Sangam: A Confluence of Knowledge Streams

People’s Relational Agency in Confronting Exclusion in Rural South India

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dc.creator Arora, Saurabh
dc.creator Menon, Ajit
dc.creator Vijayabaskar, M.
dc.creator Sharma, Divya
dc.creator Gajendran, V.
dc.date 2021-12-16T13:36:24Z
dc.date 2021-12-16T13:36:24Z
dc.date 2021
dc.date.accessioned 2022-05-26T08:50:56Z
dc.date.available 2022-05-26T08:50:56Z
dc.identifier Arora, S., Menon, A.; Vijayabaskar, M.; Sharma, D. and Gajendran, V. (2021) People’s Relational Agency in Confronting Exclusion in Rural South India, STEPS Working Paper 117, Brighton: STEPS Centre, DOI: 10.19088/STEPS.2021.004
dc.identifier 978-1-78118-887-3
dc.identifier https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/17011
dc.identifier 10.19088/STEPS.2021.004
dc.identifier.uri http://localhost:8080/xmlui/handle/CUHPOERS/198809
dc.description Social exclusion is considered critical for understanding poverty, livelihoods, inequality and political participation in rural India. Studies show how exclusion is produced through relations of power associated with gender, caste, religion and ethnicity. Studies also document how people confront their exclusion. We use insights from these studies – alongside science and technology studies – and rely on life history narratives of ‘excluded’ people from rural Tamil Nadu, to develop a new approach to agency as constituted by two contrasting ways of relating: control and care. These ways of relating are at once social and material. They entangle humans with each other and with material worlds of nature and technology, while being mediated by structures such as social norms and cultural values. Relations of control play a central role in constituting exclusionary forms of agency. In contrast, relations of care are central to the agency of resistance against exclusion and of livelihood-building by the ‘excluded’. Relations can be transformed through agency in uncertain ways that are highly sensitive to trans-local contexts. We offer examples of policy-relevant questions that our approach can help to address for apprehending social exclusion in rural India and elsewhere.
dc.language en
dc.publisher STEPS Centre
dc.relation STEPS Working Paper;117
dc.rights http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.rights © STEPS 2021
dc.subject Gender
dc.subject Politics and Power
dc.title People’s Relational Agency in Confronting Exclusion in Rural South India
dc.type Other
dc.coverage South India


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