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SUMMARY:The Articulation of Bureaucratic Everydayness in the Indian Himala
 ya - Nayanika Mathur (Social Anthropology\; CRASSH)
DTSTART:20130508T110000Z
DTEND:20130508T130000Z
UID:TALK45128@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Ruth Rushworth
DESCRIPTION:Dr Nayanika Mathur (Social Anthropology\; CRASSH) presents at 
 the CRASSH Postdoctoral Research Seminar.\n\nRegister online: http://www.c
 rassh.cam.ac.uk/events/2431/\n\nAbstract\n\nThis paper is an ethnographic 
 rendition of the everyday life of a development bureaucracy in a district 
 in the Indian Himalaya. I am centrally concerned with exploring the means 
 through which one can capture and represent through writing the mundane\, 
 repetitive\, quotidian life of bureaucracy. My subject of study is the bur
 eaucratic apparatus of the Indian state. I ask what insights into the func
 tioning of the contemporary Indian state can we glean through an attention
  to the particular and the everyday of bureaucracy. Based on 18 months of 
 fieldwork in India\, I trace the processes and things – paper – throug
 h which an ambitious anti-poverty legislation was implemented in a Himalay
 an state. Through this detailing I show how and why this developmental law
  met with surprisingly little success in this impoverished Himalayan regio
 n of India. I conclude by arguing that crumbling government offices and se
 emingly ordinary bureaucratic procedures and objects are central to the co
 ntinual production of the developmental Indian state. In the acknowledgeme
 nt of the centrality of these spaces and things we will\, I suggest\, gain
  a keener insight into why India continues to struggle to meet its welfare
  objectives.\n\nAbout Nayanika Mathur\n\nNayanika Mathur is Postdoctoral R
 esearch Fellow at CRASSH. She is a Social Anthropologist with an interest 
 in the ethnography of bureaucracy\, poverty\, the state\, capitalism\, and
  human-animal relations. Her book manuscript\, deriving from her doctoral 
 research\, entitled Paper Tiger: Bureaucracy and the Developmental State i
 n the Indian Himalaya is currently under review. At CRASSH she is beginnin
 g her postdoctoral research\, which is a comparative historical and ethnog
 raphic study of national ID systems in India and the UK. This work will st
 udy the relation between ideals of transparency and the generation of susp
 icion of democratic government. Nayanika has previously lectured in Social
  Anthropology at the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh.
LOCATION:CRASSH\, Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambridge\, CB3 
 9DT
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