Riot Politics

Riot Politics

Based on an extensive ethnographic study of Gujaratâ€™s local politics, Riot Politics offers a novel approach to understanding the processes that foster outbursts of communal violence in India. Berenschot argues that the difficulties that especially poorer citizens face when dealing with state institutions, underlie the capacity and interests of political actors to instigate and organise communal violence. As the reader is led into the often shadowy world of local politics in Gujarat, the author reveals how the capacity and willingness of various types of riotersâ€”from politicians, local criminals, Hindu-nationalist activists to neighbourhood leaders and police officialsâ€”to organise and perpetrate violence is closely related to the different positions these actors hold in the patronage networks that provide access to state resources.An exciting new study of the relationship between political mediation and violence in Gujarat, this work is ethnographically rich, well-written, and theoretically ambitious. This is a work that is unusually sensitive to historical change in the traditional forms of brokerage and social mediation in Ahmedabad.â€”Dr Samira Sheikh, Assistant Professor, History and Asian Studies, Vanderbilt University, USABerenschotâ€™s meticulously researched and robust work demonstrates that organizing, preparing, and imagining communal violenceâ€”real or potentialâ€”is endemic to the way democracy, identity, and political power functions at the level of neighbourhoods and streets in Indiaâ€™s economic powerhouse.â€”Thomas Blom Hansen, Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University, USA
Country USA
Manufacturer OUP
Binding Hardcover
EANs 9780199068173
ReleaseDate 0000-00-00

Country	USA
Manufacturer	OUP
Binding	Hardcover
EANs	9780199068173
ReleaseDate	0000-00-00

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