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Cultural Disincentives for Conservative Mobilization: Paternalism and the Decline of Bonded Labor in Rural India

Tue, August 19, 12:30 to 2:10pm, TBA

Abstract

Since the 1960s more attention has been paid to how movements secure rights than to how the powerful lose control. Within the literature on social movements this gap is manifested in an overemphasis on challengers, with less attention paid to those targeted by movements, or on tactical interactions between movements and their adversaries. Interviews with current and former perpetrators of bonded labor in India capture human rights violators as they are in the process of losing the control they had previously enjoyed thanks to the institution of caste. This sudden loss of authority comes as a surprise and an offense since paternalism has lead perpetrators to believe that debt bondage was a mutually beneficial socio-economic relationship. When movement efforts combine with macro-economic forces to challenge this exploitative status quo, human rights violators must scramble to find new ideational and practical responses. Turning the lens onto the movement target’s experience unpacks a critical phase in which eroding authority is often met by resignation. It is suggested that resignation, simply giving up, may explain a significant percentage of movement impact on non-state targets. The study’s findings suggest that movements targeting power institutionalized outside the state may experience success if targets lack the will or means to defend a beleaguered status quo.

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