Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner – författare

The COVID-19 pandemic was a global emergency, but its health, social, and economic effects were highly uneven. In India--one of the world's most unequal democracies--the pandemic and government responses unfolded across a hierarchical social landscape and uneven institutional terrain, producing starkly different experiences of risk, protection, and loss. In Unequal Contagion, Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner and Poulami Roychowdhury bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to analyze how long-standing patterns of inequality shaped pandemic experiences in India, how those inequalities were intensified by state responses, and how historically rooted forms of social mobilization and citizen-state relations helped, in some contexts, to mitigate their effects. Drawing on wide-ranging methods, from surveys to ethnography, chapter authors examine how centrally imposed lockdowns, disruptions to health systems, and uneven welfare provision interacted with class, caste, gender, religious, and regional inequalities. While responses varied substantially across states and localities, seemingly universal policy responses often amplified vulnerability--particularly among migrants, informal sector workers, women, and other marginalized groups--leaving many without access to livelihoods, healthcare, or protection from violence. Chapters also trace how access to healthcare, welfare, and relief depended not only on policy design but on everyday relationships between citizens, local officials, frontline workers, and civil society organizations. Grounded in India yet widely relevant, Unequal Contagion advances a relational and intersectional account of governance under stress. By linking sub-national variation in pandemic policy and welfare outcomes to historically embedded patterns of social mobilization and political engagement, the book offers insights on the formulation and implementation of emergency-related public policy in other unequal democracies, revealing how social inequality and uneven citizen-state relations shape who is protected and who is left vulnerable.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a global emergency, but its health, social, and economic effects were highly uneven. In India--one of the world's most unequal democracies--the pandemic and government responses unfolded across a hierarchical social landscape and uneven institutional terrain, producing starkly different experiences of risk, protection, and loss. In Unequal Contagion, Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner and Poulami Roychowdhury bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to analyze how long-standing patterns of inequality shaped pandemic experiences in India, how those inequalities were intensified by state responses, and how historically rooted forms of social mobilization and citizen-state relations helped, in some contexts, to mitigate their effects. Drawing on wide-ranging methods, from surveys to ethnography, chapter authors examine how centrally imposed lockdowns, disruptions to health systems, and uneven welfare provision interacted with class, caste, gender, religious, and regional inequalities. While responses varied substantially across states and localities, seemingly universal policy responses often amplified vulnerability--particularly among migrants, informal sector workers, women, and other marginalized groups--leaving many without access to livelihoods, healthcare, or protection from violence. Chapters also trace how access to healthcare, welfare, and relief depended not only on policy design but on everyday relationships between citizens, local officials, frontline workers, and civil society organizations. Grounded in India yet widely relevant, Unequal Contagion advances a relational and intersectional account of governance under stress. By linking sub-national variation in pandemic policy and welfare outcomes to historically embedded patterns of social mobilization and political engagement, the book offers insights on the formulation and implementation of emergency-related public policy in other unequal democracies, revealing how social inequality and uneven citizen-state relations shape who is protected and who is left vulnerable.

Claim-making - the everyday strategies through which citizens pursue rights fulfilment - is often overlooked in studies of political behavior, which tend to focus on highly visible, pivotal moments: elections, mass protests, high court decisions, legislative decisions. But what of the politics of the everyday? This Element takes up this question, drawing together research from Colombia, South Africa, India, and Mexico. The authors argue that claim-making is a distinct form of citizenship practice characterized by its everyday nature, which is neither fully programmatic nor clientelistic; and which is prevalent in settings marked by gaps between the state's de jure commitments to rights and their de facto realization. Under these conditions, claim making is both meaningful (there are rights to be secured) and necessary (fulfillment is far from guaranteed). Claim-making of this kind is of critical consequence, both materially and politically, with the potential to shape how citizens engage (or disengage) the state.

Claim-making - the everyday strategies through which citizens pursue rights fulfilment - is often overlooked in studies of political behavior, which tend to focus on highly visible, pivotal moments: elections, mass protests, high court decisions, legislative decisions. But what of the politics of the everyday? This Element takes up this question, drawing together research from Colombia, South Africa, India, and Mexico. The authors argue that claim-making is a distinct form of citizenship practice characterized by its everyday nature, which is neither fully programmatic nor clientelistic; and which is prevalent in settings marked by gaps between the state's de jure commitments to rights and their de facto realization. Under these conditions, claim making is both meaningful (there are rights to be secured) and necessary (fulfillment is far from guaranteed). Claim-making of this kind is of critical consequence, both materially and politically, with the potential to shape how citizens engage (or disengage) the state.

Citizens around the world look to the state for social welfare provision, but often struggle to access essential services in health, education, and social security. This book investigates the everyday practices through which citizens of the world's largest democracy make claims on the state, asking whether, how, and why they engage public officials in the pursuit of social welfare. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in rural India, Kruks-Wisner demonstrates that claim-making is possible in settings (poor and remote) and among people (the lower classes and castes) where much democratic theory would be unlikely to predict it. Examining the conditions that foster and inhibit citizen action, she finds that greater social and spatial exposure - made possible when individuals traverse boundaries of caste, neighborhood, or village - builds citizens' political knowledge, expectations, and linkages to the state, and is associated with higher levels and broader repertoires of claim-making.