsen 2020). In the hegemonic project of the BJP and the wider Hindu nationalist movement, we argue, this strategy allows religious majoritarianism to dictate law-making and override the precepts of secular constitutional morality, as well as the general democratic principle of protecting minority rights. Always-already conjoined with majoritarian

In this article we explore the relationship between Marxist theory and social movements, in parti... more In this article we explore the relationship between Marxist theory and social movements, in particular how this relationship works in the specific historical period that we call the twilight of neoliberalism.

“Social movement studies”, as an academic entity with (some) power, resources and legitimacy, now... more “Social movement studies”, as an academic entity with (some) power, resources and legitimacy, now has its institutional centre of gravity in the US, Canada and western Europe, and the same is true for pretty much all the thinkers who are routinely cited in general “social movements” textbooks. Similarly, some of the most “powerful” (insofar as the term has any meaning) theories used within social movements also have roots in these societies and are shaped by their specific historical experiences. These specificities, however, are often not recognised or discussed, including in those contexts elsewhere in the world where academics or activists are importing such theories as ways of thinking about local (and global) realities

Pluto Press, 2019

More than 70 years after its founding, with Narendra Modi's authoritarian Hindu nationalists in government, is the dream of Indian democracy still alive and well?

Three chapters available under "Papers", below. ""Marxism and Social Movements is the first su... more Three chapters available under "Papers", below.

Download flyer for 25% discount offer."

We live in the twilight of neoliberalism: the ruling classes can no longer rule as before, and or... more We live in the twilight of neoliberalism: the ruling classes can no longer rule as before, and ordinary people are no longer willing to be ruled in the old way. Pursued by global elites since the 1970s, neoliberalism is defined by dispossession and ever-increasing inequality. The refusal to continue to be ruled like this - "ya basta!" - appears in an arc of resistance stretching from rural India to the cities of the global North. From this network of movements, new visions are emerging of a future beyond neoliberalism. We Make Our Own History responds to these visions by reclaiming Marxism as a theory born from activist experience and practice. This book marks a break both with established social movement theory, and with those forms of Marxism which treat the practice of social movement organising as an unproblematic process. It shows how movements can develop from local conflicts to global struggles; how neoliberalism operates as a social movement from above, and how popular struggles can create new worlds from below.

Oxford University Press eBooks, Jul 9, 2015

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and The Middle East, May 1, 2022

The Oxford Handbook of Political Participation

The Sociological Review, Nov 18, 2016

Routledge Handbook of Autocratization in South Asia, 2021

Religions, 2021

What role does the Islamophobic theory of “love jihad” play in the politics of Hindu nationalist ... more What role does the Islamophobic theory of “love jihad” play in the politics of Hindu nationalist statecraft—the legal codification of Hindu nationalist ideology—in India today? In this article, we address this question through a critical analysis of how the idea of “love jihad” relate to both (a) a conservative politics of governing gender and intimacy in which women are constituted as subjects of protection and (b) an authoritarian populism grounded in a foundational opposition between true Indians and their anti-national enemies within. The article begins by exploring how “love jihad” has transformed from an idea that was used to legitimize extra-legal violence by Hindu nationalist vigilantes to the status of law, with a particular focus on the BJP-ruled state of Uttar Pradesh. We then situate the “love jihad” laws in relation to a regime of gender governance that constitutes women as subjects of protection - and specifically protection by state and nation—and discuss how this res...

Interface: a journal for and about social movements, 2017

After three long years as a Cambridge English student, the thing that is most memorable about my ... more After three long years as a Cambridge English student, the thing that is most memorable about my degree and the thing that has caused me the most frustration is just how unbearably white the curriculum is. Myself and countless others have written at length about the ways in which a white curriculum is nothing more than the maintenance of structural and epistemological power. Decolonising the curriculum is a process – a process that requires thought and consideration. It means rethinking what we learn and how we learn it; critically analysing whose voices are given priority in our education and for what reason. It is not an easy process and why should it be?

International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 2016

Much of the work that has gone into the making of this special issue has taken place in the conte... more Much of the work that has gone into the making of this special issue has taken place in the context of South Africa, where the nation's universities have been sites of turmoil and protest for more than a year now. The origins of the protests that culminated in the FeesMustFall movement that swept across many of the country's campuses can be traced to a campaign that erupted at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in March 2015. Led by a coalition of staff and students, the campaign sets out to challenge what it referred to as 'the reality of institutional racism at the University of Cape Town' (http://rhodesmustfall.co.za/). The most immediate symbolic demand made by the campaign was for the statue of Cecil John Rhodes that had adorned the university grounds since 1934 to be removed-hence the campaign's name, RhodesMustFall (RMF). The demand was inaugurated by a visceral act of protest, as student leader Chumani Maxwele threw human faeces at the statue. The immediate response from UCT was to have Maxwele arrested, but university management was soon compelled to enter into negotiations with a rapidly growing movement. Negotiations were followed by a student occupation of a central administrative building at UCT-renamed by the activists as Azania House to create a space for 'free alternative versions of blackness otherwise denied by UCT' (Sebambo 2015: 2)-and by the end of the month, the UCT senate voted in favour of dismantling the statue. As Ruchi Chaturvedi (2015)-a UCT-based sociologist and one of the contributors to this volume-notes the RMF movement posed a comprehensive challenge to 'the hurtful milieu they live and study inreplete not just with colonial era statues and symbols but also with pedagogical and conversational modes that regard black students as deficient, necessarily

Many people within the movement of movements, while outraged at the global state of affairs, and ... more Many people within the movement of movements, while outraged at the global state of affairs, and determined to bring about large-scale systemic change, are nevertheless reluctant to use the language of winning-that is, to consider what it means to bring about that change against determined and powerful opposition. In part this reflects a fear that to think strategically is to act like "the system", and is bound to lead to cynical instrumentalism and the attempt to replace one elite-led system with another. We start by outlining what is at stake and asking what "winning" means: what actually happens when a social movement project from below achieves its goal of constructing "another world"? We explore the step-by-step processes through which the movement of movements is currently developing the "insurgent architecture" involved in this construction, and noting how this presents a challenge for the powers that be. We then turn to the massive opposition that the movement has been meeting from abovefrom multinational institutions, states and corporations. We explore the nature of these responses and argue that while they have failed to defeat the movement, they have brought about something of a temporary stalemate. We ask how the movement can get beyond this stalemate, not by adopting the logic and methods of its opponents, but by taking qualitative steps forward in its own development, according to its own logic. The paper finishes with some brief discussion of the most important practical steps in constructing another world, and the nature of the moments of confrontation that lie ahead. This is a working draft, for whose failings Laurence takes full responsibility. Please do not quote too loudly!

Sociology Compass, 2007

This article explores the state of research on the 'movement of movements' against neoliberal glo... more This article explores the state of research on the 'movement of movements' against neoliberal globalisation. Starting from a general consideration of the significance of the movement and the difficulties inherent in studying it, it discusses the literature on the movement from within social movement studies, and argues that the response from social movement researchers falls short of what could be expected in terms of adequacy to the movement and its own knowledge production. It explores some effects of this failure and locates the reasons for it in the unacknowledged relationship between social movements theorising and activist theorising. The article then discusses the possible contributions that can be made by Marxist and other engaged academic writers, as well as the significance of the extensive theoretical literature generated by activists within the movement. It concludes by stating the importance of dialogue between activist and academic theorising and research in attempting to understand the movement.

Forum for Development Studies, 2018

After seven decades as an independent democratic nation, India's social landscape remains marred ... more After seven decades as an independent democratic nation, India's social landscape remains marred by persistent contradictions and inequalities. As the country moves from celebrating 70 years of independence towards its seventeenth general election in 2019, this article sets out to survey what democracy has done to India over the past 70 years. How was Indian democracy established and how has it evolved? Why do people vote, and who do they vote for? How does Indian democracy function beyond elections, and to what extent has democracy delivered in terms of social development and the economic and political integration of marginalised groups? These are the key questions that we address in this article. Drawing on Heller's distinction between the formal, effective and substantive dimensions of democracy, we adopt an understanding of the dynamics of Indian democracy that extends well beyond formal institutions and elections. While we acknowledge that Indian democracy in the formal sense is plural, vibrant, and resilient, we also argue that the transition from a vibrant formal democracy to one that is both effective and substantive is impeded by contradictions and inequalities that are both historical and contemporary in nature. We also reflect on the current potential of popular mobilisations from below for forging mutually reinforcing connections between the formal, effective, and substantive dimensions of democracy, in a context in which an increasingly authoritarian Hindu nationalism continues to gain ground. On 25 November 1949, the Dalit leader B.R. Ambedkar addressed the Constituent Assembly for the last time. Ambedkar had chaired the committee for almost three years, and now a new Constitution would come into effect in late January the next year. Although this was in many

Globalizations, 2021

This article maps and analyses the trajectory of India's Covid-19 pandemic from its onset in earl... more This article maps and analyses the trajectory of India's Covid-19 pandemic from its onset in early 2020 until the outbreak of the country's devastating second wave a little over a year later. I begin with a critique of the lockdown policy of the right-wing Hindu nationalist government of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which served as a political spectacle rather than a public health intervention. I then proceed to detail how India as a lockdown nation witnessed forms of social suffering and political repression that can only be truly understood in light of how the trajectory and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was shaped by two preexisting crises in India's economy and polity. In conclusion, I reflect on the likely political outcomes of the pandemic, considering both the impact of its second wave, and the emergence of oppositional sociopolitical forces in the country.

Development and Change , 2020

When James Ferguson's Give a Man a Fish was published in 2015, it seemed to many that the anthrop... more When James Ferguson's Give a Man a Fish was published in 2015, it seemed to many that the anthropologist was continuing his trailblazing work in critical development research and pioneering a new imaginary for a progressive left politics of welfare. This article argues that such enthusiasm is misplaced and that we need to devote ourselves to a more rigorous and ambitious project if we are to forge a social theory for the future that holds any kind of genuinely emancipatory potential. First, the article shows how Ferguson's diagnosis of global development is analytically flawed in that it is articulated at a strictly empirical and descriptive level. As a result, Ferguson fails to probe into the underlying power relations that have generated the developmental scenario that is the context of his reflections. It then moves on to show how this absence of any sustained conceptual and analytical engagement with questions of power in the political economy of capitalism leads Ferguson to a deeply flawed argument about welfare. The article concludes with a brief reflection on what an alternative and genuinely socialist form of welfare might look like in the context of a conjuncture of sustained neo-liberal crisis.

Economic and Political Weekly, 2019

Class exploitation and caste oppression in rural India have to be put squarely at the centre of a... more Class exploitation and caste oppression in rural India have to be put squarely at the centre of any oppositional agenda for redistribution, recognition, and progressive change.

Lecture notes for guest lecture at University of Agder - intro to global uneven development.

Lecture notes for academic writing for undergrads part 4

Last of 4 lectures introducing academic writing to undergraduate students.

Slides to lecture notes on social movements

Intro to social movements for first year undergrad sociology students.

Lecture notes and slides - academic writing for undergrads part 3 (of 4)

Intro to North-South relations for first-semester, first-year undergrads.

Narrated PPT - part 2 of intro to academic writing for undergrads

Second part of a series of lectures on academic writing (lecture notes)

Slides for lecture notes on race and racism - sociology undergrad lecture

Intro lecture on race/racism in the modern world for first-semester, first-year sociology undergrads

SLIDE 1: Hello and welcome to this fourth week of academic skills lectures. This week and the fol... more SLIDE 1: Hello and welcome to this fourth week of academic skills lectures. This week and the following three weeks, we are going to focus on academic writing, and especially on how to write a successful academic essay. Essay-writing is of course at the core of your assessment on this module, which means that these four weeks of skills sessions are going to be very important for you. And, as essay-writing will remain a central exercise throughout your studies, you're going to learn skills during these weeks that will be relevant far beyond SOC110, and which you can draw on in your future studies too. In this week's session, we'll look at how to interpret an assignment and how to structure your essay. These skills are some of the most basic building blocks of academic writing, and we therefore need to look at them in some detail. SLIDES 2 AND 3: Now, an essay assignment typically looks like the example provided here on slide 2.

First of a four-part intro to academic writing for first-semester first-year students

Slides for lecture notes on gender and gender orders.

LECTURE NOTES - INTRODUCTION TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF GENDER FOR 1ST SEMESTER 1ST YEAR STUDENTS.

Intro lecture for first-semester first-year undergraduates

There's something about the nineteenth century", says Gurminder K.

Times Higher Education Supplement, 2008

Boston Review, 2021

An essay on the politics of India's Covid-19 pandemic

En innføring i marxistisk teori om utbytting og denne teoriens relasjon til økende ulikheter i ve... more En innføring i marxistisk teori om utbytting og denne teoriens relasjon til økende ulikheter i verdenssamfunnet. Kommer i Gnist ganske snart.

An op-ed for Open Democracy.

International Affairs Forum, 2020

An interview with International Affairs Forum on poverty, inequality, protests, and authoritarian... more An interview with International Affairs Forum on poverty, inequality, protests, and authoritarian populism in the post-pandemic world.

A short commentary on Covid-19 in India, for the NIHSS.

Routledge Handbook on Autocratization in South Asia , 2022

In this chapter, we analyze how a majoritarian Hindu nationalism has been inscribed into law in u... more In this chapter, we analyze how a majoritarian Hindu nationalism has been inscribed into law in unprecedented ways under Narendra Modi. In doing so, we start from Hindu nationalist attempts at redefining the Indian nation through grassroots mobilization and violence from the 1990s. The chapter then analyzes the more recent attempts by the Modi regime at mobilizing law in order to align the nation with the core tenets of Hindu nationalism. This, we argue, is in effect an attempt at legally locking in Hindu nationalist claims to the nation in ways that make it exceedingly difficult to reverse such claims in the future, and which erodes democratic rights in dramatic ways.

Destroying Democracy , 2021

A Gramscian analysis of India's trajectory towards authoritarian populism during the period 2004-... more A Gramscian analysis of India's trajectory towards authoritarian populism during the period 2004-2019.

My entry in the Routledge Handbook of Marxism and Post-Marxism.

Pre-print version of my chapter in the Routledge Handbook of Transformative Global Studies

Pluto Press, 2019

Conclusion to the volume Indian Democracy: Origins, Trajectories, Contestations (Pluto Press, 2019)

Pluto Press, 2019

The introduction to the edited volume Indian Democracy: Origins, Trajectories, Contestations

The introduction to "Social Movements in the Global South: Dispossession, Development, and Resist... more The introduction to "Social Movements in the Global South: Dispossession, Development, and Resistance" (Palgrave, 2011)

Entry in "The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism" (edited by Immanuel Ness... more Entry in "The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism" (edited by Immanuel Ness and Zak Cope, published October 2015).

http://nyupress.org/books/9781479806010/

An entry on new social movements in the volume "Key Concepts in Modern Indian Studies" (OUP/NYUP ... more An entry on new social movements in the volume "Key Concepts in Modern Indian Studies" (OUP/NYUP 2015).

My contribution to the volume "New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualizing Power and Resistance in ... more My contribution to the volume "New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualizing Power and Resistance in Contemporary India"

Marxism and social movements, Jun 21, 2013

‘From castles and palaces and churches to prisons and workhouses and schools; from weapons of war... more ‘From castles and palaces and churches to prisons and workhouses and schools; from weapons of war to a controlled press’, Raymond Williams writes, ‘any ruling class, in variable ways though always materially, produces a social and political order’. This productive activity constitutes the essence of what can be referred to as social movements from above.

This paper explores social movements from above as the organization of multiple forms of skilled activity around a rationality expressed and organized by dominant social groups, which aims at the maintenance or modification of a dominant structure of entrenched needs and capacities in ways that reproduce and/or extend the power of those groups and its hegemonic position within a given social formation.

Starting from a theoretical conception of social structure as the sediment of struggle between social movements from above and those from below, the paper discusses the relevance of a conception of social movements from above to activist experience – in particularly as a way of avoiding the reification of exploitative and oppressive social structures.

The paper moves on to an outline of a model of the fields of force animated by movements from above and below in understanding the major ‘epochal shifts’ and ‘long waves’ in capitalist development. This model is then put to work in a prolegomenon to an analysis of global neoliberal restructuring as a social movement from above aiming to restore the class power of capital over labour.

This analysis aims to discern the hegemony of neoliberalism not as an accomplished and monolithic state of affairs, but as an unfinished process riddled by internal contradictions which the movement of movements might exploit in its efforts to impose an alternative direction and meaning upon the self-production of society.

Social movement activists have their own theories of social movements, whose goals and structure ... more Social movement activists have their own theories of social movements, whose goals and structure often diverge radically from those of academic social movement studies. This paper explores the example of Marxism, as a theory developed outside the academy, primarily on the basis of the experience of the nineteenth-century workers’ movement in Europe. If society consists of socially organised human practice, then social movements contend to direct this “historicity”, in Touraine’s words: they are struggles over how society creates itself.

This paper attempts to do two things. Firstly, it offers a rough-and-ready typology of how grassroots activists experience their opponents in “social movements from above”, the ways in which dominant social groups attempt to maintain or extend ways of organising human practice that sustain their power. We explore defensive and offensive movements from above, the political choices and alliances involved, and the ways in which movements from above impact on activists in movements from below.

Secondly, we attempt to theorise the collective agency of subaltern social groups, making the links between their situated experience of their lifeworld, the conflicts between “common sense” and “good sense”, and the development out of these of militant particularisms, large-scale campaigns and social movement projects aiming to restructure human practice on a large scale. We are interested in particular in how this process is experienced and shaped by activists themselves. In conclusion, we use the categories of neo-liberalism and the “movement of movements” to discuss the current shape of the conflict between movements from above and from below.

Introduction to the volume on New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualizing hegemony and resistance i... more Introduction to the volume on New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualizing hegemony and resistance in contemporary India edited by Alf Gunvald Nilsen and Srila Roy

This is the text of a talk given at the Tenth Forum of the World Association for Political Econom... more This is the text of a talk given at the Tenth Forum of the World Association for Political Economy (Johannesburg, June 2015).

This is the text of a talk given at a book launch at Ike's Books and Collectables in Durban, 4 Ju... more This is the text of a talk given at a book launch at Ike's Books and Collectables in Durban, 4 June 2015.

This is a first attempt to develop a conceptual framework for the study of how "development regim... more This is a first attempt to develop a conceptual framework for the study of how "development regimes" are moulded by the dialectics of power and resistance. Very tentative stuff - comments and criticisms welcome.

My intervention this afternoon will attempt to summarize some of the main ideas put forward in We... more My intervention this afternoon will attempt to summarize some of the main ideas put forward in We Make Our Own History – a book that it took my good friend and comrade Laurence Cox and myself well over a decade to write. We Make Our own History is intended, above all, to explore the relationship between Marxist theory and social movements, and in particular how this relationship works in the specific historical period that we are calling the twilight of neoliberalism. Or – put slightly differently – I’ll be talking about how we can reclaim Marxism as a theory that can serve activist purposes and knowledge interests in a context where neoliberalism appears to be undergoing a moment of organic crisis.

Neoliberalism we condense four decades of research and activism into an argument about how ordina... more Neoliberalism we condense four decades of research and activism into an argument about how ordinary people can understand the nature of the world we live in and find ways to push beyond the neoliberal orthodoxy of the last few decades.

April 2014: In Dongguan in the Pearl River delta, tens of thousands of Chinese workers walk out o... more April 2014: In Dongguan in the Pearl River delta, tens of thousands of Chinese workers walk out of factories owned by a Taiwanese company that produces shoes for global brand leaders like Nike and Reebok in protest over the corrupt handling of their pensions. Following in the wake of the strikes at a Honda-owned factory in Foshan -also in the Pearl River delta -in 2010, the April walkouts in Dongguan are expressive of a new wave of labour militancy in China, which increasingly targets the transnational corporations that have been so central to the export-driven growth strategy of the Chinese authorities, and which have been successful in winning wage gains for the country's working classes. May 2014: In Spain's elections for the European Parliament, a new political party -Podemos -wins 5 seats and 7.9 per cent of the vote (approximately 1.2 million votes). The unexpected levels of support for the party are seen as a continued expression of the widespread anger against unemployment and austerity policies that was initially voiced by the Indignados. "We want to build a political majority", argued the party leader Pablo Iglesias as he described the politics of Podemos, "that reflects the social majority of Spain." In aspiring to do this, Podemos is developing and deepening the project of massbased, participatory democracy that started to take shape in public squares around the country during the 15-M protests of 2011 and 2012.

We start by outlining what is at stake and asking what "winning" means: what actually happens when a social movement project from below achieves its goal of constructing "another world"? We explore the step- by-step processes through which the movement of movements is currently developing the "insurgent architecture" involved in this construction, and noting how this presents a challenge for the powers that be.

We then turn to the massive opposition that the movement has been meeting from above - from multinational institutions, states and corporations. We explore the nature of these responses and argue that while they have failed to defeat the movement, they have brought about something of a temporary stalemate. We ask how the movement can get beyond this stalemate, not by adopting the logic and methods of its opponents, but by taking qualitative steps forward in its own development, according to its own logic.

The paper finishes with some brief discussion of the most important practical steps in constructing another world, and the nature of the moments of confrontation that lie ahead.

Theorien zu sozialen Bewegungen bedienen sich gemeinhin eines stark reduzierten Konzeptes, das so... more Theorien zu sozialen Bewegungen bedienen sich gemeinhin eines stark reduzierten Konzeptes, das soziale Bewegungen als eine institutionelle Ebene in einer politischen Ordnung begreift. Diese Sichtweise ist in ihrer Fähigkeit begrenzt, strategische Aussagen über die Perspektive von Kämpfen zu treffen, die möglicherweise über das bestehende System hinausgehen. (Barker/Cox 2011) Der Marxismus ist eine für soziale Bewegungen relevante Theorie (Bevington/Dixon 2005), denn er hat sich aus dem Dialog mit sozialen Bewegungen entwickelt, die wesentlich zum Entstehen der modernen Welt beigetragen haben. Paradoxerweise fehlt dem Marxismus bisher eine Theorie, die sich explizit der Entstehung, der Natur und der Entwicklung sozialer Bewegungen widmet und diese erklärt (Barker et al. 2013). Wir versuchen im Folgenden einen theoretischen Ansatz zu entwickeln, der den Interessen von Aktivisten gerecht wird, die in den Aufbau eines oppositionellen, politischen Projektes eingebunden sind, das progressive Veränderung herbeiführen will. Ziel ist es, den Marxismus auf eine "Theorie sozialer Bewegungen" zurückzuführen (Cox 2014). Das heißt, das Wissen von Aktivisten in Beziehungen zueinander zu setzen. Dabei ist der Marxismus zweifellos nicht die einzige Theorie, die es schafft die Interessen von Aktivisten aufzugreifen.

This article explores the state of research on the "movement of movements" against neoliberal glo... more This article explores the state of research on the "movement of movements" against neoliberal globalisation. Starting from a general consideration of the significance of the movement and the difficulties inherent in studying it, it discusses the literature on the movement from within social movement studies, and argues that the response from social movement researchers falls short of what could be expected in terms of adequacy to the movement and its own knowledge production. It explores some effects of this failure and locates the reasons for it in the unacknowledged relationship between social movements theorising and activist theorising. The article then discusses the possible contributions that can be made by Marxist and other engaged academic writers, as well as the significance of the extensive theoretical literature generated by activists within the movement. It concludes by stating the importance of dialogue between activist and academic theorising and research in attempting to understand the movement.

In this paper, we retrace in concepts a path that we’ve followed in the experience and practice o... more In this paper, we retrace in concepts a path that we’ve followed in the experience and practice of our own lives: from activism to theory, and back again to activism, now understood in a new light. Like many people, we’ve found ourselves moving towards activism as we discovered the boundaries that our kind of societies place in the way of living fully human lives. Over time, we found ourselves asking broader questions of the world and ourselves than could be answered within the activist frameworks we had available to us at the time, and moved to draw on the theoretical resources of the past, specifically Marxism. We are now moving back towards activism, through our own participation and through social movements research. In this paper we want to see what we can bring back from our theorizing that will help us and other activists in our practice.

This is a paper written for a talk that is to be presented to the SOAS Development Studies semina... more This is a paper written for a talk that is to be presented to the SOAS Development Studies seminar series.

Please note that, as such, it is written without the usual academic references, quotes, and citations. Full references, quotes, and citations will be provided as part of a longer version of this paper, to be published as a journal article later this year.

Hastily assembled notes for a talk at the ISA World Congress in Toronto.

Public Lecture - School of International Studies - JNU

A text for a talk at Jaffna University, January 2018.

Movements that change the world also change the ways in which we know and understand the world. A... more Movements that change the world also change the ways in which we know and understand the world. Activists produce knowledge as they try to find answers to the questions they face in struggle – questions about the issues they mobilize around, about the opposition that they face from above, about the relations between their own struggles and those of others elsewhere, and, most importantly, questions about how to bring about the changes that they want to see in the world. What I want to propose in my intervention here today is that it may be constructive to think of this knowledge as a distinctive form of theory – what I will refer to as movement theory. To put it very simply, this term refers to theories that are grounded in the lived experience of subaltern groups and their collective action to transform regnant structures of power. I'll unpack this statement in more detail in a minute, but let me first specify what acknowledging movement theory entails in terms of how we think of the production of theoretical knowledge more generally. To acknowledge movement theory means, first of all, to recognize that the production of theoretical knowledge is not necessarily a scholastic exercise. It means, furthermore, that academia is not necessarily the only site in which theory is produced, that the producers of theoretical knowledge are not necessarily academically trained, and do not by necessity hold the qualifications that are commonly associated with what Antonio Gramsci referred to as the immediate social function of the professional category of the intellectuals. To acknowledge this, in turn, means to recognize that theory can be a tool that oppressed and exploited groups 1 This talk is based on chapter 1 of Laurence Cox and Alf Gunvald Nilsen: We Make Our Own History: Marxism and Social Movements in the Twilight of Neoliberalism (Pluto, 2014).

Text of a talk to be given at SLU, Uppsala, 01/02/2017.

Draft version of a chapter for the Democratic Marxism book series.

Public Lecture – Indore Press Club. Trying my hand at an analysis of authoritarian populism acros... more Public Lecture – Indore Press Club. Trying my hand at an analysis of authoritarian populism across the North-South axis of the world-system.

NB! This paper draws extensively on arguments that I have developed in collaboration with Laurenc... more NB! This paper draws extensively on arguments that I have developed in collaboration with Laurence Cox in our co-authored book We Make Our Own History: Marxism and Social Movements in the Twilight of Neoliberalism (Pluto Press, 2014). In their recent book Assembly, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri put forward a refreshing approach to questions of leadership in collective oppositional action. I say refreshing because their approach seeks so consistently to navigate between the orthodoxies and binaries that simultaneously animate and suffocate strategic debates on the left. Whereas " centralized, vertical forms of organization " are duly criticized for the way in which they come to constitute " fetters to the development of democracy and the full participation of all in political life, " they are also very clear that questions of leadership cannot be dismissed out of hand: " … it is a terrible mistake to translate valid critiques of leadership into a refusal of sustained political organization and institution, to banish verticality only to make a fetish of horizontality and ignore the need for durable social structures. " My intervention here today does not so much engage Hardt and Negri's arguments about leadership. Rather, it works with a similar readiness to think beyond disabling strategic binaries in relation to another key question in left strategy – namely how we think about and approach the state in our efforts to, as Hardt and Negri put it, " to take power differently, to achieve a fundamentally new, democratic society and crucially, to produce new subjectivities. " Here too, polarized terms of debate (an insistence on either reformist engagement or revolutionary confrontation with the state has been pitted against anarchist and autonomist arguments for the necessity of changing the world without taking power) have arguably prevented productive debates about how we might relate to the institutionalization of political power in the bourgeois state if we are serious about winning, by which I mean bringing about systemic change against

A draft paper on the transition from the UPA regime to the NDA regime in India.

Paper for a talk at the University of Oslo, February 2018.

Paper for workshop at Azim Premji University, August 2017. Draws extensively on work co-authored ... more Paper for workshop at Azim Premji University, August 2017. Draws extensively on work co-authored with Kenneth Nilsen and an ongoing book project with Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Anand Vaidya.