PUBLIC LECTURE
on
The Ordering of Political Allegiance in the Villages of North Kerala
by Dr Nitasha Kaul, Associate Professor (Reader) in Politics and International Relations, Centre for the Study of Democracy , University of Westminster
About the lecture:
This lecture will provide a combination of political analysis with ethnographic fieldwork observations to theorize Communist party’s construction of political allegiance and their persistence of power in the democratic context at a local village level in the state of Kerala. It focuses on a scholarly conceptualization of an empirical phenomenon, known in Kerala as the ‘party village’, as the focus of analysis. It places village observations in the longer frame of historical north Kerala village politics, noting the changes over time and offering theoretical perspectives upon them. Through a mix of empirical observation with historical context and theorization, it will highlight the importance and the implications of unconventional democratic dynamics more generally.