Amit Prakash – författare

Why are relations between minorities and the police in France so fraught? Stripping away the myth that this tension is a sudden and recent disruption of its universalist republican tradition brought on by the presence of North African immigrants, Amit Prakash locates the origins of contemporary conflicts in race and empire in France's history. In Empire on the Seine, Prakash argues that the métropole and the colony dynamically co-developed a policing regime over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to manage colonial and racial difference. With the North African community emerging as a sizable and durable presence in Paris after World War I, this policing became a key state practice in imagining and administering the immigrant population. Prakash shows that despite the French state's current reluctance to use race as an official category, racial thought and racial targets animated police services, social services, and urban planning schemes from the 1920s until the 1970s. Using police archival records, reports from colonial officials, urban planning and housing studies, and the records of French social workers and immigrant associations, Prakash shows that colonial racism was integrated into the policing of Paris and that architecture, urbanism, and social housing assumed police functions for colonial and postcolonial migrants. In light of this history, contemporary social and racial segregation, periodic protests and rioting against police violence, and the aggressive posture of the Parisian police emerge as the material traces of French colonialism in the métropole. The city of Paris was the capital of an empire and its imperial shadows are long.

Why are relations between minorities and the police in France so fraught? Stripping away the myth that this tension is a sudden and recent disruption of its universalist republican tradition brought on by the presence of North African immigrants, Amit Prakash locates the origins of contemporary conflicts in race and empire in France's history. In Empire on the Seine, Prakash argues that the métropole and the colony dynamically co-developed a policing regime over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to manage colonial and racial difference. With the North African community emerging as a sizable and durable presence in Paris after World War I, this policing became a key state practice in imagining and administering the immigrant population. Prakash shows that despite the French state's current reluctance to use race as an official category, racial thought and racial targets animated police services, social services, and urban planning schemes from the 1920s until the 1970s.Using police archival records, reports from colonial officials, urban planning and housing studies, and the records of French social workers and immigrant associations, Prakash shows that colonial racism was integrated into the policing of Paris and that architecture, urbanism, and social housing assumed police functions for colonial and postcolonial migrants. In light of this history, contemporary social and racial segregation, periodic protests and rioting against police violence, and the aggressive posture of the Parisian police emerge as the material traces of French colonialism in the métropole. The city of Paris was the capital of an empire and its imperial shadows are long.

This book offers an overview of the history and development of civil society in three major nations of South Asia – Pakistan, India and Bangladesh – from colonial times to the present. It examines the liberalization of civil society since the 1980s, the needs it created for civil action, the professionalization of civil society organizations, and the extent to which civil society may benefit society at large in the context of local, national and global transformations in the economy, political regime and ideology.The reader will find new insights on the interaction between the liberalization of multifaceted civil societies in the three countries, presenting contrasts such as restrictions put on women’s organizations or labour unions and acceptance of religious organizations’ activities. The volume looks at forms of transfer of civil society models, representation and democratic legitimacy of civil society organizations such as nongovernmental organizations, government organized NGOs and faith-based organizations, along with the structuring of civil society through legal frames as well as female, religious, and ethnic mobilizations around language and literature. Using wide-ranging empirical data and theoretical analyses, it deals with civil society issues relating to human rights and political challenges, justice, inequality, empowerment, and the role of bureaucracy, women’s movements, and ethnic and linguistic minorities. It also presents early responses to the Covid-19 crisis in 2020 which created significant pressure on the states and on civil society. This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of political studies, development studies, sociology, public policy and governance, law and human rights, as also to professionals in think tanks, civil society activists and NGOs.

This book offers an overview of the history and development of civil society in three major nations of South Asia – Pakistan, India and Bangladesh – from colonial times to the present. It examines the liberalization of civil society since the 1980s, the needs it created for civil action, the professionalization of civil society organizations, and the extent to which civil society may benefit society at large in the context of local, national and global transformations in the economy, political regime and ideology.The reader will find new insights on the interaction between the liberalization of multifaceted civil societies in the three countries, presenting contrasts such as restrictions put on women’s organizations or labour unions and acceptance of religious organizations’ activities. The volume looks at forms of transfer of civil society models, representation and democratic legitimacy of civil society organizations such as nongovernmental organizations, government organized NGOs and faith-based organizations, along with the structuring of civil society through legal frames as well as female, religious, and ethnic mobilizations around language and literature. Using wide-ranging empirical data and theoretical analyses, it deals with civil society issues relating to human rights and political challenges, justice, inequality, empowerment, and the role of bureaucracy, women’s movements, and ethnic and linguistic minorities. It also presents early responses to the Covid-19 crisis in 2020 which created significant pressure on the states and on civil society. This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of political studies, development studies, sociology, public policy and governance, law and human rights, as also to professionals in think tanks, civil society activists and NGOs.

This volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach to rethink the multiple dimensions of marginality – political, societal, economic, cultural, legal and spatial. It explores their new representations in colonial and post-colonial India. Departing from extant analyses of experiences of marginalization in diverse social groups, it proposes to problematize the conceptualization of marginality, focusing on its evolution through space and time. A relational position, marginality, it is argued, presupposes a confrontation with centrality or the ‘mainstream’ within a common discourse of knowledge and power. The volume emphasizes that the process of marginalization is not a ‘marginal’ phenomenon and draws attention to the historical processes which determine, establish and perpetuate the margins.The book reflects on varied aspects of evolving marginalities – structural, cultural and psychological – in South Asia in diverse temporal, spatial or societal contexts. It examines the discourses, institutional mechanisms and economic processes within which marginalities are located. This work will be an important read for scholars and researchers of history, anthropology, subaltern studies, exclusion studies, South Asian history, post-colonial studies, political studies, Indian history, cultural studies and history, in general.

This volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach to rethink the multiple dimensions of marginality – political, societal, economic, cultural, legal and spatial. It explores their new representations in colonial and post-colonial India. Departing from extant analyses of experiences of marginalization in diverse social groups, it proposes to problematize the conceptualization of marginality, focusing on its evolution through space and time. A relational position, marginality, it is argued, presupposes a confrontation with centrality or the ‘mainstream’ within a common discourse of knowledge and power. The volume emphasizes that the process of marginalization is not a ‘marginal’ phenomenon and draws attention to the historical processes which determine, establish and perpetuate the margins.The book reflects on varied aspects of evolving marginalities – structural, cultural and psychological – in South Asia in diverse temporal, spatial or societal contexts. It examines the discourses, institutional mechanisms and economic processes within which marginalities are located. This work will be an important read for scholars and researchers of history, anthropology, subaltern studies, exclusion studies, South Asian history, post-colonial studies, political studies, Indian history, cultural studies and history, in general.