Akhil Gupta
2021
Gupta, Akhil
Technology, power, and the state in a complex agricultural society : the green revolution in a north Indian village Journal Article
In: pp. 223-236, 2021.
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abstract = {Thesis (Ph. D.)--Stanford University, 1988. Includes bibliographical references (p. 223-236). Photocopy.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Stanford University, 1988. Includes bibliographical references (p. 223-236). Photocopy.
Gupta, Akhil; Ali, Salman; Langford, Mohammed Jameel Steven J
Capacitive humidity sensing performance of naphthalene diimide derivatives at ambient temperature Journal Article
In: Synthetic Metals, vol. 275, 2021.
@article{Gupta2021,
title = {Capacitive humidity sensing performance of naphthalene diimide derivatives at ambient temperature},
author = {Akhil Gupta and Salman Ali and Mohammed Jameel Steven J Langford},
doi = {10.1016/j.synthmet.2021.116739},
year = {2021},
date = {2021-03-01},
journal = {Synthetic Metals},
volume = {275},
abstract = {We report for the first-time the development of capacitive type humidity sensors employing naphthalene diimide derivatives (NDI) as sensing layer. Three different naphthalene diimide derivatives bearing imide side chains of different hydrophilicity were designed, synthesised and characterised. X-ray diffraction and thermogravimetric analyses gave useful information about structural and thermal behaviour of the newly developed materials, indicating their crystallinity and stability. Atomic force microscopy analysis revealed a variety of morphologies in thin films as a result of the structural properties of the NDIs. Devices bearing NDI layers were fabricated on ceramic substrates with gold interdigitated electrodes spaced 200 µm apart. Humidity sensing performance, as a change in capacitance, was studied upon exposure to a wide range of relative humidity levels (0-95%) at ambient temperature. Importantly, an increase in the capacitance of the sensors was recorded with an increase in relative humidity. The developed sensors exhibited high sensitivity, good long-term stability, excellent reproducibility, and low hysteresis. The sensor performance was also tested against different operating frequencies (250 Hz-2 kHz) to improve linearity, illustrating directions for optimised performance. These results confirm that sensors based on NDIs possess better sensing performance to other types of reported capacitive humidity sensors.},
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We report for the first-time the development of capacitive type humidity sensors employing naphthalene diimide derivatives (NDI) as sensing layer. Three different naphthalene diimide derivatives bearing imide side chains of different hydrophilicity were designed, synthesised and characterised. X-ray diffraction and thermogravimetric analyses gave useful information about structural and thermal behaviour of the newly developed materials, indicating their crystallinity and stability. Atomic force microscopy analysis revealed a variety of morphologies in thin films as a result of the structural properties of the NDIs. Devices bearing NDI layers were fabricated on ceramic substrates with gold interdigitated electrodes spaced 200 µm apart. Humidity sensing performance, as a change in capacitance, was studied upon exposure to a wide range of relative humidity levels (0-95%) at ambient temperature. Importantly, an increase in the capacitance of the sensors was recorded with an increase in relative humidity. The developed sensors exhibited high sensitivity, good long-term stability, excellent reproducibility, and low hysteresis. The sensor performance was also tested against different operating frequencies (250 Hz-2 kHz) to improve linearity, illustrating directions for optimised performance. These results confirm that sensors based on NDIs possess better sensing performance to other types of reported capacitive humidity sensors.
Gupta, Akhil; Birajdar, Shailesh S; Brixi, Samantha; Rao, Pedada Srinivasa; Bhosale, Rajesh; Kobaisi, Mohammad Al; Lessard, Benoît H; Bhosale, Sidhanath V; Bhosale, Sheshanath
Conjoint use of Naphthalene Diimide and Fullerene Derivatives to Generate Organic Semiconductors for n-type Organic Thin Film Transistors Journal Article
In: ChemistryOpen , vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 414-420, 2021, ISSN: 2191-1363.
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title = {Conjoint use of Naphthalene Diimide and Fullerene Derivatives to Generate Organic Semiconductors for n-type Organic Thin Film Transistors},
author = {Akhil Gupta and Shailesh S Birajdar and Samantha Brixi and Pedada Srinivasa Rao and Rajesh Bhosale and Mohammad Al Kobaisi and Benoît H Lessard and Sidhanath V Bhosale and Sheshanath Bhosale},
doi = {10.1002/open.202000230},
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abstract = {In this paper, we described the design, synthesis, and characterization of two novel naphthalene diimide (NDI) core-based targets modified with terminal fullerene (C60 ) yield - so called S4 and S5, in which NDI bearing 1 and 2 molecules of C60 , respectively. The absorption, electrochemical and thin-film transistor characteristics of the newly developed targets were investigated in detail. Both S4 and S5 displayed broad absorption in the 450-500 nm region, owing to the effect of conjugation due to fullerene functionalities. The electrochemical measurement suggested that the HOMO and the LUMO energy levels can be altered with the number of C60 units. Both S4 and S5 were employed as organic semiconductor materials in n-channel transistors. The thin film transistor based on S4 exhibited superior electron mobility (μe) values ranging from 1.20×10-4 to 3.58×10-4 cm2 V-1 s-1 with a current on-off ratio varying from 102 to 103 in comparison with the performance of S5 based transistor, which exhibited μe ranging from 8.33×10-5 to 2.03×10-4 cm2 V-1 s-1 depending on channel lengths.},
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In this paper, we described the design, synthesis, and characterization of two novel naphthalene diimide (NDI) core-based targets modified with terminal fullerene (C60 ) yield - so called S4 and S5, in which NDI bearing 1 and 2 molecules of C60 , respectively. The absorption, electrochemical and thin-film transistor characteristics of the newly developed targets were investigated in detail. Both S4 and S5 displayed broad absorption in the 450-500 nm region, owing to the effect of conjugation due to fullerene functionalities. The electrochemical measurement suggested that the HOMO and the LUMO energy levels can be altered with the number of C60 units. Both S4 and S5 were employed as organic semiconductor materials in n-channel transistors. The thin film transistor based on S4 exhibited superior electron mobility (μe) values ranging from 1.20×10-4 to 3.58×10-4 cm2 V-1 s-1 with a current on-off ratio varying from 102 to 103 in comparison with the performance of S5 based transistor, which exhibited μe ranging from 8.33×10-5 to 2.03×10-4 cm2 V-1 s-1 depending on channel lengths.
Gupta, Akhil; Ali, Salman; Shafiei, Mahnaz; Langford, Steven J
Recent Advances in Perylene Diimide-Based Active Materials in Electrical Mode Gas Sensing Journal Article
In: Chemosensors, vol. 9, no. 2, 2021, ISSN: 2227-9040.
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title = {Recent Advances in Perylene Diimide-Based Active Materials in Electrical Mode Gas Sensing},
author = {Akhil Gupta and Salman Ali and Mahnaz Shafiei and Steven J Langford},
doi = {10.3390/chemosensors9020030},
issn = {2227-9040},
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date = {2021-02-01},
journal = {Chemosensors},
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abstract = {This review provides an update on advances in the area of electrical mode sensors using organic small molecule n-type semiconductors based on perylene. Among small organic molecules, perylene diimides (PDIs) are an important class of materials due to their outstanding thermal, chemical, electronic, and optical properties, all of which make them promising candidates for a wide range of organic electronic devices including sensors, organic solar cells, organic field-effect transistors, and organic light-emitting diodes. This is mainly due to their electron-withdrawing nature and significant charge transfer properties. Perylene-based sensors of this type show high sensing performance towards various analytes, particularly reducing gases like ammonia and hydrazine, but there are several issues that need to be addressed including the selectivity towards a specific gas, the effect of relative humidity, and operating temperature. In this review, we focus on the strategies and design principles applied to the gas-sensing performance of PDI-based devices, including resistive sensors, amperometric sensors, and operating at room temperature. The device properties and sensing mechanisms for different analytes, focusing on hydrazine and ammonia, are studied in detail, and some future research perspectives are discussed for this promising field. We hope the discussed results and examples inspire new forms of molecular engineering and begin to open opportunities for other rylene diimide classes to be applied as active materials.},
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This review provides an update on advances in the area of electrical mode sensors using organic small molecule n-type semiconductors based on perylene. Among small organic molecules, perylene diimides (PDIs) are an important class of materials due to their outstanding thermal, chemical, electronic, and optical properties, all of which make them promising candidates for a wide range of organic electronic devices including sensors, organic solar cells, organic field-effect transistors, and organic light-emitting diodes. This is mainly due to their electron-withdrawing nature and significant charge transfer properties. Perylene-based sensors of this type show high sensing performance towards various analytes, particularly reducing gases like ammonia and hydrazine, but there are several issues that need to be addressed including the selectivity towards a specific gas, the effect of relative humidity, and operating temperature. In this review, we focus on the strategies and design principles applied to the gas-sensing performance of PDI-based devices, including resistive sensors, amperometric sensors, and operating at room temperature. The device properties and sensing mechanisms for different analytes, focusing on hydrazine and ammonia, are studied in detail, and some future research perspectives are discussed for this promising field. We hope the discussed results and examples inspire new forms of molecular engineering and begin to open opportunities for other rylene diimide classes to be applied as active materials.
2020
Appel, Hannah; Anand, Nikhil; Gupta, Akhil
Introduction: Temporality, Politics, and the Promise of Infrastructure Book Chapter
In: Chapter The Promise of Infrastructure, pp. pp.1-38, 2020, ISBN: 9781478002031.
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2019
Gupta, Akhil; Mankekar, Purnima
The missed period Journal Article
In: American Ethnologist, vol. 46, no. 2, 2019.
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title = {The missed period},
author = {Akhil Gupta and Purnima Mankekar},
doi = {10.1111/amet.12837},
year = {2019},
date = {2019-10-01},
journal = {American Ethnologist},
volume = {46},
number = {2},
abstract = {Business process outsourcing (BPO) industries providing customer service are characterized by three features: the product of labor is affect; affect is central to the labor process; and affect constitutes a crucial modality for the workers’ subject formation. This affective labor is distinctive in that workers’ connections to their customers are live, transnational, and interactive. Such BPOs constitute a form of capitalist production in which profits are based on the management and monetization of affect, including brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. Affective labor generates disjunctive temporalities that are coimplicated with those of family life and with routines of schooling, ritual, and religion. These disjunctive temporalities engender modes of embodiment that are crucial to how BPO workers are constituted as specific kinds of laboring subjects.},
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Business process outsourcing (BPO) industries providing customer service are characterized by three features: the product of labor is affect; affect is central to the labor process; and affect constitutes a crucial modality for the workers’ subject formation. This affective labor is distinctive in that workers’ connections to their customers are live, transnational, and interactive. Such BPOs constitute a form of capitalist production in which profits are based on the management and monetization of affect, including brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. Affective labor generates disjunctive temporalities that are coimplicated with those of family life and with routines of schooling, ritual, and religion. These disjunctive temporalities engender modes of embodiment that are crucial to how BPO workers are constituted as specific kinds of laboring subjects.
2018
Gupta, Akhil; Anand, Nikhil; Appel, Hannah
Promise of Infrastructure Book
Duke University Press, 2018, ISBN: 978-1-4780-0018-1.
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abstract = {From U.S.-Mexico border walls to Flint's poisoned pipes, there is a new urgency to the politics of infrastructure. Roads, electricity lines, water pipes, and oil installations promise to distribute the resources necessary for everyday life. Yet an attention to their ongoing processes also reveals how infrastructures are made with fragile and often violent relations among people, materials, and institutions. While infrastructures promise modernity and development, their breakdowns and absences reveal the underbelly of progress, liberal equality, and economic growth. This tension, between aspiration and failure, makes infrastructure a productive location for social theory. Contributing to the everyday lives of infrastructure across four continents, some of the leading anthropologists of infrastructure demonstrate in The Promise of Infrastructure how these more-than-human assemblages made over more-than-human lifetimes offer new opportunities to theorize time, politics, and promise in the contemporary moment.},
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From U.S.-Mexico border walls to Flint's poisoned pipes, there is a new urgency to the politics of infrastructure. Roads, electricity lines, water pipes, and oil installations promise to distribute the resources necessary for everyday life. Yet an attention to their ongoing processes also reveals how infrastructures are made with fragile and often violent relations among people, materials, and institutions. While infrastructures promise modernity and development, their breakdowns and absences reveal the underbelly of progress, liberal equality, and economic growth. This tension, between aspiration and failure, makes infrastructure a productive location for social theory. Contributing to the everyday lives of infrastructure across four continents, some of the leading anthropologists of infrastructure demonstrate in The Promise of Infrastructure how these more-than-human assemblages made over more-than-human lifetimes offer new opportunities to theorize time, politics, and promise in the contemporary moment.
Gupta, Akhil; Muir, Sarah
Rethinking the Anthropology of Corruption: An Introduction to Supplement 18 Journal Article
In: Current Anthropology, vol. 59, no. S18, pp. 4-15, 2018.
@article{Gupta2018b,
title = {Rethinking the Anthropology of Corruption: An Introduction to Supplement 18},
author = {Akhil Gupta and Sarah Muir},
doi = {10.1086/696161},
year = {2018},
date = {2018-03-08},
journal = {Current Anthropology},
volume = {59},
number = {S18},
pages = {4-15},
abstract = {In our introduction to this special issue, we take stock of where the anthropological literature on corruption has come and where it might go next. Our goal is neither to provide an exhaustive literature review nor to summarize the papers gathered together in this issue. Rather, we aim to identify especially promising areas in need of more focused research and analytic attention and to articulate pressing questions within those areas. Toward that end, we theorize corruption as an object of analysis by framing it as a globalized concept, the practical and social life of which anthropology is especially well suited to study. Finally, we specify how such an approach is especially helpful in disentangling the stubborn problematics that have so persistently dogged both analytic and practical engagements with corruption.},
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In our introduction to this special issue, we take stock of where the anthropological literature on corruption has come and where it might go next. Our goal is neither to provide an exhaustive literature review nor to summarize the papers gathered together in this issue. Rather, we aim to identify especially promising areas in need of more focused research and analytic attention and to articulate pressing questions within those areas. Toward that end, we theorize corruption as an object of analysis by framing it as a globalized concept, the practical and social life of which anthropology is especially well suited to study. Finally, we specify how such an approach is especially helpful in disentangling the stubborn problematics that have so persistently dogged both analytic and practical engagements with corruption.
Gupta, Akhil; Appel, Hannah; Anand, Nikhil
Introduction: Temporality, Politics, and the Promise of Infrastructure Book Chapter
In: pp. 1-38, The Promise of Infrastructure, 2018, ISBN: 978-1-4780-0203-1.
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abstract = {Since 1970 the School for Advanced Research (formerly the School of American Research) has published over one hundred volumes in the Advanced Seminar series. These volumes arise from seminars held on sar’s Santa Fe
campus that bring together small groups of experts to explore a single issue. Participants assess recent innovations in theory and methods, appraise ongoing research, and share data relevant to problems of significance in anthropology and related disciplines. The resulting volumes reflect sar’s commitment to the development of new ideas and to scholarship of the highest caliber. The complete Advanced Seminar series can be found at www.sarweb.org
The settlers’ town is a strongly built town, all made of stone and steel. It is a brightly lit town; the streets are covered with asphalt, and the garbage cans swallow all the leavings, unseen, unknown and hardly thought about The town belonging to the colonized people. . . is a world without spaciousness; men live there on top of each other, and their huts are built one on top of the other. The native town is a hungry town, starved of bread, of meat, of shoes, of coal, of light.},
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Since 1970 the School for Advanced Research (formerly the School of American Research) has published over one hundred volumes in the Advanced Seminar series. These volumes arise from seminars held on sar’s Santa Fe
campus that bring together small groups of experts to explore a single issue. Participants assess recent innovations in theory and methods, appraise ongoing research, and share data relevant to problems of significance in anthropology and related disciplines. The resulting volumes reflect sar’s commitment to the development of new ideas and to scholarship of the highest caliber. The complete Advanced Seminar series can be found at www.sarweb.org
The settlers’ town is a strongly built town, all made of stone and steel. It is a brightly lit town; the streets are covered with asphalt, and the garbage cans swallow all the leavings, unseen, unknown and hardly thought about The town belonging to the colonized people. . . is a world without spaciousness; men live there on top of each other, and their huts are built one on top of the other. The native town is a hungry town, starved of bread, of meat, of shoes, of coal, of light.
campus that bring together small groups of experts to explore a single issue. Participants assess recent innovations in theory and methods, appraise ongoing research, and share data relevant to problems of significance in anthropology and related disciplines. The resulting volumes reflect sar’s commitment to the development of new ideas and to scholarship of the highest caliber. The complete Advanced Seminar series can be found at www.sarweb.org
The settlers’ town is a strongly built town, all made of stone and steel. It is a brightly lit town; the streets are covered with asphalt, and the garbage cans swallow all the leavings, unseen, unknown and hardly thought about The town belonging to the colonized people. . . is a world without spaciousness; men live there on top of each other, and their huts are built one on top of the other. The native town is a hungry town, starved of bread, of meat, of shoes, of coal, of light.
2017
Gupta, Akhil; Mankekar, Purnima
Future tense: Capital, labor, and technology in a service industry: The 2017 Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture Journal Article
In: HAU Journal of Ethnographic Theory, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 67-87, 2017.
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title = {Future tense: Capital, labor, and technology in a service industry: The 2017 Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture},
author = {Akhil Gupta and Purnima Mankekar},
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abstract = {Since its beginning in 2000, the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry has grown to employ 700,000 young people in India. These workers spend their nights interacting by phone and online with customers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and elsewhere. In this article, we focus on the affective dimensions of work in this industry. BPOs have led to contradictory outcomes such as upward mobility accompanied by precarity. Our research explores the complex interplay between work, personal aspirations, social futures, and transformations in global capitalism. Our informants’ experiences with affective labor performed at a distance provide us with critical insights into capital, labor, and technology in our rapidly changing world. Movement characterizes the industry and its workers as they communicate across spatial, linguistic, and cultural distance, while simultaneously being emplaced by regimes of racialized labor. We draw on long-term fieldwork to analyze the complexity and density of interactions between imagination, aspiration, technology, and work for upwardly mobile classes in the Global South.},
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Since its beginning in 2000, the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry has grown to employ 700,000 young people in India. These workers spend their nights interacting by phone and online with customers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and elsewhere. In this article, we focus on the affective dimensions of work in this industry. BPOs have led to contradictory outcomes such as upward mobility accompanied by precarity. Our research explores the complex interplay between work, personal aspirations, social futures, and transformations in global capitalism. Our informants’ experiences with affective labor performed at a distance provide us with critical insights into capital, labor, and technology in our rapidly changing world. Movement characterizes the industry and its workers as they communicate across spatial, linguistic, and cultural distance, while simultaneously being emplaced by regimes of racialized labor. We draw on long-term fieldwork to analyze the complexity and density of interactions between imagination, aspiration, technology, and work for upwardly mobile classes in the Global South.
Gupta, Akhil
Changing Forms of Corruption in India Journal Article
In: Modern Asian Studies, vol. 51, no. 06, pp. 1862-1890, 2017.
@article{Gupta2017b,
title = {Changing Forms of Corruption in India},
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year = {2017},
date = {2017-11-01},
journal = {Modern Asian Studies},
volume = {51},
number = {06},
pages = {1862-1890},
abstract = {This article has four important goals. First, I want to ask why liberalization and market-friendly reforms failed to curb corruption in India. Indeed, confounding the predictions of most proponents of reform, corruption seems to have increased after the neoliberal reforms of 1991. Second, I aim to develop a typology in which the importance of particular sectors to corrupt practices is highlighted and explained. Third, I point out that India has failed to make the ‘transition’ historically seen in low-income countries as they develop. Nation-states have in the past moved from a system of vertical corruption—marked by the extraction of small sums from a large number of transactions with citizens in everyday life—to a system of horizontal corruption, in which governmental elites extract large sums in a small number of transactions from corporate and commercial bodies. Finally, I argue that anti-corruption movements cannot be understood without paying attention to the affective and emotional ties that bind citizens to the state. We have to take account of contradictory feelings about the state: cynicism about the state and popular anger against corruption on one side, and an attachment to popular sovereignty and patronage on the other. These contradictory sentiments will better enable us to understand the conjunctures that lead to effective institutional change.},
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This article has four important goals. First, I want to ask why liberalization and market-friendly reforms failed to curb corruption in India. Indeed, confounding the predictions of most proponents of reform, corruption seems to have increased after the neoliberal reforms of 1991. Second, I aim to develop a typology in which the importance of particular sectors to corrupt practices is highlighted and explained. Third, I point out that India has failed to make the ‘transition’ historically seen in low-income countries as they develop. Nation-states have in the past moved from a system of vertical corruption—marked by the extraction of small sums from a large number of transactions with citizens in everyday life—to a system of horizontal corruption, in which governmental elites extract large sums in a small number of transactions from corporate and commercial bodies. Finally, I argue that anti-corruption movements cannot be understood without paying attention to the affective and emotional ties that bind citizens to the state. We have to take account of contradictory feelings about the state: cynicism about the state and popular anger against corruption on one side, and an attachment to popular sovereignty and patronage on the other. These contradictory sentiments will better enable us to understand the conjunctures that lead to effective institutional change.
2016
Gupta, Akhil; Mankekar, Purnima
Intimate Encounters: Affective Labor in Call Centers Journal Article
In: positions east asia cultures critique, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 17-43, 2016, ISSN: 1527-8271.
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title = {Intimate Encounters: Affective Labor in Call Centers},
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abstract = {By examining the affective regimes generated by call center workers in Bangalore, the authors argue that the forms of alienation and intimacy they generate are coimplicated, rather than in opposition, to each other. In contesting the presumption that the intimate is in contradistinction to the public, the authors join scholarly conversations that trace how relations of intimacy are constructed through processes of labor. This analysis of intimate encounters and affective labor draws upon several years of intensive ethnographic field research in call centers in the southern Indian city of Bangalore. The authors argue that the affective labor of call center agents is service work but that it takes the form of intimate labor provided at a distance. While intimacy implies a proximity that may be physical, corporeal, emotional, and/or geographical, the affective labor of the informants underscored the ways in which it reconstituted their very experience of time and space, proximity and distance. On the one hand, their success at work was contingent on their construction of a relationship of proximity with their clients, eliciting and producing affects that generated intimate encounters. However, although these workers did not engage in physical travel, their virtual and imaginative travel was generative of new modalities of proximity that compel the authors to review existing assumptions about intimacy and distance, and about the relation between intimacy and capital.},
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By examining the affective regimes generated by call center workers in Bangalore, the authors argue that the forms of alienation and intimacy they generate are coimplicated, rather than in opposition, to each other. In contesting the presumption that the intimate is in contradistinction to the public, the authors join scholarly conversations that trace how relations of intimacy are constructed through processes of labor. This analysis of intimate encounters and affective labor draws upon several years of intensive ethnographic field research in call centers in the southern Indian city of Bangalore. The authors argue that the affective labor of call center agents is service work but that it takes the form of intimate labor provided at a distance. While intimacy implies a proximity that may be physical, corporeal, emotional, and/or geographical, the affective labor of the informants underscored the ways in which it reconstituted their very experience of time and space, proximity and distance. On the one hand, their success at work was contingent on their construction of a relationship of proximity with their clients, eliciting and producing affects that generated intimate encounters. However, although these workers did not engage in physical travel, their virtual and imaginative travel was generative of new modalities of proximity that compel the authors to review existing assumptions about intimacy and distance, and about the relation between intimacy and capital.
2015
Gupta, Akhil
An Anthropology of Electricity from the Global South Journal Article
In: Cultural Anthropology, vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 555-568, 2015.
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title = {An Anthropology of Electricity from the Global South},
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pages = {555-568},
abstract = {I am returning full circle in this essay to ask a question that I never thought important while I was working in the electrical power industry: What can anthropology contribute to the study of electricity, and what can electricity contribute to the study of anthropology? Why do we need an anthropology of electricity? This essay is available from the wonderful, open-access journal Cultural Anthropology.},
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I am returning full circle in this essay to ask a question that I never thought important while I was working in the electrical power industry: What can anthropology contribute to the study of electricity, and what can electricity contribute to the study of anthropology? Why do we need an anthropology of electricity? This essay is available from the wonderful, open-access journal Cultural Anthropology.
Gupta, Akhil; Nugent, David; Sreenath, Shreyas
State, corruption, postcoloniality: A conversation with Akhil Gupta on the 20th anniversary of “Blurred Boundaries” Journal Article
In: American Ethnologist, vol. 42, no. 4, 2015.
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title = {State, corruption, postcoloniality: A conversation with Akhil Gupta on the 20th anniversary of “Blurred Boundaries”},
author = {Akhil Gupta and David Nugent and Shreyas Sreenath},
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year = {2015},
date = {2015-09-01},
journal = {American Ethnologist},
volume = {42},
number = {4},
abstract = {Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics, and the Imagined State,” by Akhil Gupta, first appeared in print in 1995 in the pages of American Ethnologist. It went on to become one of the most important and influential articles of recent decades. We talked with Akhil Gupta about how the argument put forward in “Blurred Boundaries” came to be. Our conversation touched on the background of the article and the difficulties in getting it published; the relationship of the article to postcolonial scholarship, subaltern studies, feminist studies, and the then emerging literature on globalization; its relationship with other theorists of the state through themes such as Eurocentrism, reification, fantasy, fetishism, and the role of culture in the analysis of the state; and future directions in research on the state, among them, examining emotion and affect, studying the most powerful bureaucracies in nation-states, and developing the emergent literature on corruption.},
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Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics, and the Imagined State,” by Akhil Gupta, first appeared in print in 1995 in the pages of American Ethnologist. It went on to become one of the most important and influential articles of recent decades. We talked with Akhil Gupta about how the argument put forward in “Blurred Boundaries” came to be. Our conversation touched on the background of the article and the difficulties in getting it published; the relationship of the article to postcolonial scholarship, subaltern studies, feminist studies, and the then emerging literature on globalization; its relationship with other theorists of the state through themes such as Eurocentrism, reification, fantasy, fetishism, and the role of culture in the analysis of the state; and future directions in research on the state, among them, examining emotion and affect, studying the most powerful bureaucracies in nation-states, and developing the emergent literature on corruption.
Gupta, Akhil; Howe, Cymene; Lockrem, Jessica; Appel, Hannah; Hackett, Edward; Boyer, Dominic; Hall, Randal; Schneider-Mayerson, Matthew; Pope, Albert; Rodwell, Elizabeth; Ballestero, Andrea; Durbin, Trevor; el-Dahdah, Fares; Long, Elizabeth; Mody, Cyrus C. M.
Paradoxical Infrastructures: Ruins, Retrofit, and Risk Journal Article
In: Science, Technology & Human Values, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 547-565, 2015.
@article{Gupta2015,
title = {Paradoxical Infrastructures: Ruins, Retrofit, and Risk},
author = {Akhil Gupta and Cymene Howe and Jessica Lockrem and Hannah Appel and Edward Hackett and Dominic Boyer and Randal Hall and Matthew Schneider-Mayerson and Albert Pope and Elizabeth Rodwell and Andrea Ballestero and Trevor Durbin and Fares el-Dahdah and Elizabeth Long and Cyrus C. M. Mody},
doi = {10.1177/0162243915620017},
year = {2015},
date = {2015-02-23},
journal = {Science, Technology & Human Values},
volume = {41},
number = {3},
pages = {547-565},
abstract = {In recent years, a dramatic increase in the study of infrastructure has occurred in the social sciences and humanities, following upon foundational work in the physical sciences, architecture, planning, information science, and engineering. This article, authored by a multidisciplinary group of scholars, probes the generative potential of infrastructure at this historical juncture. Accounting for the conceptual and material capacities of infrastructure, the article argues for the importance of paradox in understanding infrastructure. Thematically the article is organized around three key points that speak to the study of infrastructure: ruin, retrofit, and risk. The first paradox of infrastructure, ruin, suggests that even as infrastructure is generative, it degenerates. A second paradox is found in retrofit, an apparent ontological oxymoron that attempts to bridge temporality from the present to the future and yet ultimately reveals that infrastructural solidity, in material and symbolic terms, is more apparent than actual. Finally, a third paradox of infrastructure, risk, demonstrates that while a key purpose of infrastructure is to mitigate risk, it also involves new risks as it comes to fruition. The article concludes with a series of suggestions and provocations to view the study of infrastructure in more contingent and paradoxical forms.},
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In recent years, a dramatic increase in the study of infrastructure has occurred in the social sciences and humanities, following upon foundational work in the physical sciences, architecture, planning, information science, and engineering. This article, authored by a multidisciplinary group of scholars, probes the generative potential of infrastructure at this historical juncture. Accounting for the conceptual and material capacities of infrastructure, the article argues for the importance of paradox in understanding infrastructure. Thematically the article is organized around three key points that speak to the study of infrastructure: ruin, retrofit, and risk. The first paradox of infrastructure, ruin, suggests that even as infrastructure is generative, it degenerates. A second paradox is found in retrofit, an apparent ontological oxymoron that attempts to bridge temporality from the present to the future and yet ultimately reveals that infrastructural solidity, in material and symbolic terms, is more apparent than actual. Finally, a third paradox of infrastructure, risk, demonstrates that while a key purpose of infrastructure is to mitigate risk, it also involves new risks as it comes to fruition. The article concludes with a series of suggestions and provocations to view the study of infrastructure in more contingent and paradoxical forms.
2014
Gupta, Akhil
Authorship, research assistants and the ethnographic field Journal Article
In: Ethnography, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 394-400, 2014.
@article{Gupta2014,
title = {Authorship, research assistants and the ethnographic field},
author = {Akhil Gupta},
doi = {10.1177/1466138114533460},
year = {2014},
date = {2014-08-20},
journal = {Ethnography},
volume = {15},
number = {3},
pages = {394-400},
abstract = {Th is rich specia l issue opens up a large se t of questions abou t authorshi p that goes well beyond the question of resea rch assistants in the field. I will first explore this issue, and then atten1pt to position the question of research assistants in a wider 'field. I will argue that Midd leton and Cons (and their contribut ors) are quite righ t to focus on research assistants in the field , because the neglect of this topic leaves a la rge gap i n anth ropology's sel f-reflex ivity. More importa ntly, and this will be my final poin t, a focus on field assistants pushes the bounda ries of 'the field ' itsel f. This point, along with other emergent reconceptualizations of 'the field', has the poten tial to radically rethink the temporal and spatial configu ration of fieldwork.},
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Th is rich specia l issue opens up a large se t of questions abou t authorshi p that goes well beyond the question of resea rch assistants in the field. I will first explore this issue, and then atten1pt to position the question of research assistants in a wider 'field. I will argue that Midd leton and Cons (and their contribut ors) are quite righ t to focus on research assistants in the field , because the neglect of this topic leaves a la rge gap i n anth ropology's sel f-reflex ivity. More importa ntly, and this will be my final poin t, a focus on field assistants pushes the bounda ries of 'the field ' itsel f. This point, along with other emergent reconceptualizations of 'the field', has the poten tial to radically rethink the temporal and spatial configu ration of fieldwork.
2013
Gupta, Akhil
Messy bureaucracies Journal Article
In: HAU Journal of Ethnographic Theory, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 435-440, 2013.
@article{Gupta2013,
title = {Messy bureaucracies},
author = {Akhil Gupta},
doi = {10.14318/hau3.3.029},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-12-23},
journal = {HAU Journal of Ethnographic Theory},
volume = {3},
number = {3},
pages = {435-440},
abstract = {In Government of paper, Matthew Hull has given us one of the most finely grained, ethnographically rich analyses of the role of material artifacts in the working of states. His focus on files, maps, the parchi and the petition, and lists and land records, is a sorely needed addition to the ethnographic record. As a linguistic anthropologist, he is uniquely positioned to reflect on the linguistic properties of such documents; as a broadly-trained sociocultural anthropologist, he is able to tease out the social and political implications of how these inscriptions function in the social world, what they enable people to do, and how their materiality limits their possible uses and their possible users. This book also sets up very interesting comparative possibilities for research about the state in South Asia. For example, although Hull’s concerns are not identical to those raised in my recent book on Indian bureaucracy, Red tape (2012), it is interesting to read both books to ask the question of how much difference the postcolonial histories of India and Pakistan have made to their respective bureaucracies. On the one hand, the continuities exhibited by the two bureaucracies in the wake of colonial rule are truly astonishing. It has been more than sixty years since the subcontinent achieved Independence. In that time, a minirevolution has taken place in organizing and running offices. Handwriting was first replaced by typewritten documents, and then computers substituted typewriters. Techniques of filing moved from tying bundles of paper within a cardboard cover secured by tape and stored horizontally, to papers being stored in tabbed folders open on one side and stored vertically in filing cabinets, to electronic files being stored on computers and backed up in the cloud and on hard drives. Government bureaucracies in all three countries in British India (Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh) have displayed a stubborn attachment to colonial practices, including forms filled out in triplicate, files tied with ribbons, the design of office space, the hierarchies of bureaucratic offices, et cetera. I emphasize “government bureaucracies” in the previous sentence because the bureaucracies found in private corporations have moved their office practices to resemble businesses in the global North. Few managers in corporations, even customer-facing ones, would run an
office like Zaffar Khan’s (that Hull describes so vividly), where several, unrelated, groups of clients were being entertained simultaneously. Hull and I were writing our books at the same time and we produced very similar descriptions of office practices in bureaucracies separated by national boundaries and by sixty years of postcolonial governance. This coincidence has less to do with us as observers, and more with the fact that the offices themselves resemble each other. A photograph by Jan Banning from his exhibition and subsequent book, Bureaucratics (2008), graces the cover of Red tape. What is interesting to me is the number of lay people who have told me that photograph looks exactly like the office where they had recently gone to do a task involving a government agency. That it was in a different state and in a different bureaucracy seemed not to matter; and I am sure that when people in the subcontinent read Hull’s wonderfully evocative descriptions of the
CDA, they will have a sense of déjà vu.},
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In Government of paper, Matthew Hull has given us one of the most finely grained, ethnographically rich analyses of the role of material artifacts in the working of states. His focus on files, maps, the parchi and the petition, and lists and land records, is a sorely needed addition to the ethnographic record. As a linguistic anthropologist, he is uniquely positioned to reflect on the linguistic properties of such documents; as a broadly-trained sociocultural anthropologist, he is able to tease out the social and political implications of how these inscriptions function in the social world, what they enable people to do, and how their materiality limits their possible uses and their possible users. This book also sets up very interesting comparative possibilities for research about the state in South Asia. For example, although Hull’s concerns are not identical to those raised in my recent book on Indian bureaucracy, Red tape (2012), it is interesting to read both books to ask the question of how much difference the postcolonial histories of India and Pakistan have made to their respective bureaucracies. On the one hand, the continuities exhibited by the two bureaucracies in the wake of colonial rule are truly astonishing. It has been more than sixty years since the subcontinent achieved Independence. In that time, a minirevolution has taken place in organizing and running offices. Handwriting was first replaced by typewritten documents, and then computers substituted typewriters. Techniques of filing moved from tying bundles of paper within a cardboard cover secured by tape and stored horizontally, to papers being stored in tabbed folders open on one side and stored vertically in filing cabinets, to electronic files being stored on computers and backed up in the cloud and on hard drives. Government bureaucracies in all three countries in British India (Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh) have displayed a stubborn attachment to colonial practices, including forms filled out in triplicate, files tied with ribbons, the design of office space, the hierarchies of bureaucratic offices, et cetera. I emphasize “government bureaucracies” in the previous sentence because the bureaucracies found in private corporations have moved their office practices to resemble businesses in the global North. Few managers in corporations, even customer-facing ones, would run an
office like Zaffar Khan’s (that Hull describes so vividly), where several, unrelated, groups of clients were being entertained simultaneously. Hull and I were writing our books at the same time and we produced very similar descriptions of office practices in bureaucracies separated by national boundaries and by sixty years of postcolonial governance. This coincidence has less to do with us as observers, and more with the fact that the offices themselves resemble each other. A photograph by Jan Banning from his exhibition and subsequent book, Bureaucratics (2008), graces the cover of Red tape. What is interesting to me is the number of lay people who have told me that photograph looks exactly like the office where they had recently gone to do a task involving a government agency. That it was in a different state and in a different bureaucracy seemed not to matter; and I am sure that when people in the subcontinent read Hull’s wonderfully evocative descriptions of the
CDA, they will have a sense of déjà vu.
office like Zaffar Khan’s (that Hull describes so vividly), where several, unrelated, groups of clients were being entertained simultaneously. Hull and I were writing our books at the same time and we produced very similar descriptions of office practices in bureaucracies separated by national boundaries and by sixty years of postcolonial governance. This coincidence has less to do with us as observers, and more with the fact that the offices themselves resemble each other. A photograph by Jan Banning from his exhibition and subsequent book, Bureaucratics (2008), graces the cover of Red tape. What is interesting to me is the number of lay people who have told me that photograph looks exactly like the office where they had recently gone to do a task involving a government agency. That it was in a different state and in a different bureaucracy seemed not to matter; and I am sure that when people in the subcontinent read Hull’s wonderfully evocative descriptions of the
CDA, they will have a sense of déjà vu.
2012
Gupta, Akhil
Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India Book
Duke University Press, 2012, ISBN: 978-0-8223-5098-9.
@book{Gupta2012,
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abstract = {DIVRed Tape presents a major new theory of the state developed by the renowned anthropologist Akhil Gupta. Seeking to understand the chronic and widespread poverty in India, the world's fourth largest economy, Gupta conceives of the relation between the state in India and the poor as one of structural violence. Every year this violence kills between two and three million people, especially women and girls, and lower-caste and indigenous peoples. Yet India's poor are not disenfranchised; they actively participate in the democratic project. Nor is the state indifferent to the plight of the poor; it sponsors many poverty amelioration programs.Gupta conducted ethnographic research among officials charged with coordinating development programs in rural Uttar Pradesh. Drawing on that research, he offers insightful analyses of corruption; the significance of writing and written records; and governmentality, or the expansion of bureaucracies. Those analyses underlie his argument that care is arbitrary in its consequences, and that arbitrariness is systematically produced by the very mechanisms that are meant to ameliorate social suffering. What must be explained is not only why government programs aimed at providing nutrition, employment, housing, healthcare, and education to poor people do not succeed in their objectives, but also why, when they do succeed, they do so unevenly and erratically./div},
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DIVRed Tape presents a major new theory of the state developed by the renowned anthropologist Akhil Gupta. Seeking to understand the chronic and widespread poverty in India, the world's fourth largest economy, Gupta conceives of the relation between the state in India and the poor as one of structural violence. Every year this violence kills between two and three million people, especially women and girls, and lower-caste and indigenous peoples. Yet India's poor are not disenfranchised; they actively participate in the democratic project. Nor is the state indifferent to the plight of the poor; it sponsors many poverty amelioration programs.Gupta conducted ethnographic research among officials charged with coordinating development programs in rural Uttar Pradesh. Drawing on that research, he offers insightful analyses of corruption; the significance of writing and written records; and governmentality, or the expansion of bureaucracies. Those analyses underlie his argument that care is arbitrary in its consequences, and that arbitrariness is systematically produced by the very mechanisms that are meant to ameliorate social suffering. What must be explained is not only why government programs aimed at providing nutrition, employment, housing, healthcare, and education to poor people do not succeed in their objectives, but also why, when they do succeed, they do so unevenly and erratically./div
2011
Gupta, Akhil
National Poverty and Global Poverty in the Age of Neoliberalism Journal Article
In: Notebooks D African Studies, vol. 51, no. 2, pp. 415-426, 2011.
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title = {National Poverty and Global Poverty in the Age of Neoliberalism},
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year = {2011},
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journal = {Notebooks D African Studies},
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2009
Gupta, Akhil
The Song of the Nonaligned World: Transnational Identities and the Reinscription of Space in Late Capitalism Journal Article
In: Cultural Anthropology, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 63 - 79, 2009.
@article{Gupta2009,
title = {The Song of the Nonaligned World: Transnational Identities and the Reinscription of Space in Late Capitalism},
author = {Akhil Gupta},
doi = {10.1525/can.1992.7.1.02a00050},
year = {2009},
date = {2009-10-28},
journal = {Cultural Anthropology},
volume = {7},
number = {1},
pages = {63 - 79},
abstract = {contingent form of organizing space in the world. National identity appears to be firmly spatialized and seemingly immutable, becoming almost a "natural" marker of cultural and social difference. This article problematizes nationalism by juxtaposing it and other forms of spatial commitment and identity, particularly transnational ones. In so doing, it seeks to illuminate the specificity of nationalism in the postcolonial world. Beginning with the premise that the structures of feeling (R. Williams 1961:48-71) that produce a location called "the nation" are not identical in differently situated places, I wish to conceptualize the vastly dissimilar structural positions occupied by First and Third World' nationalisms by locating them with respect to late capitalism and to the postcolonial world order. Connecting such global phenomena with questions of place and identity is consonant with recent moves in anthropological theory that urge us to go beyond "the field" to see how transnationalism refracts and shapes "the local."2 The changing global configuration of postcoloniality and late capitalism have resulted in the repartitioning and reinscription of space. These developments have had profound implications for the imagining of national homelands and for the discursive construction of nationalism. To grasp the nature of these changes, we need to be bifocal in our analytical vision. On the one side, we need to investigate processes of place making, of how feelings of belonging to an imagined community bind identity to spatial location such that differences between communities and places are created. At the same time, we also need to situate these processes within systemic developments that reinscribe and reterritorialize space in the global political economy. To spell out the argument, I make extensive use of two examples of nonnational collectivities: the Nonaligned Movement (NAM) and the European Community (EC). The examination of imagined communities that transgress the spa},
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contingent form of organizing space in the world. National identity appears to be firmly spatialized and seemingly immutable, becoming almost a "natural" marker of cultural and social difference. This article problematizes nationalism by juxtaposing it and other forms of spatial commitment and identity, particularly transnational ones. In so doing, it seeks to illuminate the specificity of nationalism in the postcolonial world. Beginning with the premise that the structures of feeling (R. Williams 1961:48-71) that produce a location called "the nation" are not identical in differently situated places, I wish to conceptualize the vastly dissimilar structural positions occupied by First and Third World' nationalisms by locating them with respect to late capitalism and to the postcolonial world order. Connecting such global phenomena with questions of place and identity is consonant with recent moves in anthropological theory that urge us to go beyond "the field" to see how transnationalism refracts and shapes "the local."2 The changing global configuration of postcoloniality and late capitalism have resulted in the repartitioning and reinscription of space. These developments have had profound implications for the imagining of national homelands and for the discursive construction of nationalism. To grasp the nature of these changes, we need to be bifocal in our analytical vision. On the one side, we need to investigate processes of place making, of how feelings of belonging to an imagined community bind identity to spatial location such that differences between communities and places are created. At the same time, we also need to situate these processes within systemic developments that reinscribe and reterritorialize space in the global political economy. To spell out the argument, I make extensive use of two examples of nonnational collectivities: the Nonaligned Movement (NAM) and the European Community (EC). The examination of imagined communities that transgress the spa
2008
Gupta, Akhil
Globalisation and Difference: Cosmopolitanism Before the Nation-State Journal Article
In: Transforming Cultures eJournal, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 1-20, 2008.
@article{Gupta2008,
title = {Globalisation and Difference: Cosmopolitanism Before the Nation-State},
author = {Akhil Gupta},
doi = {10.5130/tfc.v3i2.921},
year = {2008},
date = {2008-11-10},
journal = {Transforming Cultures eJournal},
volume = {3},
number = {2},
pages = {1-20},
abstract = {In this paper, I have tried to reflect on what cosmopolitanism might mean in a very different era of globalisation than the present. Although cosmopolitanism, as an expansive and sociable vision, is often contrasted with the geographically limited perspective and claustrophobic affinities of nationalism, the term originates in a historical period before the rise of nationalism in Europe. I argue that the residents of the civilisations around the Indian Ocean in the medieval and early modern world were cosmopolitan even by the standards of the high modernist meaning of the term. Not only did a range of people transact and translate across different languages, but they also knew how to conduct themselves in different cultural settings with people of different religious beliefs, while respecting the disparate religious, social, and cultural practices of their neighbours.},
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In this paper, I have tried to reflect on what cosmopolitanism might mean in a very different era of globalisation than the present. Although cosmopolitanism, as an expansive and sociable vision, is often contrasted with the geographically limited perspective and claustrophobic affinities of nationalism, the term originates in a historical period before the rise of nationalism in Europe. I argue that the residents of the civilisations around the Indian Ocean in the medieval and early modern world were cosmopolitan even by the standards of the high modernist meaning of the term. Not only did a range of people transact and translate across different languages, but they also knew how to conduct themselves in different cultural settings with people of different religious beliefs, while respecting the disparate religious, social, and cultural practices of their neighbours.
Gupta, Akhil
Imagining Nations Book Chapter
In: Chapter 17, pp. 267 - 281, A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics, 2008, ISBN: 9780470693681.
@inbook{Gupta2008d,
title = {Imagining Nations},
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abstract = {This essay revisits theories of nationalism by focusing on questions of time and temporality, in particular, the question of whether the ideas of time central to Anderson's influential work on nationalism may not be usefully rethought from the perspective of Third World nationalism. Accordingly, notions of homogeneous, empty time, the modularity of the nation form, the seriality of the contingent, contested effort to forge a hegemonic nationalism, and the impact of late capitalism on national sovereignty are questioned.},
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This essay revisits theories of nationalism by focusing on questions of time and temporality, in particular, the question of whether the ideas of time central to Anderson's influential work on nationalism may not be usefully rethought from the perspective of Third World nationalism. Accordingly, notions of homogeneous, empty time, the modularity of the nation form, the seriality of the contingent, contested effort to forge a hegemonic nationalism, and the impact of late capitalism on national sovereignty are questioned.
Gupta, Akhil; James, Ferguson.
Beyond "culture": space, identity and the politics of difference Journal Article
In: Antípoda : Revista de Antropologia y Arqueologia., vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 6-23, 2008, ISBN: 978-0-8223-8208-9.
@article{Gupta2008e,
title = {Beyond "culture": space, identity and the politics of difference},
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isbn = {978-0-8223-8208-9},
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abstract = {This article explores the way that “received ideas” about space and place have shaped, and continue to shape, the common sense of the anthropological task. Specifcally, we want to inquire how the renewed interest in postmodern and feminist theory about space theorization (revealed in notions such as vigilance, panopticism, simulacrum, deterritorialization, postmodern hyperspace, frontiers and marginality), has forced us to revaluate key anthropological analytical concepts such as "culture" and "cultural difference".},
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This article explores the way that “received ideas” about space and place have shaped, and continue to shape, the common sense of the anthropological task. Specifcally, we want to inquire how the renewed interest in postmodern and feminist theory about space theorization (revealed in notions such as vigilance, panopticism, simulacrum, deterritorialization, postmodern hyperspace, frontiers and marginality), has forced us to revaluate key anthropological analytical concepts such as "culture" and "cultural difference".
2005
Gupta, Akhil
Narratives of Corruption: Anthropological and Fictional Accounts of the Indian State Journal Article
In: Ethnography, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 5-34, 2005.
@article{Gupta2005,
title = {Narratives of Corruption: Anthropological and Fictional Accounts of the Indian State},
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year = {2005},
date = {2005-03-01},
journal = {Ethnography},
volume = {6},
number = {1},
pages = {5-34},
abstract = {In this article I attempt to analyze stories about corruption for what they might reveal about the Indian state. By triangulating my own fieldwork data, a prize-winning novel written by an official of the Uttar Pradesh (U.P.) state government, and the accounts of corruption by one of the major social anthropologists of India, F.G. Bailey, I claim that narratives of corruption, and the actions of bureaucrats and agencies in relation to those narratives, are fundamental to the constitution of the state in contemporary India. I argue that the success of policies geared to providing basic needs to the poor depend on changing these narratives and thereby altering the affective relations that poor citizens have with the state.},
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In this article I attempt to analyze stories about corruption for what they might reveal about the Indian state. By triangulating my own fieldwork data, a prize-winning novel written by an official of the Uttar Pradesh (U.P.) state government, and the accounts of corruption by one of the major social anthropologists of India, F.G. Bailey, I claim that narratives of corruption, and the actions of bureaucrats and agencies in relation to those narratives, are fundamental to the constitution of the state in contemporary India. I argue that the success of policies geared to providing basic needs to the poor depend on changing these narratives and thereby altering the affective relations that poor citizens have with the state.
2002
Gupta, Akhil
Reliving Childhood? The Temporality of Childhood and Narratives of Reincarnation Journal Article
In: Ethnos, vol. 67, no. 1, pp. 33-55, 2002.
@article{Gupta2002,
title = {Reliving Childhood? The Temporality of Childhood and Narratives of Reincarnation},
author = {Akhil Gupta},
doi = {10.1080/00141840220122959},
year = {2002},
date = {2002-03-01},
journal = {Ethnos},
volume = {67},
number = {1},
pages = {33-55},
abstract = {Although less well known than the Tibetan search for high lamas, cases of reincarnation reported from other parts of the world frequently involve very young children. What does this imply for our understanding of childhood? Reincarnated children are inhabited by their (adult) thoughts and gestures, and clearly have to be conceptualized as more complex beings than is allowed by the standard narrative of childhood which posits a new being who slowly finds his or her way in the world. This paper raises questions about the challenges posed by reincarnation to dominant conceptions of childhood in the West, surveying subjects such as the separation of children into age grades and of 'life' into stages, the relatively recent historical trend of recasting childhood into a nostalgic mold, the investment of a life trajectory with an historicity, and the equating of children with savages, as peoples who antecede the 'adult' civilizations of the West.},
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Although less well known than the Tibetan search for high lamas, cases of reincarnation reported from other parts of the world frequently involve very young children. What does this imply for our understanding of childhood? Reincarnated children are inhabited by their (adult) thoughts and gestures, and clearly have to be conceptualized as more complex beings than is allowed by the standard narrative of childhood which posits a new being who slowly finds his or her way in the world. This paper raises questions about the challenges posed by reincarnation to dominant conceptions of childhood in the West, surveying subjects such as the separation of children into age grades and of 'life' into stages, the relatively recent historical trend of recasting childhood into a nostalgic mold, the investment of a life trajectory with an historicity, and the equating of children with savages, as peoples who antecede the 'adult' civilizations of the West.
2001
Gupta, Akhil
Governing Population Book Chapter
In: pp. 65-96, Durham: Duke University Press, 2001, ISBN: 9780822381273.
@inbook{Gupta2001,
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pages = {65-96},
publisher = {Durham: Duke University Press},
abstract = {I returned to Alipur village in western Uttar Pradesh for a short spell of fieldwork in the summer of 1989. Villagers excitedly told me about all the changes that had occurred in the four years since I had last been there doing a study on agricultural change. Among the new features of Alipur were an anganwadi, a center that provided day care, nutrition, and inoculations to children and supplementary nutrition and health care to pregnant women and mothers of infants. I was so intrigued by this new development that in my second fieldwork project on the ethnography of the state I included the Integrated Child Development Services (icds), more popularly known as the anganwadi program, among the development projects that I studied. The icds program is interesting for a number of reasons. It is one of the fastest growing development programs run by the Indian state. Launched with only 33 projects in 1985, the icds program had expanded to 1,356 projects in the next ten years, and to 5,614 by 1995 (Government of India 1985: 4). The anganwadi program grew even when the Indian government started cutting the budgets of other social welfare programs in the postliberalization era initiated in 1991. Allocations for icds in 1998–1999 went up to more than twice their 1990–1991 levels. 1 Another reason for paying attention to the icds program is that it was one of the first interventions that attempted to control population growth rates by paying attention to the quality of the population.},
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I returned to Alipur village in western Uttar Pradesh for a short spell of fieldwork in the summer of 1989. Villagers excitedly told me about all the changes that had occurred in the four years since I had last been there doing a study on agricultural change. Among the new features of Alipur were an anganwadi, a center that provided day care, nutrition, and inoculations to children and supplementary nutrition and health care to pregnant women and mothers of infants. I was so intrigued by this new development that in my second fieldwork project on the ethnography of the state I included the Integrated Child Development Services (icds), more popularly known as the anganwadi program, among the development projects that I studied. The icds program is interesting for a number of reasons. It is one of the fastest growing development programs run by the Indian state. Launched with only 33 projects in 1985, the icds program had expanded to 1,356 projects in the next ten years, and to 5,614 by 1995 (Government of India 1985: 4). The anganwadi program grew even when the Indian government started cutting the budgets of other social welfare programs in the postliberalization era initiated in 1991. Allocations for icds in 1998–1999 went up to more than twice their 1990–1991 levels. 1 Another reason for paying attention to the icds program is that it was one of the first interventions that attempted to control population growth rates by paying attention to the quality of the population.
Gupta, Akhil
HISTORY, RULE, REPRESENTATION Scattered Speculations on Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume II Journal Article
In: Interventions: international journal of postcolonial studies, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 40-46, 2001.
@article{Gupta2001b,
title = {HISTORY, RULE, REPRESENTATION Scattered Speculations on Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume II},
author = {Akhil Gupta},
doi = {10.1080/13698010020026994},
year = {2001},
date = {2001-03-01},
journal = {Interventions: international journal of postcolonial studies},
volume = {3},
number = {1},
pages = {40-46},
abstract = {The second volume of John and Jean Comaroff"s RR delivers a complex and richly nuanced analysis of the complexities of colonial domination. In my response I focus on three topics in particular: on processes of historical causation and notions of temporality; on processes of governmentality; and on the possibilities of self-reflexivity in how colonial encounters are represented. The section on historical causation focuses on the relationship between the kind of historical anthropology of practices found in RR and the standard chronicle of events and structures found in social history. How do their conceptions of time differ? The section on governmentality draws attention to the parallels between the Comaroffs" account of the colonial encounter and Foucault"s observations about the importance of processes of government that do not reside in the state. Finally, the section on self-reflexivity in the representation of colonialism draws attention to the possibilities of representing the non-auditory realm of encounter, where styles of dress or agricultural practices may be more important than subaltern speech.},
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The second volume of John and Jean Comaroff"s RR delivers a complex and richly nuanced analysis of the complexities of colonial domination. In my response I focus on three topics in particular: on processes of historical causation and notions of temporality; on processes of governmentality; and on the possibilities of self-reflexivity in how colonial encounters are represented. The section on historical causation focuses on the relationship between the kind of historical anthropology of practices found in RR and the standard chronicle of events and structures found in social history. How do their conceptions of time differ? The section on governmentality draws attention to the parallels between the Comaroffs" account of the colonial encounter and Foucault"s observations about the importance of processes of government that do not reside in the state. Finally, the section on self-reflexivity in the representation of colonialism draws attention to the possibilities of representing the non-auditory realm of encounter, where styles of dress or agricultural practices may be more important than subaltern speech.
1999
Gupta, Akhil; Herzfeld, Michael
Hybridity in an Arid Field Journal Article
In: Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 72, no. 3, pp. 131-135, 1999.
@article{Gupta1999b,
title = {Hybridity in an Arid Field},
author = {Akhil Gupta and Michael Herzfeld},
doi = {10.2307/3317427},
year = {1999},
date = {1999-07-01},
journal = {Anthropological Quarterly},
volume = {72},
number = {3},
pages = {131-135},
abstract = {Anthropological Quarterly, also known as AQ, is a peer-reviewed journal published by the George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research. AQ was founded in 1921 by the Catholic University of America and was published from 1921 to 1953 under the name Primitive Man. While continuing to publish outstanding, original, data-driven articles that advance ethnography and anthropological theory, AQ also asks intellectuals to contribute to on-going public debates relevant to contemporary experiences and public debates. Topics include: war, racism, poverty, nationalism, globalization, human rights, and the social, legal, and ethical implications of new genetic technologies. Essays on such timely topics are published in our "Social Thought and Commentary" section.},
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Anthropological Quarterly, also known as AQ, is a peer-reviewed journal published by the George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research. AQ was founded in 1921 by the Catholic University of America and was published from 1921 to 1953 under the name Primitive Man. While continuing to publish outstanding, original, data-driven articles that advance ethnography and anthropological theory, AQ also asks intellectuals to contribute to on-going public debates relevant to contemporary experiences and public debates. Topics include: war, racism, poverty, nationalism, globalization, human rights, and the social, legal, and ethical implications of new genetic technologies. Essays on such timely topics are published in our "Social Thought and Commentary" section.
1995
Gupta, Akhil
Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics, and the Imagined State Journal Article
In: American Ethnologist, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 375-402, 1995.
@article{Gupta1995,
title = {Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics, and the Imagined State},
author = {Akhil Gupta},
doi = {10.1525/ae.1995.22.2.02a00090},
year = {1995},
date = {1995-05-01},
journal = {American Ethnologist},
volume = {22},
number = {2},
pages = {375-402},
abstract = {In this article I attempt to do an ethnography of the state by examining the discourses of corruption in contemporary India. I focus on the practices of lower levels of the bureaucracy in a small north Indian town as well as on representations of the state in the mass media. Research on translocal institutions such as “the state” enables us to reflect on the limitations of participant-observation as a technique of fieldwork. The analysis leads me to question Eurocentric distinctions between state and civil society and offers a critique of the conceptualization of “the state” as a monolithic and unitary entity. [the state, public culture, fieldwork, discourse, corruption, India]},
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In this article I attempt to do an ethnography of the state by examining the discourses of corruption in contemporary India. I focus on the practices of lower levels of the bureaucracy in a small north Indian town as well as on representations of the state in the mass media. Research on translocal institutions such as “the state” enables us to reflect on the limitations of participant-observation as a technique of fieldwork. The analysis leads me to question Eurocentric distinctions between state and civil society and offers a critique of the conceptualization of “the state” as a monolithic and unitary entity. [the state, public culture, fieldwork, discourse, corruption, India]
1993
Gupta, Akhil
The Reincarnation of Souls and the Rebirth of Commodities: Representations of Time in "East" and "West" Journal Article
In: Cultural Critique, pp. 187, 1993.
@article{Gupta1993,
title = {The Reincarnation of Souls and the Rebirth of Commodities: Representations of Time in "East" and "West"},
author = {Akhil Gupta},
doi = {10.2307/1354088},
year = {1993},
date = {1993-11-01},
journal = {Cultural Critique},
pages = {187},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
1989
Gupta, Akhil
The Political Economy of Post-Independence India—A Review Article Journal Article
In: The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 48, no. 4, pp. 787-797, 1989.
@article{Gupta1989,
title = {The Political Economy of Post-Independence India—A Review Article},
author = {Akhil Gupta},
year = {1989},
date = {1989-11-01},
journal = {The Journal of Asian Studies},
volume = {48},
number = {4},
pages = {787-797},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
1984
Gupta, Akhil
Revolution in Telengana (1946-1951): (Part Two) Journal Article
In: Comparative Studies of South Asia Africa and the Middle East, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 22-32, 1984.
@article{Gupta1984b,
title = {Revolution in Telengana (1946-1951): (Part Two)},
author = {Akhil Gupta},
doi = {10.1215/07323867-4-2-22},
year = {1984},
date = {1984-09-01},
journal = {Comparative Studies of South Asia Africa and the Middle East},
volume = {4},
number = {2},
pages = {22-32},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
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Gupta, Akhil
Revolution in Telengana 1946-1951 (Part One) Journal Article
In: Comparative Studies of South Asia Africa and the Middle East, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 1-26, 1984.
@article{Gupta1984,
title = {Revolution in Telengana 1946-1951 (Part One)},
author = {Akhil Gupta},
doi = {10.1215/07323867-4-1-1},
year = {1984},
date = {1984-03-01},
journal = {Comparative Studies of South Asia Africa and the Middle East},
volume = {4},
number = {1},
pages = {1-26},
abstract = {Examines the Telengana movement, one of the largest armed peasant uprisings in the history of modern India. At its peak, it spanned an area of about 15 000 square miles with a population of 3 to 4 million. Peasant rule was established in 2000-3000 villages and defended by a guerilla army of about 2000 regular members and an additional 10 000 activists. When the Indian army marched into the area on September 13, 1948, it destroyed the movement. Forced to retreat into the forests, the guerillas continued sporadic raids until the movement was 'called off' by the Communist Party in October 1951. -from Author},
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Examines the Telengana movement, one of the largest armed peasant uprisings in the history of modern India. At its peak, it spanned an area of about 15 000 square miles with a population of 3 to 4 million. Peasant rule was established in 2000-3000 villages and defended by a guerilla army of about 2000 regular members and an additional 10 000 activists. When the Indian army marched into the area on September 13, 1948, it destroyed the movement. Forced to retreat into the forests, the guerillas continued sporadic raids until the movement was 'called off' by the Communist Party in October 1951. -from Author
Gupta, Akhil
Revolution in Telengana (1946-65). Part 2. Journal Article
In: pp. 22-32, 1984.
@article{Gupta1984c,
title = {Revolution in Telengana (1946-65). Part 2.},
author = {Akhil Gupta},
year = {1984},
date = {1984-01-01},
pages = {22-32},
abstract = {The first part is largely descriptive, a sketch of the state of affairs in Hyderabad before the revolutionary rupture. In the second part, it assesses the achievements of the movement and seeks the causes of its initial success, its subsequent defeat, and its origins.-from Author
},
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The first part is largely descriptive, a sketch of the state of affairs in Hyderabad before the revolutionary rupture. In the second part, it assesses the achievements of the movement and seeks the causes of its initial success, its subsequent defeat, and its origins.-from Author