Beyond Enrolment and Appropriation Politics in Dalit Girls’ Education: Caste and Patriarchy Among Scavenging Communities of Urban Haryana, India

Contemporary Voice of Dalit, Volume 15, Issue 1_suppl, Page S100-S112, August 2023.
While contemplating on Dalit girls’ education, a large body of research and policy drafts generally draws from the integration of enrolment and appropriation politics (around being a ‘Dalit’ and ‘women’) to explore the educational experiences and challenges of Dalit girls in the Indian education system. However, less attention is given to what lies beyond the enrolment and appropriation politics in Dalit girls’ education. This article is based on an empirical study conducted among households associated with ‘Unclean’ occupations from two urban cities of Haryana. In order to position Dalit girls’ education beyond enrolment and appropriation politics, the article attempts to unmask the ‘multiple patriarchies’ embedded in the socio-economic barriers often pervading Dalit girls in the Indian education system. While doing so, the article demonstrates the inseparable intersectionality of caste and gender, through the workings of external Brahmanical as well as internal Dalit patriarchy simultaneously functioning against Dalit girls’ education. Eventually, the article calls for a need to position Dalit girls’ education in a Dalit feminist standpoint framework.

Environmental chauvinism? Explaining issue expansion among non-mainstream parties

Party Politics, Ahead of Print.
Do non-mainstream parties respond to other non-mainstream parties’ owned issues? Whereas a great deal of extant research has examined the owned issues of non-mainstream parties and when mainstream parties take on these issues, little research has been done to explore when non-mainstream parties expand their issue focus to include the owned issues of other non-mainstream parties. We argue that non-mainstream parties will expand their issue focus as the public salience on the issue increases, but that this expansion is conditioned by the type of issue. In particular, we posit that non-mainstream parties will expand on issues on which there is agreement among their supporters. To test our claims, we examine radical-left, radical right and green parties’ issue expansion on the environment and immigration in 15 West and East European countries from 1980–2018 using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, national election studies, and the Comparative Manifestos Project. Our findings have important implications for non-mainstream parties’ issue evolution and party competition more generally.

Partisanship and science advice: Do the right prefer economists and the left social scientists?

Party Politics, Ahead of Print.
It is often claimed that parties on the left and right have different preferences for scholarly knowledge. However, little research has addressed whether partisanship actually matters for science advice preferences, particularly in the European setting. Drawing on original data on governmental appointments of academic scholars to more than 1400 public advisory commissions in Norway between 1969 and 2020, this article examines whether the left–right divide matters for cabinets’ consultation of economists and social scientists. The findings reveal that left-wing governments in Norway have consulted scholars of social science—such as sociologists and political scientists—more frequently than right-wing governments. In contrast, partisanship seem to matter less for the consultation of economic scholars, as economists have been extensively used as advisors by both blocs in the period studied. Overall, the article contributes theoretical and empirical knowledge to the politics of science advice.

Right-wing populism and territorial party competition: The case of the Alternative for Germany

Party Politics, Ahead of Print.
The study of electoral competition of populist radical right (PRR) parties has mostly focused on the national and supranational levels, leaving the subnational arena unexplored. This article contributes to filling this gap by theorizing on PRR parties’ strategic behaviour in regional elections and testing the hypotheses using the Alternative for Germany (AfD) as a case study. Combining new Regional Manifestos Project data with a qualitative exploration, the article shows that the AfD has adapted to a regional frame of competition in different ways. While its radical conservatism on cultural issues is cross-regionally homogenous, the positions in other dimensions do significantly vary across Länder, revealing a mix of economically rightist and leftist positions as well as a mix of national and regional identity appeals. The latter are combined with differentiated and conflictive competential demands. These findings pave the way for a more ambitious research agenda on PRR substate competition, which so far has been limited by the lack of comparable data.

Sairat Zaala Ji…

Contemporary Voice of Dalit, Ahead of Print.
In Maharashtra, a few numbers of films have been produced on Dalit marginal or subaltern narratives, mainly based on the intersectionality of caste and gender conflicts. Unfortunately, these films have not received good responses nor got a box office success like Sairat movie did in the twenty-first century. In India, caste conflict, Brahminical hegemony and gender discrimination issues have produced fewer cinematic narratives about subalterns and badly left them without a voice. This article significantly exemplifies the Sairat movie to understand how a young generation in Maharashtra (especially from the rural areas) is facing caste hierarchy, class conflict, discrimination, gender-related issues and challenges in their lives. A class conflict and the characters’ struggle can be seen through the protagonists Parshya (Akash Thosar) and Archi (Rinku Rajguru) when they get married and start living their lives as an average couple, but nothing happens as a happy ending. This story re/presents the struggle of inter-caste marriage couples, social unacceptability and exclusion. They fail to resist the social, political and caste conflicts and get killed. In short, they become a victim of honour killing. To conclude, Sairat represents social, gender and caste conflict and reflects the struggle of youngsters in inter-caste marriages.

Becoming Dalit Women’s Voice: Engaging with Self-reflective Narrative in Bama’s Karukku

Contemporary Voice of Dalit, Volume 15, Issue 1_suppl, Page S113-S126, August 2023.
Dalit writings are considered to be centred on the issue of identity politics. Most analysis rests on their claim of identity as fixed and static. They ignore an embedded process of various spatial implications, characters’ interaction with it, and a self-reflexive narrative gaze that most of the prominent Dalit writers present through their autobiographical narratives. Concentration on these concepts provides a fresh perspective to critically analyse Dalit writings and presents a different understanding of identity formation. This article proposes to unearth this process through a reading of Bama’s Karukku (2012), in English translation. It attempts to establish that identity formation in Dalit writings is a process that is based on various kinds of spatial experiences that could be divided into three stages of development. This process culminates in transforming a character into a politically conscious Dalit figure. Also, this article attempts to chart a character’s development that corroborates to body’s spatial-cultural location and its response to/within that space. It is an attempt to understand various spatial ramifications that the character experiences in an attempt to forge an identity outside the traditional definition.