I showcase here textual and visual gems of a geek mixed methods ethnography in political science and sociology, focusing mainly on educated youth, representation and political becoming in contemporary India. The repository gravitates around a monograph in preparation on campus activism and Indian democracy, and introduces the curated material of an archival exhibition on student politics. I have a growing interest in text analysis and the study of populist speeches. Content is open access.
§︎ Research foci
• Youth activism as political self-fashioning
• Political archives and the pamphleteers
• Populist style as political representation
• Political intermediaries, elites and subalterns
• Ethnography of political ambition in India
• Text analysis, speeches and lifeworlds
§︎ Contents
• Publications: articles · preprints · op-eds
• Collaborations: ceri · iiit-d · icas-mp
• Datasets: parcha · dips
• Curation: memories of change
• Syllabi: sciences po · king's · cemis
• Code: r · python
• Photography: fieldword photos
• E-library: nonfiction
This article proposes to explore populism diachronically as a political career. Contra ideationalists, this ethnographic study of an Indian youth leader ‘entering populism’ helps to reconsider the phenomenon as an a-ideological attempt to become politically autonomous.
This guest lecture is part of Dr. Baris Ari’s class Social “Research Methods: Ethnography”, School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication, University of East Anglia. It discusses ethnographic inquiry in the context of a deepening divide between “positivist” and “interpretivist” research traditions.
Through engaging with everyday practices among student activists in contemporary Indian campus politics, this ethnographic study examines the breadcrumb trail between the left and self-fashioning. It focuses on a performative modality of political representation…
This essay revisits the movement against the Constitution Amendment Act in India, exploring how it subverted the governement’s way to claim democratic representation through reappropriating its pervasive nationalist discourse.
Desde la reelección de Narendra Modi como primer ministro de India en mayo de 2019, su partido político y la maquinaria del Estado Central han acelerado la implementación de una agenda etno-nacionalista e hinducéntrica, para progresivamente redefinir…
As Indian public universities become both spaces for and subjects of political disputes, this podcast examines what it means for such universities to be “political”, especially in the face of increasing privatization of higher education.
This interdisciplinary project explores the effects of political language on democracy when it transitions to authoritarianism. By relying on digital social sciences and ethnographic evidence, I will retrace the lineages and impacts of populist, authoritarian and communal rhetoric in the world’s largest democracy: India.
Across India, an unprecedented student-led opposition has materialized, in particular in the aftermath of the violent police storming of two Muslim-dominated state-funded universities. We are questioning the relevance of campus spaces in leading…
This introduction questions the relevance of student politics as an object of inquiry by asking whether it truly constitutes a field that is autonomous from wider organized politics. Through interpreting student politics as political becoming…
Departing from essentialist approaches to student politics, this article outlines the processes by which campus spaces activate the formation of political attitudes among participants. I suggest that everyday political competition among student organizations…
Qualitative and quantitative evidence collected over the last four years (2014–18) at the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus reaffirms the crucial contribution of the institution’s diverse and democratic base to Indian politics. The authors suggest…
Several recent studies propose that political choices of Indian youth can hardly be distinguished from those of their parents in many respects. Contrary to this well-established understanding, this article shows that when set apart…
This project intends to examine the pivotal role of political mediators in the conduct of Indian democracy. By organizing seven research-related events on often unaccounted political intermediaries in contemporary India…
In these times of cultural and ideological tensions across the world, the coexistence between followers of different faiths is a burning issue. South Asia is no exception to this global trend: over the past decades…