Long read review: Decolonizing politics: an introduction by Robbie Shilliam

In Decolonizing Politics: An Introduction, Robbie Shilliam explores the colonial and racist logics enfolded within the history of political thought while also identifying decolonising moves within the discipline. Recontextualising and reconceptualising the intellectual roots and routes of political science, this book is infused with new possibilities and optimism, providing practical solutions for scholars keen to go beyond power-laden racialised and gendered categories of thinking, writes Sudhir Chella Rajan. Decolonizing Politics: An Introduction. Robbie Shilliam. Polity. 2021

Is Democracy Possible, Part II: Cosmopolitan Ideas and the Problem of Global Political Community 1

All communities are imagined. The ‘global community ’ is no exception to that rule. But imagination turns into a tangible, potent, effective integrating force when aided by socially produced and socially sustained institutions of collective self-identification and self-government, as it was in the case of modern nations wedded for better or worse and till death-dothem-part to modern sovereign states. As far as the imagined global community is concerned, such an institutional network (woven from global agencies of democratic control, a globally binding legal system and globally upheld ethical principles) is largely absent … Our consolation, though (the only consolation available, but also – let me add – the only one humankind needs when falling on dark times), is the fact ‘history is still with us and can be made ’ (Bauman 2002). The small but influential segment of Anglo-American liberal scholarship that focuses on democracy theory seems only lately to have recognized that not only the rationale for the domain it chooses for its research—territorially bound entities—but therefore perhaps th

The Social Impacts of Climate Change in South Asia

Climate change is undoubtedly the most serious environmental crisis Earth has ever witnessed. As the planet enters what many are terming the ‘Anthropocene ’ period in its geological history (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000) the impacts of climate change—along with the side-by-side destruction of ecosystems associated with the relentless industrialisation of the land and oceans—will transform forever its physical and biological properties. At smaller scales of time and space societies too are expected to undergo radical and irreversible changes. Indeed, in the context of South Asia, climate change is not only the biggest environmental threat faced by the region but also the likely cause of extraordinary social and economic problems in the course of this century. While it is virtually impossible to forecast the physical impacts of climate change with great accuracy at the regional scale, given vast uncertainties in input parameters as well as non-linearities in system dynamics, there are several added difficulties in predicting its social impacts. One has to do with ‘reflexivity ’ of human agency, i.e., the ability of people and societies to shift course based on their observation of how they are changing the world around them. Another, which counteracts the tendencies of the first, has to do with fundamental problems of collective action, i.e., the disconnect 1 Electronic copy available at

Data driven analysis of social capital in Farmer Producer Companies

The Farmer Producer Company (FPC), a subset of the Farmer Producer Organization (FPO), is an important institutional form designed to organize farmer groups towards better coordinated farming and marketing. In the Indian context, as FPCs have emerged as new forms of members-led agribusiness, their ability to identify prevailing social ties and tap them effectively towards business growth needs to be better understood. Although social capital is studied broadly for its potential to drive organizational performance, it has been poorly researched in farmer collectives such as FPCs. The current work examines the effect of social capital on benefits and business performance at the level of member groups in FPCs. An empirical analysis was conducted in which two FPCs, which differed significantly in their mobilization strategies, farming methods, and supply chain linkages, were surveyed. Data collected from the surveys were visualized and clustering analysis was carried out using Self Organizing Maps (SOM), an unsupervised Artificial Neural Network (ANN) tool. Insights from clustering reveal the importance of pre-existing social ties, leadership, participation in group activities and the geographical affinity of groups in benefits realization and business performance of FPCs. The importance of bottom-up approaches in establishing robust supply chain linkages in emerging FPCs was keyed out through this work. The inferences through SOM, distilled strategies for FPCs' stakeholders in prioritizing interventions for member groups and in generating broader implications for policy makers accounting social capital in new institutional models