Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T13:25:16.721Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

DECENTRALISED GOVERNANCE AS SITES FOR SELF-FORMATION: A COMPARISON OF PRACTICES OF WELFARE DISTRIBUTION IN TELANGANA, INDIA, AND CENTRAL LOMBOK, INDONESIA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2014

Tanya Jakimow*
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Australia. E-mail [email protected]

Abstract

Studies that examine the effects of decentralisation for social change or stasis have placed necessary attention on its institutional dynamics: the ways social institutions have transformed as a result of new governance regimes, or alternatively, how the existing institutional context and attendant power relations determine its actualisation. The second facet of the structure/agency dialectic is often overlooked however, that is, the actors themselves. This article seeks to overcome this lacuna by exploring the effects of citizens' engagement in practices associated with decentralised governance for individuals' understandings of self, society, and their relationship with the state. A comparison of two villages in Telangana, India, and Central Lombok, Indonesia reveals how differences in the distribution of welfare benefits have implications for the potential of such interactions to be sites of creative self-formation. Differences such as the regularity and ability to demand entitlements, preferential versus equal access to resources, and the levels at which citizens engage with the state, may be crucial for processes of subjectification, and by extension, social transformation.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Agrawal 2005 Agrawal, Arun. “Environmentality: Community, Intimate Government and the Making of Environmental Subjects in Kumaon, India.” Current Anthropology 46:2 (2005), pp. 161–90.Google Scholar
Althusser 1971 Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. London: New Left, 1971.Google Scholar
Antlov 2003 Antlov, Hans. “Village Government and Rural Development in Indonesia: The New Democratic Framework.” Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 39:2 (2003), pp. 193214.Google Scholar
Aretxaga 2003 Aretxaga, Begona. “Maddening States.” Annual Review of Anthropology 32 (2003), pp. 393410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aspinall 2013 Aspinall, Edward. “A Nation in Fragments.” Critical Asian Studies 45:1 (2013), pp. 2754.Google Scholar
Auyero 2012 Auyero, Javier. Patients of the State: The Politics of Waiting in Argentina. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Bardhan 2002 Bardhan, Pranab. “Decentralization of Governance and Development.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 16:4 (2002), pp. 185205.Google Scholar
Bartley et al. 2008 Bartley, T., Andersson, K., Jagger, P., and Van Laerhoven, F.. “The Contribution of Institutional Theories to Explaining Decentralization of Natural Resource Governance.” Society and Natural Resources 21:2 (2008), pp. 160–74.Google Scholar
Bebbington et al. 2004 Bebbington, Anthony, Dharmawan, Leni, Fahmi, Erwin, and Guggenheim, Scott. “Village Politics, Culture and Community-Driven Development: Insights from Indonesia.” Progress in Development Studies 4:3 (2004), pp. 187205.Google Scholar
Bonu et al. 2011 Bonu, S., Rani, M., Peters, D. H., and Baker, T. D.. “Empowering the ‘Socially Excluded’ in Rural Local Governments: An Exploratory Study from a State in India.” Journal of International Development 23:1 (2011), pp. 4262.Google Scholar
Bourdieu 1990 Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buehler 2010 Buehler, M.Decentralisation and Local Democracy in Indonesia: The Marginalisation of the Public Sphere.” In Problems of Democratisation in Indonesia: Elections, Institutions and Society, eds. Aspinall, E. and Mietzner, M., pp. 267–85. Singapore: ISEAS, 2010.Google Scholar
Butler 1997 Butler, Judith. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell 2004 Campbell, John. Institutional Change and Globalization. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Chatterjee 2004 Chatterjee, Partha. The Politics of the Governed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Corbridge et al. 2005 Corbridge, S., Williams, G., Srivastava, M., and Veron, R.. Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Cleaver 2002 Cleaver, Francis. “Reinventing Institutions: Bricolage and the Social Embeddedness of Natural Resource Management.” European Journal of Development Research 14:2 (2002), pp. 1130.Google Scholar
Crook and Manor 1998 Crook, R., and Manor, J.. Democracy and Decentralisation in South Asia and West Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Das and Poole 2004 Das, Veena, and Poole, Deborah. “State and Its Margins: Comparative Ethnographies.” In Anthropology in the Margins of the State, eds. Das, V. and Poole, D., pp. 334. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Eggen 2012 Eggen, Oyvind. “Performing Good Governance: The Aesthetics of Bureaucratic Governance in Malawi.” Ethnos 77:1 (2012), pp. 123.Google Scholar
Ferguson 2013 Ferguson, James. “Declarations of Dependence: Labour, Personhood, and Welfare in Southern Africa.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 19 (2013), pp. 223–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault 1994 Foucault, Michael. “The Ethics of the Concern of the Self as a Practice of Freedom.” In Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Rabinow, P., pp. 281302. New York: The New Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Giddens 1979 Giddens, Anthony. Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis. London, Macmillan, 1979.Google Scholar
Government of India (GoI) n.d. Government of India (GoI) n.d. “The Constitution (73rd Amendment) Act 1992.” http://indiacode.nic.in/coiweb/amend/amend73.htm, accessed 11 March 2013.Google Scholar
Gupta 2012 Gupta, Akhil. Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence and Poverty in India. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Hadiz 2010 Hadiz, Vedi. Localising Power in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia: A Southeast Asia Perspective. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Hall and Taylor 1996 Hall, Peter A., and Taylor, Rosemary C. R.. “Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms.” Political Studies 44 (1996), pp. 936–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harriss et al. 2004 Harriss, John, Stokke, Kristian, and Tornquist, Olle. “Introduction: The New Local Politics of Democratisation.” In Politicising Democracy: The New Politics of Democratisation, eds. Harriss, J., Stokke, K., and Tornquist, O., pp. 128. Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.Google Scholar
Heller 2009 Heller, Peter. “Democratic Deepening in India and South Africa.” Journal of Asian and African Studies 44:1 (2009), pp. 123–49.Google Scholar
Ito 2006 Ito, T.Dynamics of Local Governance Reform in Decentralizing Indonesia: Participatory Planning and Village Empowerment in Bandung, West Java’. Asian and African Area Studies 5:2 (2006), pp. 137–83.Google Scholar
Jakimow 2013 Jakimow, T.Unlocking the Black Box of Institutions in Livelihoods Analysis: Case Study from Andhra Pradesh, India.” Oxford Development Studies 41:4 (2013), pp. 493516.Google Scholar
Jayal 2011 Jayal, N. G.A False Dichotomy? The Unresolved Tension between Universal and Differentiated Citizenship in India.” Oxford Development Studies 39:2 (2011), pp. 185204.Google Scholar
Jessop 2001 Jessop, Bob. “Institutional Re(turns) and the Strategic-relational Approach.” Environment and Planning A 33 (2001), pp. 1213–35.Google Scholar
Johnson 2003 Johnson, Craig. “Decentralisation in India: Poverty, Politics and Panchayati Raj.” ODI Working Paper 199, 2003.Google Scholar
Johnson et al. 2005 Johnson, Craig, Deshingkar, Priya, and Start, Danial. “Grounding the State: Devolution and Development in India's Panchayats.” Journal of Development Studies 41:6 (2005), pp. 937–70.Google Scholar
Krishna 2011 Krishna, Anirudh. “Gaining Access to Public Services and the Democratic State in India: Institutions in the Middle.” Studies in Comparative International Development, 46 (2011), pp. 98117.Google Scholar
Laclau and Mouffe 2001 Laclau, Ernesto, and Mouffe, Chantal. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. Second Edition. London: Verso, 2001.Google Scholar
Li 2007 Li, Tania Murray. The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development and the Practice of Politics. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Moore 2007 Moore, Henrietta. The Subject of Anthropology: Gender, Symbolism and Psychoanalysis. Cambridge: Polity, 2007.Google Scholar
Mouffe 1988 Mouffe, Chantal. “Hegemony and New Political Subjects: Toward a New Concept of Democracy.” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Nelson, C. and Grossberg, L., pp. 89104. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Mosse 1997 Mosse, David. “The Symbolic Making of a Common Property Resource: History, Ecology and Locality in a Tank-Irrigated Landscape in South India.” Development and Change 28 (1997), pp. 467504.Google Scholar
Nordholt 2004 Nordholt, Henk Schulte. ‘Decentralisation in Indonesia: Less State, More Democracy?’ In Politicising Democracy: The New Politics of Democratisation, eds. Harriss, J., Stokke, K., and Tornquist, O., pp. 2950. Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.Google Scholar
Ortner 2005 Ortner, Sherry B.Subjectivity and Cultural Critique.” Anthropological Theory 5:1 (2005), pp. 3152.Google Scholar
Oxhorn et al. 2004 Oxhorn, P., Tulchin, J. S., and Selee, A. D., eds. Decentralization, Democratic Governance, and Civil Society in Comparative Perspective. Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Press Centre, 2004.Google Scholar
Pattenden 2011 Pattenden, Jonathan. “Social Protection and Class Relations: Evidence from Scheduled Caste Women's Associations in Rural South India.” Development and Change 42:2 (2011), pp. 469–98.Google Scholar
Phillips 2006 Phillips, Kendall.R.Rhetorical Maneuvers: Subjectivity Power and Resistance.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 39:4 (2006), pp. 310–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pigg 1992 Pigg, Stacey Leigh.Inventing Social ategories through Place: Social Representations and Development in Nepal.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 34:3 (1992), pp. 491513.Google Scholar
Rosser et al. 2005 Rosser, Andrew, Roesad, Kurnya, and Edwin, Donni. “Indonesia: The Politics of Inclusion.” Journal of Contemporary Asia 35:1 (2005), pp. 5377.Google Scholar
Schmidt 2008 Schmidt, Vivien A.Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and Discourse.” Annual Review of Political Science 11 (2008), pp. 303–26.Google Scholar
Taussig 1997 Taussig, Michael. The Magic of the State. London: Routledge, 1997.Google Scholar
Tilly 1998 Tilly, Charles. “Where Do Rights Come From?” In Democracy, Revolution and History, ed. Skocpol, Theda, pp. 5572. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Udayaadithya and Gurtoo 2012 Udayaadithya, A., and Gurtoo, Anjula. “Working of Decentralized Governance in Rural India: Social Dynamics or Institutional Rational Choice?Journal of Asian and African Studies 47:1 (2012), pp. 101–18.Google Scholar