Indira Arumugam

My research focuses on the connections between the projects of self-formation and state-formation among the Kallars in central Tamil Nadu. My dissertation, “Kinship as Citizenship:  State-formation, Sovereignty and Political Ethics” unravels the constitution of a political subjectivity. This mapping of a political universe articulates with a conceptual ethnography of citizenship, statehood and sovereignty. Kinship, specifically lineage, is the key to understanding Kallar localised state formations as well as the specific theories of power and political ethics that they objectify. I argue that kinship is a form of alternate citizenship. More than everyday practices, it is the jural and moral implications of kinship that frame Kallar micro-polities and political theories. My study examines the conjuncture of extant political thoughts (as also manifested in their theories of kinship and ritual) with newer governmental forms and political styles. In examining the consonance between a political ontology and the adoption of democratic institutions, this research contributes to current scholarship on the anthropology of democracy in India. This investigation also connects a number of socio-spatial scales - from the person to the region – in order to add a new dimension - of intimacy – to understandings of political theory. The emphasis on the individual and their pre-existing notions of rights as the basis of their political cosmology challenges the socio-structural emphasis in ethnographies of South Asia. This in-depth investigation of political values also fills a lacuna in scholarship on non Judeo-Christian traditions of moral philosophy and ethical projects.
Supervisors: C.J. Fuller and Laura Bear