Interpreting Politics: Situated Knowledge, India, and the Rudolph Legacy

by John Echeverri-Gent (Editor), Kamal Sadiq (Editor)

Overview

In careers that spanned six decades, Padma Bhushan award winners Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph elaborated seminal insights about Indian politics. The Rudolphs’ rigorous and remarkably empathetic study of India coupled with their extensive reading of social science theory served as the basis for their development of a broader interpretive mode of political analysis centered on the complex processes by which people construct meaning and motivation for political action. The eminent contributors to this volume pay tribute to the Rudolphs’ scholarship by examining its contributions to their own cutting-edge research as they advance the frontiers of the study of Indian politics and social science writ large. Their engaging essays analyze vital topics including how ‘situated knowledge’ shapes discourse, moral imagination, political strategies, and institutional change. They apply this interpretive approach to Indian politics to illuminate how the interaction of caste, class, gender, and religion has structured political mobilization, how changing social and political relations have affected education policy and civil–military relations, and how political leadership is forging the future of Indian politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190991289
Publisher:	OUP India
Publication date:	09/10/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

John Echeverri Gent, Associate Professor, Department of Politics, University of Virginia, Kamal Sadiq, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of California, Irvine

John Echeverri-Gent is associate professor in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. He is author of The State and the Poor: Public Policy and Political Development in India and the United States and co-editor of Economic Reform in Three Giants: U.S. Foreign Policy and the USSR, China, and India. His many articles in comparative public policy and the political economy of development have appeared in Perspectives on Politics; PS: Political Science and Politics; World Development; Policy Studies Journal; Asian Survey; Contemporary South Asia; India Review; and Political Science Quarterly. He is a member of the editorial board of Political Science Quarterly. He has served as consultant to the World Bank and USAID.
Kamal Sadiq (PhD, University of Chicago) is associate professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of Paper Citizens: How Illegal Immigrants Acquire Citizenship in Developing Countries (2009, repr. 2010). His articles have appeared in International Studies Quarterly, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Asian Perspectives, PS: Political Science & Politics, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, the Oxford Handbook of Citizenship, and select edited books. He served as chair of the Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration Studies (ENMISA) section of the International Studies Association (2013-15) and as co-president of the Migration and Citizenship section of the American Political Science Association (2015-17). He serves on the editorial board of the journal Citizenship Studies.

Table of Contents

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES ix
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xiii
FOREWORD: Susanne Hoeber Rudolph and Lloyd I. Rudolph: Partners in Political Science and Indian Studies xv
Francis W. Hoeber
I Introduction
1. Politics as Interpretation
John Echeverri-Gent and Kamal Sadiq
II Interpretative Approaches to Political Analysis
2. Situated Knowledge, the Construction of Meaning, and Political Action: A Framework for Interpretative Political Analysis
John Echeverri-Gent and Kamal Sadiq
3. Interpretivism in Motion: Discursive Institutionalism as the Fourth 'New' Institutionalism
Vivien A. Schmidt
4. A Different Way of Seeing Things: The Intellectual Legacy of Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph
Kristen Renwick Monroe
III Caste, Class, and the 'Lived Experience' of Political Mobilization
5. Dominant Castes, from Bullock Capitalists to OBCs? The Impact of Class Differentiation in Rural India
Christophe Jaffrelot and Kalaiyarasan A.
6. Does Class Matter in Politics? Rethinking 'Conditions and Reasons'
Rina Agarwala and Ronald Herring
7. Interpreting the Political Economy of the Indian State: Culture, Inequality, and the Conceptual Possibilities of In Pursuit of Lakshmi
Leela Fernandes
IV The State, Leadership, and Political Change
8. From Gandhi to Modi: Enlisting the Rudolphs to Understand Charismatic Leadership
Amrita Basu
9. In Pursuit of Saraswati: The Politics of Autonomy in the Indian University
Niraja Gopal Jayal
10. Civil-Military Relations and Democratic Stability
Steven I. Wilkinson
11. Centrism, Political Leadership, and the Future of Indian Politics
John Echeverri-Gent and Kamal Sadiq
INDEX
EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

Editorial Reviews

"This volume brings together the best minds in the field to celebrate the scholarly legacy of Susanne and Lloyd Rudolph and advance their own novel contributions. Erudite and intelligent, the essays ought to attract the attention of specialists in Indian politics and those interested in interpretive approaches in the social sciences." — Atul Kohli, David K.E. Bruce Professor of international affairs, Princeton University, USA

"What a bounty! Stimulated by the deep intellectual legacy of two remarkable scholars and teachers, this rich harvest advances our knowledge of their cherished India while both broadening and intensifying our means as students of comparative politics. Like the Rudolphs, these essays refuse any simple binary distinguishing interpretive social science from analytical considerations of political institutions, social structures, and political economy." — Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of political science and history, Columbia University, USA; President, American Political Science Association, 2005-6

"This book uses deep contextual knowledge to address vital issues in comparative politics institutions, violence, identity, class, culture and leadership. It is a fitting tribute to Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph, social scientists who demonstrated the value of situated knowledge in what they wrote and how they lived." — Kanchan Chandra, professor of politics, New York University, USA

"An invaluable demonstration of how humanistic social science can provide potent insights into the most challenging developments in India and the world today." — Rogers Smith, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of political science, University of Pennsylvania, USA; President, American Political Science Association, 2018-19

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