Sanjay Srivastava
SOAS University of London, Sociology and Anthropology, Faculty Member
- An anthropologist interested in urban issues and ethnographic approaches to urban life, spaces and processes, includi... moreAn anthropologist interested in urban issues and ethnographic approaches to urban life, spaces and processes, including consumer cultures, urban middle-classes, the poor and governance.edit
The city of Gurugram, the administrative headquarters of a district of the same name, is located in the state of Haryana. Gurugram adjoins the southern borders of Delhi and has been the site of intense urban development over the past two... more
The city of Gurugram, the administrative headquarters of a district of the same name, is located in the state of Haryana. Gurugram adjoins the southern borders of Delhi and has been the site of intense urban development over the past two decades. Rapid urbanisation has attracted a variety of workers from di erent parts of the country. Unlike Hindus, however, the majority of the Muslim migrants to the city tend to be poor and unskilled. In recent times, there has been a great deal of public debate and conflict over Muslims o ering namaaz (prayer) at di erent public places-such as streets and parks-in the
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Since the 1990s, training programs for service-sector jobs have proliferated in India. Frequently referred to as "skills training," these programs aim to overcome the perceived cultural and professional "deficiencies" of youth from the... more
Since the 1990s, training programs for service-sector jobs have proliferated in India. Frequently referred to as "skills training," these programs aim to overcome the perceived cultural and professional "deficiencies" of youth from the poorest sections of society. They focus on "soft skills" and "personality development," teaching body etiquette, time discipline, and emotional control; introducing students to "global" cuisine and commodities; and developing English-language skills. How do the students in these programs make sense of attempts to train them in new dispositions? An ethnography of Indian skills training finds that capitalism's most marginal subjects creatively engage with its possibilities, in ways unaccounted for in arguments about the making of "neoliberal subjectivity." For contexts like this-in which neoliberal processes may not necessarily produce neoliberal subjects-a more productive account is found in anthropological writings on split and partitioned selves as deliberate acts of self-making. Among Indian skills trainees, this may be conceptualized as "relational flexibility.
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Introduction The most significant recent development, a break with the past, in the study of sexual cultures has to do with the term ‘culture’ itself: that we think of sexuality (and sexualities) as having ‘cultures’. Historically, both... more
Introduction The most significant recent development, a break with the past, in the study of sexual cultures has to do with the term ‘culture’ itself: that we think of sexuality (and sexualities) as having ‘cultures’. Historically, both in academic and popular thinking, the term ‘sexuality’ most frequently elicited responses that have to do with biology. That is, whether as an area of study or as a set of ideas people have about their intimate lives, sexuality was too easily detached from the social contexts where it belongs and presented as something of itself. There is a strong tendency to view our sexual lives as dictated by their own peculiar rules that ( a ) are biologically derived, ( b ) have been historically stable (that is, the same since the ‘dawn of time’), ( c ) are ‘essentially’ about our ‘private’ lives, and ( d ) are ‘basically’ the same across different cultures. Ironically, while, on the one hand, we think of sexuality as a world-untoitself – such that it is regard...
In the annals of Indian modernity, narratives of tricksters and counterfeiters have a long, popular, and cautionary history. The topographies of deception outlined by colonial and post-colonial police reports established both its history... more
In the annals of Indian modernity, narratives of tricksters and counterfeiters have a long, popular, and cautionary history. The topographies of deception outlined by colonial and post-colonial police reports established both its history as an aspect of modern industrial life as well as the city as the 'scene of the crime'. This article explores the meanings that attach to certain contemporary acts of deceiving and faking, and the ways in which they are both produced by being in the city as well as producing certain kinds of relationships. The article focuses on the residents of a Delhi slum and their various acts of producing fake identity cards and a variety of other documents. It offers a discussion about simulation and dissimulation, feigning and duplicity, and passing and pretending as significant contexts for gaining security of livelihood and residence in the city as well as constituting specific senses of community. Faking and counterfeiting, the article suggests, are arenas where the state both constitutes itself and contributes to the making of imagined non-state sensibilities of community.
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This article explores the remaking of ideas of the "ordinary citizen" in India in the context of Hindu majoritarian politics and changing relationships between the state and private capital. Focusing on one of India's largest privately... more
This article explores the remaking of ideas of the "ordinary citizen" in India in the context of Hindu majoritarian politics and changing relationships between the state and private capital. Focusing on one of India's largest privately developed townships, DLF City, which adjoins Delhi, the article explores the ways in which activities by middle-and upper middle-class residents of DLF City produce new narratives of "ordinariness." Within them, socioeconomically privileged groups come to be represented as "the common people," contesting the postcolonial state's historical focus on the welfare of marginal populations. The article suggests that contemporary narratives of ordinariness in India require an understanding beyond its deployment in critical social science literature where it is posited as a politics of speaking truth to power. The appropriation of ordinariness by the privileged in the Indian context is part of a new politics of class, caste, and majoritarianism.
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Building upon theorizations of gender, space and subjectivity, and consumer cultures, this article explores contemporary masculinity politics in Delhi. It focuses upon a group of young men of the Bajrang Dal, an organization of the Hindu... more
Building upon theorizations of gender, space and subjectivity, and consumer cultures, this article explores contemporary masculinity politics in Delhi. It focuses upon a group of young men of the Bajrang Dal, an organization of the Hindu Right, in order to explore their lives as urban subjects whose actions unfold across a number of registers, of which ‘Hindu nationalism’ is just one. The discussion embarks upon an ethnography of ‘fragmentation’ and ‘splitting’, presenting these as significant processes in themaking of masculine identities. It suggests that these concepts foreground the ways in which new consumer cultures play a role in the making of masculine power and the notion of an ‘all-consuming man’.
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What does it mean to insert and describe actual spaces of dialogue and debate within discussions regarding power, privilege, disparate geographies, and the 'Possibilities and Limits to Dialogue'? Is there a critical potential to the... more
What does it mean to insert and describe actual spaces of dialogue and debate within discussions regarding power, privilege, disparate geographies, and the 'Possibilities and Limits to Dialogue'? Is there a critical potential to the argument that we recognize the near-impossibility of the conditions of dialogue under certain actually existing conditions of life? Through providing a concrete example from India, this commentary suggests that recognition of the impossibility of dialogue provides an understanding of the state of global and local asymmetries and the specificity of the quotidian. And that to strive toward such an understanding is a key objective of critical social science practice.
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An exploration of connections between contemporary religiosity and consumerism.
in Filippo Osella and Daromir Rudnyckyj (2017) (eds.), Religion and the Morality of Markets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
in Filippo Osella and Daromir Rudnyckyj (2017) (eds.), Religion and the Morality of Markets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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An exploration of relationships between new forms of urbanism, the state, private capital, processes of privatization and individuation.
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An ethnography of new consumerism in India that focuses upon shopping malls. The article explores the various ways in which webs of familial relations and norms and ideas of a 'new' India interact and find expression through everyday acts... more
An ethnography of new consumerism in India that focuses upon shopping malls. The article explores the various ways in which webs of familial relations and norms and ideas of a 'new' India interact and find expression through everyday acts of shopping.
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Media discourses—both independent journalism and advertisements—during the 2014 general election in India articulated a gendered focus on a significant aspect of Narendra Modi’s public representation relating to his forceful masculinity.... more
Media discourses—both independent journalism and advertisements—during the 2014 general election in India articulated a gendered focus on a significant aspect
of Narendra Modi’s public representation relating to his forceful masculinity. His election campaign—as well as popular discourse that surrounded his pre-prime ministerial persona—significantly focused upon his “manly” leadership style: efficient,
dynamic, potent, and capable of removing all policy-roadblocks through sheer force of personality. In this, he is implicitly counterpoised to Manmohan Singh, his “impotent” predecessor, and more generally against an “effeminate” Indian type who is unable to strike hard at both external enemies (Pakistan and China, say) and internal threats (“Muslim terrorists,” most obviously). His “56-inch chest”—able and willing to bear the harshest burdens in the service of “Mother India”—was a frequently invoked metaphor in the election. This article suggests that Modi-masculinity is a reformulation
of older versions of Indian masculinist discourse in a time of consumerist modernity and that the media has played a significant role in the re-making. The discussion
suggests that Modi-masculinity stands at the juncture of new consumerist aspirations, the politics of “Indian traditions” and gender, and the re-fashioning of masculine identities.
of Narendra Modi’s public representation relating to his forceful masculinity. His election campaign—as well as popular discourse that surrounded his pre-prime ministerial persona—significantly focused upon his “manly” leadership style: efficient,
dynamic, potent, and capable of removing all policy-roadblocks through sheer force of personality. In this, he is implicitly counterpoised to Manmohan Singh, his “impotent” predecessor, and more generally against an “effeminate” Indian type who is unable to strike hard at both external enemies (Pakistan and China, say) and internal threats (“Muslim terrorists,” most obviously). His “56-inch chest”—able and willing to bear the harshest burdens in the service of “Mother India”—was a frequently invoked metaphor in the election. This article suggests that Modi-masculinity is a reformulation
of older versions of Indian masculinist discourse in a time of consumerist modernity and that the media has played a significant role in the re-making. The discussion
suggests that Modi-masculinity stands at the juncture of new consumerist aspirations, the politics of “Indian traditions” and gender, and the re-fashioning of masculine identities.
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Familiarity and strangerhood in Delhi
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An exploration of the city as a series of connected spaces and processes, and the politics and contestations of urban life: (2015) Entangled Urbanism. Slum, Gated Community and Shopping Mall in Delhi and Gurgaon:... more
An exploration of the city as a series of connected spaces and processes, and the politics and contestations of urban life:
(2015) Entangled Urbanism. Slum, Gated Community and Shopping Mall in Delhi and Gurgaon:
http://www.oup.co.in/product/academic-general/sociology/urban-studies-urbanization/303/entangled-urbanism-slum-gated-community-shopping-mall-delhi-gurgaon-1e/9780198099147
(2015) Entangled Urbanism. Slum, Gated Community and Shopping Mall in Delhi and Gurgaon:
http://www.oup.co.in/product/academic-general/sociology/urban-studies-urbanization/303/entangled-urbanism-slum-gated-community-shopping-mall-delhi-gurgaon-1e/9780198099147
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Pubic Broadcasting and Public Interest in India
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Aging, Memory and Compassion in 'Astu', a Marathi film.
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This essay investigates the sexual cultures of contemporary Hindi-language ‘detective’ novels by focusing on the writings of one of India’s biggest-selling authors, Ved Prakash Sharma. Sharma’s novels are usually available at railway... more
This essay investigates the sexual cultures of contemporary Hindi-language ‘detective’ novels by focusing on the writings of one of India’s biggest-selling authors, Ved Prakash Sharma. Sharma’s novels are usually available at railway stations and bus stands, as well as bookstalls in the poorer localities of north Indian cities. The essay suggests that the sexual motif in the novels sits alongside
an unstated discourse of ‘Indian traditions’ such as brahmcharya (celibacy) and ‘the stable Indian family’ and that this discourse is established both through narratives within the novels, as well as techniques that lie outside them, such as the author’s letter to readers that prefaces each novel. The silent presence of
‘Indian traditions’ forms the ground upon which engagements with consumerist modernity marked by goods, technologies and transnational connections is predicated. The pleasure and ‘efficaciousness’ of the novels lie in the constant relay of choices between the world of globalized consumerist modernity and
‘traditional’ morality.
an unstated discourse of ‘Indian traditions’ such as brahmcharya (celibacy) and ‘the stable Indian family’ and that this discourse is established both through narratives within the novels, as well as techniques that lie outside them, such as the author’s letter to readers that prefaces each novel. The silent presence of
‘Indian traditions’ forms the ground upon which engagements with consumerist modernity marked by goods, technologies and transnational connections is predicated. The pleasure and ‘efficaciousness’ of the novels lie in the constant relay of choices between the world of globalized consumerist modernity and
‘traditional’ morality.