In this dissertation, I try to understand processes of dispossession and exclusion within a class-focused Marxian framework grounded in the epistemological position of overdetermination. The Marxian concept of primitive accumulation has become increasingly prominent in contemporary discussions on these issues. The dominant reading of “primitive accumulation” in the Marxian tradition is historicist, and consequently the notion itself remains outside the field of Marxian political economy. The contemporary literature has de-historicized the concept, but at the same time missed Marx’s unique class-perspective. Based on a non-historicist reading of Marx, I argue that primitive accumulation—i.e. separation of direct producers from means of production in non-capitalist class processes—is constitutive of capitalism and not a historical process confined to the period of transition from pre-capitalism to capitalism. I understand primitive accumulation as one aspect of a more complex (contradictory) relation between capitalist and non-capitalist class structure which is subject to uneven development and which admit no teleological universalization of any one class structure. Thus, this dissertation claims to present a notion of primitive accumulation theoretically grounded in the Marxian political economy. In particular, the dissertation problematizes the dominance of capital over a heterogeneous social formation and understands primitive accumulation as a process which simultaneously supports and undermines such dominance. At a more concrete level, I apply this new understanding of primitive accumulation to a social formation—consisting of “ancient” and capitalist enterprises—and consider a particular conjuncture where capitalist accumulation is accompanied by emergence and even expansion of a “surplus population” primarily located in the “ancient” economy. Using these theoretical arguments, I offer an account of postcolonial capitalism in India, distinguishing between two different regimes—(1) the dirigiste planning regime and (2) the laissez-faire regime. I argue that both regimes had to grapple with the problem of surplus population, as the capitalist expansion under both regimes involved primitive accumulation. I show how small peasant agriculture, traditional non-capitalist industry and informal “ancient” enterprises (both rural and urban) have acted as “sinks” for surplus population throughout the period of postcolonial capitalist development in India. Keywords: primitive accumulation, surplus population, postcolonial capitalism

In this dissertation, an ethnography of transnational commercial surrogacy in India, I argue that existing Eurocentric and ethics-oriented frames for studying surrogacy make invisible the labor and resistances of women within this process. By framing commercial surrogacy as ‘labor’ instead, I ask: How do commercial surrogate mothers in India, as participants in a new kind of labor, challenge and/or re-affirm ideologies, discourses and practices surrounding not just surrogacy, but women’s role as producers and reproducers? Through participant observation and open ended interviews, I reveal the “labor” of women that often remains invisible and underpaid: whether in the form of “dirty” labor, “embodied labor” (labor that requires intensive use of their physical selves) or “kinship labor” (the labor of forming and maintaining kinship ties). Instead of romanticizing the everyday resistances of the surrogates, I highlight the inherent paradox of their resistances to domination by the family, the community, the clinic and the state. The multiple sites of domination imply that resistance to one set of forces often involves reification of other forms of domination. At one level, the significance of my research is that it is the only existing work on this stunning example of international division of (reproductive) labor where poor women of the global south have babies for richer women, often from the global north. This study aims to move beyond the Euro-American setting and get a broader view of the cultural response to new reproductive technologies. By calling for the recognition of commercial surrogacy as “labor”, I challenge the gendered dichotomies of natural and biology versus social and labor. Simultaneously, I deconstruct the image of the “victim” inevitably evoked whenever bodies of “Third World” women are in focus. It’s likely that the everyday resistances by the surrogates in India pose very little threat to the fundamentally exploitative structure of transnational surrogacy. What they do represent, however, is a constant process of negotiation and strategizing at the local level. They provoke a reappraisal of existing assumptions surrounding not just surrogacy but our understanding of new forms of women’s labor and local resistances, new bases for forming kinship ties and novel responses to new reproductive technologies and biomedicalization.

From 2001–2007, students from India have consistently comprised the largest ethnic group of international students on college campuses across the United States (Open Doors: Report on International Educational Exchange, 2007). Despite a number of studies that have researched the mental health of international students in the U.S., none have done so primarily with Indian graduate students. Theoretical and empirical literature regarding the psychological changes and acculturation patterns that international students undergo after their transition do not explore the possibility of multiple pathways of change. The current study identified four separate mental health trajectories for Indian international graduate students during their first year in the U.S. It also found three distinct patterns of acculturation for the Indian culture and four acculturation trajectories for the European American culture. The size of one’s adjustment, feelings about transition, gender role attitudes, and availability of out-group support were all significant contributors to the variability among empirically derived mental health trajectories.

This dissertation looks into different aspects of women's lives in the aftermath of Nepal's ten-year long (1996–2006) Maoist insurgency. It consists of four essays, each focusing on the experience of Nepali women in a particular aspect of post-conflict development and reconstruction activity. The first essay undertakes an examination of the survival and coping strategies of widow-headed households (WHHs) in Nepal in the aftermath of the Maoist conflict. Using qualitative data from in-depth interviews, the chapter analyzes the material consequences of the conflict on such households, the strategies such households have adopted in the aftermath to cope with economic uncertainty and insecurity of livelihoods, and the role of social and cultural processes in determining these strategies. Social and cultural norms pertaining to widowhood emerge as salient determinants of the level of kin and non-kin support widow heads of household can muster, of their workday structure, of their choice of employment and of their children's welfare. Contradictory outcomes prevail in determining WHHs' actual outcomes, which are also dependent upon class, caste, location and ethnic background. The second essay is a case study of peacebuilding and reconstruction activities undertaken by women's savings and credit cooperatives in Nepal in the post-conflict period. Using secondary data from a peacebuilding project called the Developing Democracy in Nepal (DDN) carried out by the Canadian Cooperatives Association (CCA) and the Center for Microfinance (CMF) in Nepal in the cease-fire period (in 2009), the chapter examines "bottom-up" peacebuilding and the role of women's cooperatives in reducing violence, promoting reconciliation and building peace in their local communities. The case of the DDN becomes a starting point to scrutinize the nature of peacebuilding and reconstruction—including its gendered elements—undertaken by cooperatives, and the dilemmas and challenges that appear herein. Lessons from the Nepal case are distilled for future development and peacebuilding practice. The third essay draws examples from qualitative (interview) data on Nepal's Maoist conflict to illustrate the ways in which attention to women's lived experiences of violent conflict can be used to inform policies and programs of post-conflict reconstruction and development in war-torn societies. Using women's narratives from in-depth interviews, it is argued that such a feminist perspective complicates conventional understandings of the processes and effects of violent conflict and encourages a closer look at the definitions, concepts and assumptions employed in exercises of post-conflict reconstruction or peacebuilding. The crucial insights gained from women survivors' narratives suggest a reflexive approach to policy-making and program design in war-torn contexts. The final essay is a quantitative exploration of the hypothesis that the incidence of female headship increases after periods of violent conflict. Using district level data from the Nepal Livings Standards Surveys and conflict intensity data from a human rights organization in Nepal, the chapter uses regression analysis to trace the relationship between conflict intensity and female headship. While the hypothesis is not borne out in the case of Nepal, the role of migration and geographical terrain emerges as relevant for female headship in the case of Nepal. The findings of the dissertation support its initial premise that it is essential to view material life and economic phenomena through a gendered lens in order to uncover the social, cultural and institutional constraints that are in operation for particular groups, especially women. In looking at how these constraints are exacerbated, or may provide opportunities for agency and action, important insights can be afforded into social processes and development outcomes.

No description available.

Histories of tafsīr in South Asia have been mainly focused on identifying extant works of Qur’anic scholarship in the region. There are only a few academic works that explore the primary sources in detail. Surveys of the present state of the study of modern Qur’anic commentaries also highlight the lacunae in our knowledge of regional tafsīr and Qur’anic hermeneutics. Focusing on Urdu and Arabic works, the current study as a work of intellectual history is the first systematic attempt to open a new area of inquiry. Building on the earlier historiography of the pre-modern tafsīr in South Asia, it charts the development of Qur’anic hermeneutics in British India by focusing on the works of Sayyid Aḥmad Khān (d. 1898), Ashraf ʿAlī Thānawī (d. 1943), and Ḥamīd al-Dīn Farāhī (d. 1930), along with larger exegetical literature that emerged in North India. Looking beyond the artificial dichotomy of modernity and tradition and of reform and revivalism, as forces making an impact on Muslim Qur’anic thought, the current study focuses on two questions. What were the continuities and shifts in Qur’anic hermeneutics in British India since the latter half of the nineteenth century? Why did Qur’anic hermeneutics evolve the way it did in the multiple milieux of colonial India? The thesis also investigates an ancillary question: In developing their positions on Qur’anic hermeneutics, how did Muslim scholars in the period under examination conceive their relationship with the Muslim intellectual tradition in terms of their continuity or discontinuity? The study demonstrates the impact of historical forces and Muslim creative thinking on the development of modern Qur’anic hermeneutics in South Asia. Disagreeing on some key points with the current scholarship on modern Qur’an commentaries and Muslim scholarship in British India, the study shows that the period witnessed to the rise of new approaches to the study of the Qur’an in addition to the continuation of earlier trends. Moreover, it shows that Muslim scholarly ideas on the nature of the Muslim intellectual tradition in general, including Qur’anic exegesis, had a decisive impact on the development of thinking about the Qur’an in this period. / Graduate / 2021-12-22

I examine the impact of policies toward agricultural globalization on growth patterns, distribution patterns, commercialization, and the supply response of peasant farmers by analyzing agriculture in the Telangana region of South India between 1985 and 2000. I perform growth computations between 1970 and 2000 for agriculture in this region, track distributional changes based on the National Sample Survey (NSS) data between 1985 and 2000 using non-parametric regression techniques, and estimate an econometric model of supply response for Telangana farmers. This empirical investigation leads to two puzzles—one in the supply response arena and the other in the distributional arena. First, even as the prices of market-oriented crops have declined between 1991 and 2000 (during the phase of globalization), the planted area and the output of these crops have been rising rapidly. Second, between 1985 and 2000, the annual exponential growth rate of real agricultural output in the Telangana region of South India has been more than 4%, higher than much of the developing world during the same period, even as a majority of the farming population has undergone significant income/consumption losses, tragically manifested in the suicides of more than a thousand farmers. I explain these puzzles first by studying the historical antecedents (1925–1985) of agrarian change in the region, then through a theoretical peasant economy model with a lien constraint that is similar to the model that Ransom and Sutch employed in the context of the post-bellum US South, and finally by analyzing village-level institutional mechanisms based on field research (2000–01) in the region. The main conclusion of the dissertation is that the globalization-induced decline in the prices of non-food output in conjunction with local informal lending practices that require these very non-food crops as collateral help explain the tragic puzzles. The policy implications are also analyzed in the dissertation.

Community-based natural resource management has become immensely popular among some policy makers on the assumption that involvement of local communities can achieve conservation goals with greater efficiency and equity. However, the community is quite often conceived of as an undifferentiated whole. Given that diverse groups may exist within a community, with heterogeneous interests, abilities, incentives, and social affiliations, such a conception is problematic. This dissertation empirically investigates the effects of heterogeneity on use and management of common forests. This dissertation conducts a meso-level study of heterogeneity using the 'community' as the unit of analysis. The data are derived from fieldwork conducted in the middle Himalayan ranges of Himachal Pradesh, India in 2004. During this fieldwork, survey data were collected in 54 forest communities. This method contrasts with the usual practice of examining individual motivations or conducting a cross-section country-level study. There are two key findings. First, three dimensions of heterogeneity affect collective management of forests: heterogeneity in wealth, social groups and incentives. However, these effects are complex and non-linear. The empirical results suggest that both social and wealth heterogeneity have a non-monotonic relationship with cooperation. In addition, heterogeneity in incentives decreases cooperation conditional on the presence of wealth heterogeneity. These results imply that cooperation does not depend on social parochialism, very high levels of wealth heterogeneity reduce cooperation, and a divergence between wealth and incentive to cooperate decreases the level of collective management. Second, forest use is affected by heterogeneity as well. The sampled communities have access to forests that are common property, in that rights of use are vested with the community and not the individual. This means that all individuals in the community should be able to use the forest to the same degree. However, on investigating the effect of heterogeneity in forest use, the dissertation finds that wealth heterogeneity increases whereas social heterogeneity decreases the extent of forest use even after controlling for market related factors. The results therefore, suggest that the social structure of the community plays an important role in determining both the degree of cooperation and extent of forest use at the community level.

This dissertation is about the formations of the king as knowledge of the political in early eighteenth-century Brahmaputra Valley, in present day northeast India. Here, I identify three areas as the sites of the political: courtly-monastic politics, pleasure, and law. Each chapter of the dissertation presents a contemporary iteration of the king that contributed to the understanding of the political in early eighteenth-century Brahmaputra Valley. In doing so, I propose an understanding of kingship founded in the person of the king. Drawing on expressive literature, epigraphs, and visual sources written in the first few decades of the eighteenth century in the court of the Tungkhungia kings of Brahmaputra Valley and the Vaiṣṇava monasteries in the region, I argue that the person (and the body) of the king was the site of the political in the courtly-monastic spaces. This understanding of a personalised kingship in the courtly-monastic spaces was in dialogue with transregional political imaginations of kingship, both imperial Mughal and subimperial Rajput of early modern South Asia. In the dissertation, I bring together sources in Assamese, Persian, Sanskrit, and Tai-Ahom towards revealing the ways in which a distinct local articulation of the king in areas of politics, pleasure, and law was located within translocal and transregional networks of learning stretching across the regions lying to the western and southern borders of the territories of the Tungkhungia kings. Through a conceptualisation of early eighteenth-century Brahmaputra Valley as a “contact zone” between Mughal-Rajput, Tai-Ahom, and Burmese cultural forms that clashed and grappled in the wake of Brahman arrival in the court of the Tungkhungia kings I historicise the multiple iterations of the king towards understanding the intellectual conditions that emerged as foundations of a new political imagination. Moving away from cultural histories of kingship in early modern South Asia where studies of cultural productions have remained the lens for analysis of kingship; in this dissertation I look at the formations of the king within specific areas of intellectual inquiry towards writing a history of the multiple iterations of the king, across institutions, in early eighteenth-century Brahmaputra Valley. The dissertation, thus, intervenes in the study of kingship in early modern South Asia and the World, demonstrating the centrality of the person of the king, in contemporary understandings of the political, rather than the “body politic” that is immutable and imperishable. The dissertation, thus, with its focus on early eighteenth-century Brahmaputra Valley, brings to light theories of the political emerging from the margins of imperial histories of early modern South Asia and the World.

No description available.