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Politics of Post-Civil Society
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Politics of Post-Civil Society
Contemporary History of Political Movements in India

First Edition
  • Ajay Gudavarthy - Associate Professor, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.
Critical Acclaim
March 2013 | 274 pages | SAGE India
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Civil Society has emerged as one of the most celebrated concept of the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries. It offers practices that are the means and certain normative ideals that are the ends to be achieved for the preservation of democracy and expansion of the process of democratization. When available practices fail, reasons have been sought in the ideals being too lofty, and when the ideals looked minimalist, the blame has been shifted to the nature of practices being free-floating and bereft of definitive borders.

Politics of Post-Civil Society is an attempt to map the discourse and politics of contemporary political movements in India that have been negotiating with the hegemonic effects born out of the insidious co-habitation of political principles and practices in the domain referred to as the civil society. In course of constructing the political landscape of these movements, the book foregrounds the various strategies through which they are pushing and nudging towards a new politics of post-civil society.

Preface and Acknowledgements

 
 
I: WHY BEYOND CIVIL SOCIETY?
Ambiguities and Intersection

 
Autonomy and Convergence

 
 
II: HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENTS IN INDIA: STATE, CIVIL SOCIETY AND BEYOND
State-Civil Society Complementarity

 
State versus Civil Society

 
Civil Society versus Political Society

 
The Contemporary Moment: Beyond the Political?

 
 
III: DALIT AND NAXALITE STRUGGLES: POLITICAL IDENTITIES BEYOND IDENTITY POLITICS
Karamchedu: Foray into or Out of Civil Society?

 
Chundur: Identity Politics and a Disciplining Civil Society

 
Vempentta: Civil Society versus 'Dalit Society'

 
 
IV: FEMINIST POLITICS AND LEGAL SUBJECTIVITY: NEGOTIATING TRANSFORMATIVE DILEMMAS
'Law as a Catalyst': Civilizing Law or Legitimizing Civil Society?

 
One Act Play: Privatization of the Public or Publicizing the Private?

 
Feminizing the State: Economizing Culture and Politicizing the Civil

 
 
V: COLLECTIVES AGAINST POLLUTION AND 'POLITICAL SOCIETY': IMPLICATIONS OF UNCIVIL DEVELOPMENT
Understanding New Industrialization: Capital-izing Un-Civility

 
Introducing 'Development': Pollution and Social Cost

 
Political Society: Interest-Group Politics or Collectives for Justice?

 
Political Society - Of Middle Men and Processes of Fragmentation

 
 
VI: TOWARDS A POLITICS OF POST-CIVIL SOCIETY
Politics in the Waiting Lounge: Dithering Movements and Moments

 
Post and Beyond: 'Dialectics of Struggle'

 

The author critically unpacks the concept of ‘political society’, which was formulated as a response to the idea of civil society in the post-colonial context and reframes issues of democracy and agency in India within a wider scope than has ever been published before.

The New Indian Express

Undoubtedly one of the best Marxist critiques of the limitations of civil society as a transformative force...opens up many vistas for people who have been even faintly associated with political and social movements.

Frontline