Claiming the State
Active Citizenship and Social Welfare in Rural India

Explores the conditions that shape whether and how citizens in rural India make claims on the state for social welfare.

Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner (Author)

9781316649008, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 16 August 2018

336 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.49 kg

'Kruks-Wisner rightly notes scholars of political participation have remained preoccupied with exceptional or episodic moments: mass mobilizations, armed struggles, voting, and campaign rallies. In doing so, they have neglected the quotidian forms of participation that define the political lives of most citizens across the global south. Her book rightly shifts attention to everyday claim-making, and asks important questions: who makes claims, when, and how? Using meticulously collected data from north India she finds surprising answers: claim-making is not the exclusive purview of men, urbanites, the wealthy, or the socially privileged. It can occur in even the most unlikely pockets, especially when citizens develop social and economic networks extending beyond their locality or social group. Claiming the State should have a sizeable impact in reorienting studies of political participation towards life between elections, and in how we think of the practice of citizenship in contemporary India.' Tariq Thachil, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee

Citizens around the world look to the state for social welfare provision, but often struggle to access essential services in health, education, and social security. This book investigates the everyday practices through which citizens of the world's largest democracy make claims on the state, asking whether, how, and why they engage public officials in the pursuit of social welfare. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in rural India, Kruks-Wisner demonstrates that claim-making is possible in settings (poor and remote) and among people (the lower classes and castes) where much democratic theory would be unlikely to predict it. Examining the conditions that foster and inhibit citizen action, she finds that greater social and spatial exposure - made possible when individuals traverse boundaries of caste, neighborhood, or village - builds citizens' political knowledge, expectations, and linkages to the state, and is associated with higher levels and broader repertoires of claim-making.

Part I. Introduction and Theory: 1. Introduction: citizenship and social welfare
2. A theory of active citizenship
Part II. Citizenship Practice In Rajasthan: 3. The institutional terrain of the state
4. Seeking the state: claim-making patterns and puzzles
5. Encountering the state: citizens' social and spatial exposure
6. Claiming the state: exposure as a catalyst for citizen action
Part III. Consequences and Extensions: 7. The consequences of claim-making
8. Conclusion: active citizenship in Rajasthan and beyond
Appendices
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Comparative politics [JPB], Political science & theory [JPA], Sociology [JHB], Development studies [GTF], Regional studies [GTB]