Lipon Mondal

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I am Lipon Mondal, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Dhaka.

I obtained my Ph.D. degree in Sociology from Virginia Tech, USA. I also got my Master's in Sociology from the University of Dhaka.

My research focuses on global political economy, world-systems analysis, urban sociology, labor control/rights, and sociological theories. I have published several articles on dispossession, city, state, class, capital, poverty, marginality, inequality, and underdevelopment. My research uses both quantitative and qualitative data. Finally, my current research involves four geographic regions: Bangladesh, South Asia, China, and the United States.

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Papers by Lipon Mondal

The political economy of land expropriation in urban Bangladesh

Urban Studies, 2023

This paper explores the 71-year (1947-2018) history of land expropriation in urban Bangladesh. It... more This paper explores the 71-year (1947-2018) history of land expropriation in urban Bangladesh. It examines three interrelated questions regarding land occupation. First, how does the state and market pursue their mutual and competing class interests by expropriating land? Next, how does the state and market deploy primarily extra-economic means to seize land? Finally, how do actors, strategies and purposes of land expropriation vary from one political regime to another? This article addresses these questions by engaging with extant theories of land dispossession and class analysis and collecting a wide range of empirical evidence from Dhaka, Bangladesh. It argues that state and market actors in different political regimes use extra-economic means to accumulate land, creating preconditions for capitalism and expanding the existing capitalist system. To elaborate on this argument, it examines three factors of land expropriation: class, power and structure. The class dimension examines state and market actors who pursue their respective class interests by grabbing land. The power dimension explores land occupation strategies: who can use what forms of legal or illegal means to expropriate land. The structural factor shows how actors, methods, and purposes of land accumulation vary from regime to regime. Overall, this paper examines historical and contemporary forms of class interests attached to land accumulation, distinct mechanisms and purposes of land expropriation, and the nature of capitalist transformation under various political regimes.

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The Logic of Dispossession: Capitalist Accumulation in Urban Bangladesh

JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH, 2021

One particular focus of world-systems analysis is to examine the historical trajectory of capital... more One particular focus of world-systems analysis is to examine the historical trajectory of capitalist transformation in peripheral regions. This paper investigates the capitalist transformation in a specific peripheral area-the country of Bangladesh. In particular, it examines the role of dispossession in transforming an agricultural society into a neoliberal capitalist society by looking at the transformation of Panthapath Street in Dhaka, Bangladesh, since 1947. Building on the existing literature of dispossession, this article proposes an approach that explains the contribution of dispossession in capitalist accumulation. The proposed theory consists of four logics of dispossession: transformative, exploitative, redistributive, and hegemonic. These four logics of dispossession, both individually and dialectically reinforcing one another, work to privatize the commons, proletarianize subsistence laborers, create antagonistic class relations, redistribute wealth upward, and commodify sociopolitical and cultural aspects of urban life. This paper's central argument is that dispossession not only converted an agricultural society into a capitalist society in Bangladesh, but that dispossession continues to reproduce the country's existing capitalist system. This research draws on a wide range of empirical and historical evidence collected from Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2017 and 2018.

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SOCIAL FORMATION IN BANGLADESH: AN ESSAY ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF STATE, CLASS AND CAPITALISM

Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 2014

The paper offers a theoretical discussion on the social formation in Bangladesh. Taking a politic... more The paper offers a theoretical discussion on the social formation in Bangladesh. Taking a political economic approach, it traces the role of the British Raj (1757-1947) in reshaping the Indian socioeconomic and political structures through exploitation, plundering, and exclusion. Then the paper focuses on the Pakistan period (1947-71) to examine how Pakistan, as a newly born state, played a significant role to reconstruct its class and capitalism. During the Pakistan period, we notice that West Pakistan tended to colonize East Pakistan and exploited the latter economically, politically, and socially. In West Pakistan, a capitalist class thrived on the process of capital accumulation from East Pakistan through plundering wealth and resources and appropriating potential surpluses. Finally, the paper explores the formation of state, class and capitalism in Bangladesh since 1971. It shows that the present pattern of state formation is the product of colonial rule as well as the penetration of neoliberal economic policies. The paper stresses that the "businessmen-politician oligarchy" creates a "political mode of production" which determines the state-class relationship, dominates capitalist relations and reshapes social structure through its own image.

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Mondal Inequality Poverty and Marginality in BD

Social Science Review, 2013

The study aims to explore the relationship between inequality, poverty, and marginality of sweepe... more The study aims to explore the relationship between inequality, poverty, and marginality of sweepers in Dhaka city. In particular, it measures (i) household poverty by the Cost of Basic Needs (CBN) method, Poverty Gap (PG) and Squared Poverty Gap (SPG); (ii) inequality by Gini-coefficient and (iii) liquid marginality by an index consisting of 11 items clustered into four groups: (a) ethno-religious background, (b) stigmatized occupation, (c) spatial alienation, and (d) social isolation. The index was found significant as all items reported α=.01. The main findings are: (i) Tk. <6,500 is estimated as a poverty threshold for a family of four, which gives the incidence of poverty as 29 percent, the depth of poverty as 8.0, and severity of poverty as 6.3; (ii) the level of inequality is 0.27 as expressed by Gini-ratio and (iii) liquid marginality experienced by an overwhelming majority (72%-92%) of the respondents, except for group (a). It is found that marginality is not necessarily linked with poverty and inequality. The liquidity is manifest when ethnicity is situationally used both as an asset and a liability. The main reasons for such liquid marginality are ascribed to structural factors like hybrid capitalism, lumpen development, dependent urbanization, urban primacy (accumulation in the secondary circuit of capital), and informalization of the economy.

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THE ANATOMY OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN BANGLADESH: TOWARD AN INTEGRATIVE FRAMEWORK

Journal of the Institute of Bangladesh Studies, 2012

The purpose of this paper is to examine the anatomy of underdevelopment in Bangladesh by offering... more The purpose of this paper is to examine the anatomy of underdevelopment in Bangladesh by offering an integrative framework consisting of four-dimensional structural factors—economic, political, social, and cultural. Moreover, the paper aims to use the dependency, the world system, and the political-economic approaches for unearthing the historical formation and recent composition of underdevelopment in Bangladesh relating to the discussion on the formation of post-colonial capitalism, state, and class. It is also an attempt to update my previous arguments and analyses on underdevelopment in Bangladesh.

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Normative Deprivation in Urban Bangladesh: A Case Study of Uttara, Dhaka

Bangladesh-e-journal of Sociology, 2009

The study focuses on the construction of social necessity by both adults and children in an afflu... more The study focuses on the construction of social necessity by both adults and children in an affluent section of urban Bangladesh. The study has improvised on a British poverty study by Gordon et al. (2000). The data for this study come from a sample survey of 360 respondents (for adult poverty) and 265 respondents (for child poverty) from Uttara, Dhaka in 2008. The normative deprivation index for Uttara shows that 40 items out of 48 appear significant as more than 50 percent respondents consider them as necessary. More than 90 percent respondents agree on the importance of 9 items for adult poverty: three meals a day, fan, celebrating special occasions, television, mobile, good job, medicine prescribed by doctor, refrigerator and household furniture. It is found that more than 90 percent respondents agree on the importance of 10 items for child poverty: three meals a day, major requirements prescribed by school, sufficient baby milk, warm/properly fitted shoes, toys, meat, fish or vegetarian equivalent at least once a day, celebrating birth day, bicycle and home computer. It is also found that the extent of adult and child normative deprivation is 30 percent and 26 percent respectively. The chi-square test shows that the deprivation index is significantly related to selected demographic and socioeconomic variables like gender, age, marital status, occupation, education and household size. It is argued that the item-wise difference between Bangladesh and British normative deprivation is due to the cultural differences of two societies.

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Modernity in Philosophy and Sociology: An Appraisal with Special Reference to Bangladesh

Philosophy and Progress, 2014

The paper aims to explore the philosophical and sociological foundations of modernity as well as ... more The paper aims to explore the philosophical and sociological foundations of modernity as well as to figure out the pattern of modernity in Bangladesh. Modernity in philosophy refers to the fundamental modification of pre-modern political philosophy of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle by Machiavelli, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Bacon and Newton. Later, in this project, people who employed themselves as original contributors are Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Russell, Heidegger, Popper, Foucault, Derrida, and so on. Amongst these thinkers some were associated to develop the project of modernity based on the Western epistemological and ontological contemplates and some were appeared as the critic of this mundane venture. Modernity, however, in sociology refers to the move from feudal social order to the capitalistic social order under the grand project of industrialization, secularization and rationalization. Moder...

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The political economy of land expropriation in urban Bangladesh

Urban Studies, 2023

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The Logic of Dispossession: Capitalist Accumulation in Urban Bangladesh

JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH, 2021

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SOCIAL FORMATION IN BANGLADESH: AN ESSAY ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF STATE, CLASS AND CAPITALISM

Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 2014

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Mondal Inequality Poverty and Marginality in BD

Social Science Review, 2013