Hailing the State

Lisa Mitchell is Professor of History and Anthropology in the Department of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The Making of a Mother Tongue.

"In redefining democratic practice to include collective assembly, Mitchell weaves an intricate picture of how people understand themselves as democratic citizens. Deftly combining approaches from anthropology, history, and political theory, she brings alive the mosaic of actions that they employ in what she terms “hailing the state.” She draws on very rich archival and ethnographic material to tell us the ways in which people have and continue to hail the state." - Lipika Kamra (Review of Politics) “Mitchell weaves an intricate picture of how people understand themselves as democratic citizens. Deftly combining approaches from anthropology, history, and political theory, she brings alive the mosaic of actions that they employ in what she terms ‘hailing the state.’” - Lipika Kamra (Review of Politics) "A critical intervention in socio-political thought." - Chinmaya Lal Thakur (Contemporary South Asia) “Michell’s book is historically rich, ethnographically grounded, and theoretically innovative. Her intervention is at once timely and cautionary for Indian democracy, as it highlights and situates the stakes of political recognizability for marginalized populations. Readers interested in political anthropology and history and subaltern and South Asian studies will no doubt find this book insightful.”- Roderick Wijunamai (Exertions)

• A Note on Transliteration and Spelling  ixAcknowledgments  xiIntroduction. Hailing the State: Collective Assembly, Democracy, and Representation  1Part I. Seeking Audience1. Sit-In Demonstrations and Hunger Strikes: From Dharna as Door-Sitting to Dharna Chowk  432. Seeking Audience: Refusals to Listen, “Style,” and the Politics of Recognition  673. Collective Assembly and the “Roar of the People”: Corporeal Forms of “Making Known” and the Deliberative Turn  944. The General Strike: Collective Action at the Other End of the Commodity Chain  122Part II. The Criminal and the Political5. Alarm Chain Pulling: The Criminal and the Political in the Writing of History  1516. Rail and Road Blockades: Illiberal or Participatory Democracy?  1687. Rallies, Processions and Yātrās: Ticketless Travel and the Journey to “Political Arrival”  197Conclusion. Of Human Chains and Guinness Records: Attention, Recognition, and the Fate of Democracy amidst Changing Mediascapes  216Notes  225Bibliography  265Index  287