Beyond individual rights, citizenship may be grasped as a historically specific embodiment of the... more Beyond individual rights, citizenship may be grasped as a historically specific embodiment of the legitimate authority of the political community. Struggles over 'Citizenship are, thus struggles over the very meaning of politics and membership in a community. Paradoxically, perhaps, it is marginal or non citizens, those excluded from active participation in the political community, who have had the most impact on citizenship as a historically evolving imaginary. To effect the redefinition of citizenship, non-citizens must first move into the public sphere. Indeed, they have often to redefine what that public sphere is, and its very limits. Hence in this chapter I deploy the private/public distinction as a powerful deconstructive, and yet essential, analytical tool for comprehending ‘motherist' social movements both as they developed during the early phases of feminism in the Anglo-American West, and as they currently exist in postcolonial nations and in ethnic diasporic comm...
... literature on Filipino diaspora, our project has explored migrants' emotional and intell... more ... literature on Filipino diaspora, our project has explored migrants' emotional and intellectual engagement with the social and symbolic geographies of host ... more religious dimension when - as some Muslim Filipino workers do - they talk about their labour in sacred places, such ...
Among overseas Pakistanis, the Pakistani diaspora in Britain was the first emergent diasporic com... more Among overseas Pakistanis, the Pakistani diaspora in Britain was the first emergent diasporic community and the largest formed since World War II, following the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. Other major concentrations of Pakistanis exist in the United States of America, Canada and Norway, and smaller Pakistani communities can also be found in most countries in the developing world, in Europe, Australia, Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as among descendants of indentured labourers and traders in Eastern and Southern Africa. By 2001, the diaspora in the UK numbered close to one million and is estimated to have grown greatly since then. Pakistanis are dispersed throughout Britain, with marked concentrations in industrial regions, which were the main recruiting grounds for cheap migrant labour during the 1950s and 1960s from the Indian subcontinent.
This chapter interrogates the validity of Wendy Brown’s apparently self-evident assertion in Regu... more This chapter interrogates the validity of Wendy Brown’s apparently self-evident assertion in Regulating Aversion that “Tolerance as a political practice is always conferred by the dominant, it is always a certain expression of domination even as it offers protection or incorporation to the less powerful”. Tolerance, she argues, thus marks what is “civilised”, “conferring superiority on the West” (2008: 178). If ethical cosmopolitanism is defined by tolerance, toleration and reaching out to an Other or stranger, may we conclude, with Brown and other cosmosceptics, that cosmopolitanism is necessarily western and elitist, a discursive strategy that disguises and depoliticises relations of dominance? And if so, what room is there for a non-elitist, demotic, vernacular cosmopolitanism that is nevertheless moral and ethical? Can it be that the peoples anthropologists study beyond the West are incapable of being cosmopolitan? Against that view, I argue in this chapter that the habits and capacities associated with routine boundary crossings, physical, ethnic or religious, alongside the customary habits of hospitality and social exchange among strangers, are markers of vernacular cosmopolitanism. So too are ways of settling disputes, providing safe havens or making peace across borders, and of vernacular participatory cosmopolitanism by trade unionists in developing countries that are cosmopolitan despite their inferior class positioning.
The Ashgate Research Companion to Cosmopolitanism, 2016
... contain many themes that are widely prevalent across the whole of South Asia and its diaspora... more ... contain many themes that are widely prevalent across the whole of South Asia and its diasporas, from the use of turmeric and henna to ritual ... It has created its own imaginary country, as Javed Akhtar playfully argues: There is one more state in this country and this is Hindi cinema ...
Preface 1. Introduction 2. The Dignity of Labour: Women, Agency and Leadership 3. A Labour Elite?... more Preface 1. Introduction 2. The Dignity of Labour: Women, Agency and Leadership 3. A Labour Elite? Strategising Women and the Spectre of Unemployment 4. The Kgotla ya Babereki ('Court' of the Workers): The Union as Public Forum 5. Legitimate Expections': Ethics and Labour Justice in the 1991 Strike 6. The Politics of 'Infiltration': Factionalism and Party Politics 7. This Land is Our Land: The 2005 Manual Workers Union Grand Tour of Botswana 8. Solidarity Forever: Mobilising the Botswana Trade Union Movement in Prayer and Protest 9. Winning Against the Odds: Speaking Truth to Power and Dilemmas of Charismatic Leadership 10. The 'Mother of All Strikes': Vernacular Cosmopolitanism and Popular Culture, 2011 11. The Political and Moral Economy of the Strike 12. Conclusion: Legal Mobilisation, Political Protest and Cosmopolitan Virtue Concluding Remarks: Class Identity, Dignity and the Agency of Labour in Botswana Bibliography Index
This commentary outlines an intellectual genealogy of urban friendship stretching from the 1950s ... more This commentary outlines an intellectual genealogy of urban friendship stretching from the 1950s to the present, which influenced my own work on friendship. It begins by tracing this developing theory grounded in a basic contrast between close-knit, segregated networks and loose-knit or widely ramifying networks. Such morphological features define gender roles, friendship cultures and peer-group loyalties. Against the view that urban friendship is restricted to the intimate, private domain, I argue that friendship mediates structures of class and urban cognitive mapping. It is also the basis for the formation of elites and of the interdomestic domain – the setting for tournaments of value among immigrants newcomers. I further propose that elective friendship in voluntary organisations such as Sufi orders cuts across kinship, place and national boundaries. A rather darker, more dialectical conception of urban individual subjectivity emerges from Georg Simmel’s theorisation of the mod...
Beyond individual rights, citizenship may be grasped as a historically specific embodiment of the... more Beyond individual rights, citizenship may be grasped as a historically specific embodiment of the legitimate authority of the political community. Struggles over 'Citizenship are, thus struggles over the very meaning of politics and membership in a community. Paradoxically, perhaps, it is marginal or non citizens, those excluded from active participation in the political community, who have had the most impact on citizenship as a historically evolving imaginary. To effect the redefinition of citizenship, non-citizens must first move into the public sphere. Indeed, they have often to redefine what that public sphere is, and its very limits. Hence in this chapter I deploy the private/public distinction as a powerful deconstructive, and yet essential, analytical tool for comprehending ‘motherist' social movements both as they developed during the early phases of feminism in the Anglo-American West, and as they currently exist in postcolonial nations and in ethnic diasporic comm...
... literature on Filipino diaspora, our project has explored migrants' emotional and intell... more ... literature on Filipino diaspora, our project has explored migrants' emotional and intellectual engagement with the social and symbolic geographies of host ... more religious dimension when - as some Muslim Filipino workers do - they talk about their labour in sacred places, such ...
Among overseas Pakistanis, the Pakistani diaspora in Britain was the first emergent diasporic com... more Among overseas Pakistanis, the Pakistani diaspora in Britain was the first emergent diasporic community and the largest formed since World War II, following the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. Other major concentrations of Pakistanis exist in the United States of America, Canada and Norway, and smaller Pakistani communities can also be found in most countries in the developing world, in Europe, Australia, Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as among descendants of indentured labourers and traders in Eastern and Southern Africa. By 2001, the diaspora in the UK numbered close to one million and is estimated to have grown greatly since then. Pakistanis are dispersed throughout Britain, with marked concentrations in industrial regions, which were the main recruiting grounds for cheap migrant labour during the 1950s and 1960s from the Indian subcontinent.
This chapter interrogates the validity of Wendy Brown’s apparently self-evident assertion in Regu... more This chapter interrogates the validity of Wendy Brown’s apparently self-evident assertion in Regulating Aversion that “Tolerance as a political practice is always conferred by the dominant, it is always a certain expression of domination even as it offers protection or incorporation to the less powerful”. Tolerance, she argues, thus marks what is “civilised”, “conferring superiority on the West” (2008: 178). If ethical cosmopolitanism is defined by tolerance, toleration and reaching out to an Other or stranger, may we conclude, with Brown and other cosmosceptics, that cosmopolitanism is necessarily western and elitist, a discursive strategy that disguises and depoliticises relations of dominance? And if so, what room is there for a non-elitist, demotic, vernacular cosmopolitanism that is nevertheless moral and ethical? Can it be that the peoples anthropologists study beyond the West are incapable of being cosmopolitan? Against that view, I argue in this chapter that the habits and capacities associated with routine boundary crossings, physical, ethnic or religious, alongside the customary habits of hospitality and social exchange among strangers, are markers of vernacular cosmopolitanism. So too are ways of settling disputes, providing safe havens or making peace across borders, and of vernacular participatory cosmopolitanism by trade unionists in developing countries that are cosmopolitan despite their inferior class positioning.
The Ashgate Research Companion to Cosmopolitanism, 2016
... contain many themes that are widely prevalent across the whole of South Asia and its diaspora... more ... contain many themes that are widely prevalent across the whole of South Asia and its diasporas, from the use of turmeric and henna to ritual ... It has created its own imaginary country, as Javed Akhtar playfully argues: There is one more state in this country and this is Hindi cinema ...
Preface 1. Introduction 2. The Dignity of Labour: Women, Agency and Leadership 3. A Labour Elite?... more Preface 1. Introduction 2. The Dignity of Labour: Women, Agency and Leadership 3. A Labour Elite? Strategising Women and the Spectre of Unemployment 4. The Kgotla ya Babereki ('Court' of the Workers): The Union as Public Forum 5. Legitimate Expections': Ethics and Labour Justice in the 1991 Strike 6. The Politics of 'Infiltration': Factionalism and Party Politics 7. This Land is Our Land: The 2005 Manual Workers Union Grand Tour of Botswana 8. Solidarity Forever: Mobilising the Botswana Trade Union Movement in Prayer and Protest 9. Winning Against the Odds: Speaking Truth to Power and Dilemmas of Charismatic Leadership 10. The 'Mother of All Strikes': Vernacular Cosmopolitanism and Popular Culture, 2011 11. The Political and Moral Economy of the Strike 12. Conclusion: Legal Mobilisation, Political Protest and Cosmopolitan Virtue Concluding Remarks: Class Identity, Dignity and the Agency of Labour in Botswana Bibliography Index
This commentary outlines an intellectual genealogy of urban friendship stretching from the 1950s ... more This commentary outlines an intellectual genealogy of urban friendship stretching from the 1950s to the present, which influenced my own work on friendship. It begins by tracing this developing theory grounded in a basic contrast between close-knit, segregated networks and loose-knit or widely ramifying networks. Such morphological features define gender roles, friendship cultures and peer-group loyalties. Against the view that urban friendship is restricted to the intimate, private domain, I argue that friendship mediates structures of class and urban cognitive mapping. It is also the basis for the formation of elites and of the interdomestic domain – the setting for tournaments of value among immigrants newcomers. I further propose that elective friendship in voluntary organisations such as Sufi orders cuts across kinship, place and national boundaries. A rather darker, more dialectical conception of urban individual subjectivity emerges from Georg Simmel’s theorisation of the mod...
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