Purchase this article
USD $22.00
Where Is the Public Sphere?
Political Communications and the Morality of Disclosure in Rural Rajasthan
in The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
Author:
Anastasia Piliavsky
Anastasia Piliavsky
King’s College an379@cam.ac.uk
Search for other papers by Anastasia Piliavsky in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Search for other papers by Anastasia Piliavsky in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
USD $0.01
All currencies in US Dollar
The public sphere has been centre stage in celebrations of India's political triumphs. Leading commentators tell us that the astonishing post-independence surge of democracy has been contingent on the rise of a new kind of sociopolitical formation: the public sphere. This article takes a closer look at the popular deliberative terrain in North India to question this claim. Drawing on research conducted in a provincial town in the North Indian state of Rajasthan, we see that where metropolitan political theorists see 'transparency' as promoting discursive and political possibilities, Rajasthani villagers see an exposure which prevents expression, communication and the making of political choices. In their view, it is secrecy and social seclusion that enable political interactions and elicit political judgments. 'The public sphere' is an unfit heuristic for locating popular politics within (and beyond) Rajasthan, where it obscures much more than it reveals.