Sangeeta Kamat

The privatization of public interest: theorizing NGO discourse in a neoliberal era

This paper examines recent policy discussions on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and their central role in the democratization of civil society. The author argues that the policy debate on NGOs exemplifies the conflict between liberalism and socialism, or more specifically between private interest and public good. The contemporary context of neoliberal economic policies and structural adjustment represents a vindication of liberal norms, and the ascendancy of NGOs is theorized in this context. An analysis of recent policy positions on NGOs and their role in promoting governance and development is illustrative of the complex ways in which NGOs, at local and international levels, are being incorporated into the neoliberal model of civil society.

The NGO Phenomenon and Political Culture in the Third World

Sangeeta Kamat focuses on the experience of community-based NGOs, also known as CBOs or grassroots organizations, to elaborate on the political culture engendered by NGOs in the global economy. This article draws upon her work on CBOs in India, recently published as a book, as well as her forthcoming work on the regulation of NGOs in the neo-liberal policy context.

Producing hi-tech: globalization, the state and migrant subjects

This paper examines the role of the state in the context of globalization. Taking up the specific case of Indian software engineers and their migration to the USA, the authors show the involvement of the Indian state and the US at different levels. The growth of the IT labour sector was based on changes in the higher education policy of the Indian state while the large-scale migration of IT workers from India required changes in the immigration policies of the US. The authors argue that these policy changes reflect how nation-states alter their national policies to meet the demands of the global economy. Equally important, the authors show that the policy changes are indicative of the unique political context and culture of each country. In the case of India, the education policy changes relate to caste politics while the immigration policy of the USA shares the legacy of US race politics.

Neoliberalism, urbanism and the education economy: producing Hyderabad as a ‘global city’

This paper examines the emergence of Hyderabad as a hub of the global information technology economy, and in particular, the role of higher education in Hyderabads transformation as the labor market for the new economy. The extensive network of professional education institutions that service the global economy illustrates the ways in which neoliberal globalization is produced through educational restructuring and new modes of urban development. Neoliberal globalization, however, is a variegated process wherein local social hierarchies articulate with state policies and global capital. This study shows how caste and class relations in the education sector in Andhra Pradesh are instrumental to forming Hyderabads connection to the global economy. The contradictions of these regional realignments of education, geography and economy are manifest in the uneven development of the region and the rise of new socio-political struggles for the right to the city.

Postcolonial aporias, or what does fundamentalism have to do with globalization? the contradictory consequences of education reform in India

How do we understand the rise of religious nationalisms in the context of an increasingly globalized and interconnected world? Recent events in the education sector in India provide a particularly compelling example of this contradictory phenomenon. While on the one hand, the Indian State is liberalizing its economic and social sectors to compete in the global economy, in a paradoxical move, it has introduced a new Hindu nationalist curriculum in schools across the country. This article analyses the controversial national curriculum framework released in November 2000 that presents the States new vision of education. The author argues that the cultural nationalist discourse of the new curriculum is part of Indias postcolonial history that finds new meaning and purpose in the current phase of globalization.How do we understand the rise of religious nationalisms in the context of an increasingly globalized and interconnected world? Recent events in the education sector in India provide a particularly compelling example of this contradictory phenomenon. While on the one hand, the Indian State is liberalizing its economic and social sectors to compete in the global economy, in a paradoxical move, it has introduced a new Hindu nationalist curriculum in schools across the country. This article analyses the controversial national curriculum framework released in November 2000 that presents the States new vision of education. The author argues that the cultural nationalist discourse of the new curriculum is part of Indias postcolonial history that finds new meaning and purpose in the current phase of globalization.

The Political Orientations of Teachers

Teachers work and live within unequal relations of power. Capitalism, patriarchy, racial or ethnic group stratification, authoritarian religious or secular state formations, or imperialism are imbedded not only in local, national and global communities but also in teachers’ immediate work sites (classrooms and campuses) as well as in the educational system more generally. What teachers do in and outside their workplaces is dialectically related to the distribution of both a) the material and symbolic resources and b) the structural and ideological power used to control the means of producing, reproducing, consuming, and accumulating material and symbolic resources. In these terms teachers can and should be considered as political actors (Carlson, 1987). At its core politics consists of power relations. Politics “concerns the procedures by which scarce resources are allocated and distributed... [and the struggles] between groups who uphold and those who challenge the status quo” (Dove, 1986, p. 30). Teachers are engaged in political action in their pedagogical, curricular, and evaluation work with students in classrooms and corridors; in their interaction with parents, colleagues, and administrators in educational institutions; in their occupational group dealings with education system authorities and state elites, and in their “citizen” roles in local, national, and global communities. It is sometimes believed that teachers can and should be apolitical (cf., Zeigler, 1967). Such a belief rests partly on a distinction between professional or technical activity and political action. A related foundation for this belief is the contrast between personal and political matters or between activity in the public versus the private sphere (Weiler, 1988). Teachers’ work is thus characterized as professional or technical, involving personal relationships among individuals in the private sphere of the classroom or school. From this perspective, it is atypical or undesirable for “professional” teachers to venture into the public sphere, either the educational system as members of organizations or the community as members of political parties or social movements. The alternate perspective on which this chapter is based views teachers as political actors regardless of whether they are active or passive; autonomous or heteronomous vis-a-vis other political forces/groups; conservative or change-oriented; seeking

Anthropology and Global Capital: Rediscovering the Noble Savage

This article examines the recent burgeoning of tribal movements within the context of the current global political economy. Contemporary events within the Thane District of Maharashtra, India are linked up with scientific and institutional discourses on tribal and indigenous people, which present certain caveats for anthropologists. I argue that positive representations of tribal people do not necessarily translate into an advancement of struggles for justice and equity. In the conclusion, I focus upon the need for social theorists to rethink their role to be one of articulation rather than of representation of tribal issues/movements.

The Poverty of Theory

In the early decades of the World Bank’s ambitious mission of crafting a “World Without Poverty,“ aid to education was accorded low priority among its extensive loan packages and policy formulations aimed at developing nations. Development scholars lamented the World Bank’s benign neglect of education, especially given its directive role in establishing development priorities that were followed by other multilateral and bilateral agencies. The World Bank’s focus for much of the 1960s and 1970s was on large infrastructure projects such as hydroelectric dams, modernizing agricultural production and in the social sectors on reducing maternal mortality, infant mortality and promoting family planning for population control.

Religion, education and the politics of recognition: a critique and a counter‐proposal

How should religion be integrated into school curriculum? The authors compare two recent controversies about religion in school curriculum to provide an overarching perspective that can guide educators in their efforts to use religion for pedagogical purposes. The first controversy concerns curriculum approved by the California State Board of Education on ancient India and the second is a lesson approved by the Kerala State Board of Education textbook. Drawing upon political philosopher Nancy Fraser’s work, the authors argue that the first conflict is illustrative of a ‘politics of recognition’ while the second exemplifies a ‘politics of redistribution’. An analysis of the two cases provides an ethical framework that alerts us to the dangers and the possibilities of integrating religion in education. The authors propose that curriculum about religion that is based on a ‘politics of redistribution’ has the potential to contribute toward a more just and equitable society.

NGOs, Social Movements and the Neoliberal State: Incorporation, Reinvention, Critique

As the global financial crisis turns a decade old, economic and political polarisation has intensified. The nature of neoliberalism as a mode of accumulation that penetrates virtually all aspects of economic, political and social life has meant that the global financial crisis is, of course, not limited to the economy. It has come to be accompanied by full-scale political and social crises in both the Global North and South (Cahill and Konings, 2017; Mirowski, 2014), and a crisis of neoliberalism itself (Saad-Filho, 2011). Despite the intellectual vacuity of neoliberalism as a system capable of explaining the world, and its declining legitimacy the world over, the neoliberals themselves appear to have no alternative to neoliberalism, except authoritarianism. The question is whether the managers of the system are capable of containing the crisis – or otherwise allowing the emergence of even more reactionary, xenophobic forces to assume power – or whether the crisis will be resolved through mass opposition to the neoliberal state. A progressive opposition will include the range of social movements, trade unions and political parties, and the building of alternative institutions, throwing neoliberalism into further crisis. Within this frame, what makes NGOs distinct is their ambivalence: the fact that they are, on the one hand, a ‘favoured institutional form’ (Kamat, 2013: ix) of the neoliberal state and, on the other, capable of building alliances against neoliberalism, particularly in times of polarisation and crisis (Beinin, 2014; Dauvergne and LeBaron, 2014). In a global context where NGOs are subject to further subsumption as ideological weapons of the state and ‘material complicity with capital’ (Choudry and Kapoor, 2013: 14), and yet where there is growing class conflict and an increasing rejection of the status quo, we cannot assume their political affinities and affiliations; instead we must consider whether and how exactly they engage in oppositional politics and under what conditions. The neoliberal venture of the past four decades has been devastatingly successful in reinforcing the transfer of wealth and power from public to private, from poor to rich and from labour to capital. In the process, this phase of capitalism has brought forth deepening financialisation and