Subaltern Groups Research Articles

Are the Queer Movements in India Inclusive?: Explorations of Hierarchies within the Queer Community

India has seen progress in the laws and legislations granting rights to queer people in the last ten years. This resulted from decades of activism starting in the late 1980s. However, equal rights and opportunities have not been extended to all queer individuals, revealing fractures within the movement. In this context, this article explores the issues within the queer movements that have led to the hierarchisation of priorities that the movements have advocated for. Historically, queer activism has been dominated by the development sector, operating within neoliberal frameworks and global funding regimes. This has led to the prioritisation of certain issues due to the privileged backgrounds of those leading the NGOs, resulting in the exclusion of intersectional sexual subaltern groups who do not fit the neoliberal ideals of professionalism and corporatisation. The language used within queer movements, often shaped by global discourses, has also created barriers. Terms like men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender, used to secure funding, privilege those with access to such terminology, leaving others marginalised. This centralisation of power persists today, exemplified in issues like advocating for same-sex marriage, which reflects homonormative ideals that reinforce existing class and caste structures. Meanwhile, critical issues – such as challenging the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 or advocating for horizontal reservations for transgender individuals – are sidelined. To address these disparities, this article suggests that a bottom-up approach in queer advocacy is necessary to advocate for the rights of intersectional sexual subalterns, with some emerging queer movements beginning to reflect these ideals. Further, there needs to be more focus on rural and subaltern queer practices and advocacy in addition to forging alliances with other social movements – such as those on caste, class, and disability – to create safer spaces and inclusive queer movements.

Crises of Authority in the Arab World: Readings from Contemporary Tunisia

Antonio Gramsci’s thought has increasingly inspired the study of the contemporary MENA, reaching far beyond the complex and specific details of politics, history, and culture in which his writings are steeped. Taking the cue from a new generation of Gramscian research, this article provides an additional temporal and geographical test case for such critical scholarship. Through primary and secondary sources, it deploys a Gramscian toolkit to empirically explore the first post-2011 uprisings decade in Tunisia. It argues that the country is mired in an ‘interregnum’ condition due to the combined effect of a ‘crisis of authority’ from above and lacking viable alternatives from below. Since opposing masses advanced disorganized yet revolutionary claims, leadership hinging on consensus to pursue ‘great political feats’—from delivering substantive democracy through political and socio-economic change to navigating the country during Covid-19—continued to fail. Whereas protests persistently pointed to the distance between political elites and the ‘people,’ the hyper-homogenizing look at the latter unmasked citizenry’s lack of cohesion and homogeneity. This ‘double fragmentation’ of the ruling—and, eventually, dominant—classes and the subaltern groups adds to the unbridged disjoin between them for the crisis to persist, and thus reopens the way to coercion.

“The joy of being a cause” versus “the pleasure of finding things out”: subalternity and Bildung in higher education engineering and physics

This paper will discuss the concepts of Bildung, subalternity, and physics- and engineering education and where these topics intersect and interact with one another. A central part of the concept of Bildung is educating citizens—active participators in society. At the same time, a central characteristic of subaltern groups is that their voices are not heard in society. If subaltern groups thus can be recruited into a Bildung-oriented education, their subalternness can over time be challenged, and the groups can be included as equals within society. In the study, 728 physics and bachelor engineering students are asked via a questionnaire about their motivation for their education choice to chart the potential for Bildung-oriented education within these fields. The responses are sorted through a thematic analysis. As this paper will show, the social background—class structure—differs significantly between physics- and bachelor engineering students, as do their motivations. These data along with documentation from previous research showing working-class students’ predisposition toward STEM disciplines facilitate the possibility of sketching possible paths toward Bildung for these students that at the same time can lift subaltern groups and make their voices heard.

Addressing diversity: An analysis of German curricula for history

AbstractThis article analyses the extent to which German history curricula address aspects of diversity. The curricula are analysed in terms of whether they include diagnostic phases to identify students' individual interests. It also examines whether the historical experiences of minorities and the agency of subaltern groups are addressed. The extent to which the curricula abandon a Eurocentric perspective and integrate global historical aspects will also be considered. Methodologically, the curricula of two main school types in all German states were analysed by means of a qualitative content analysis. The focus was on curricula for lower and upper secondary schools. The results show that diversity is usually addressed only from the perspective of established narratives. A national and Eurocentric history continues to dominate the curricula. Only a few curricula explicitly address the diagnosis of students' performance and ideas. Finally, the paper discusses the evolving nature of curricula, influenced by societal needs and growing sensitivity to social diversity. It highlights the need for future research on diversity in teacher education and the practicality of implementing complex concepts such as postcolonial thought in the classroom. More empirical research is needed on current curricula and the teaching of history in different regions and types of school.

Forged Letters. Counterfeit Manumission Certificates and Subaltern Writing Practices as Used by Enslaved Individuals in Early Modern Iberia

The focus of the essay is the fabrication, circulation and use of ‘forged documents’ by subaltern groups, and in particular, counterfeit manumission certificates created for and by enslaved individuals in Iberia during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The analysis of ‘forged documents’ provides a deeper insight into how official model documents were appropriated by these subaltern illiterate groups. Furthermore, it provides a testimony of the dynamics of subaltern responses to documentary norms and models along the lines discussed by Donald F. McKenzie.

Intersectional praxis for social-ecological transformations: Lessons from North Macedonia's grassroots Green Deal

Intersectional praxis - the practical application of intersectional theorizing into action - can be highly relevant for pursuing social-ecological transformations. Yet, we know little about the benefits and challenges of trying to mobilize such praxis for pursuing transformations. In this contribution to critical feminist and political ecology scholarship, we explore this gap empirically through a case study of producing a grassroots Green Deal in North Macedonia in which intersectional theory principles were employed in a process of collective visioning and grassroots organizing around that endeavor. To identify benefits and challenges related to this process, we inquire into the documents produced and the experience of organizers coordinating and catalyzing those efforts. We find that the benefits of enacting intersectional praxis relate to strategizing and mobilizing, collective action, and intersectional solidarity building. Challenges faced included fears concerning the unfamiliarity with the concept of intersectionality, and issues related to the capacity of individuals from subaltern groups to participate in collective visioning processes under conditions of precarious existence. We conclude that grassroots organizing around the Green Deal framework could have a potential to address some critiques of mainstream Green Deals, shift narratives of socio-ecological transformations (SETs), unite different movements working towards climate and social justice, and mobilize people power under an umbrella framework that dominates the policy arena, such as the Green Deal.

Uncovering the sources of revolutionary violence: the case of Colombia’s National Front (1958-1964)

ABSTRACT Scholars often explain political violence by highlighting factors such as state weakness. This article shifts the analysis to a focus on state character. More specifically, the article analyses how the growth of revolutionary violence in 1960s Colombia was shaped by the earlier period of the National Front (1958–1964). This earlier period is crucial to understanding the outbreak of revolutionary violence because it gave rise to a project of state reorganization which refashioned the relationship between dominant and subaltern groups. The reorganization of alliances under the National Front helped to significantly reduce inter-party violence, but because of the way in which the form of state was reorganized, the National Front produced new conditions of conflict, which culminated in the growth of revolutionary violence. In making this case it is argued that the birth of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), reflected through the military offensive against Marquetalia in 1964, can only be effectively captured by appreciating how dominant forces implemented a state reorganization project, which produced new dynamics of conflict and ultimately failed to incorporate key subaltern groups.

Strategically Hijacking Victimhood: A Political Communication Strategy in the Discourse of Viktor Orbán and Donald Trump

This article introduces the concept of “hijacked victimhood” as a form of strategically leveraging victimhood narratives. It is a subset of strategic victimhood, which is a relatively common communicative strategy whereby groups claim victimhood status in contests over power and legitimacy. Political leaders who use the strategy of hijacked victimhood present dominant groups as in danger, as current or future victims, and in need of protection (especially by the crafter of the narrative) from oppressive forces consisting of—or indirectly representing—marginalized and subaltern groups. In the process, leaders hijacking victimhood blunt the rights-based claims of such groups. Analyzing Viktor Orbán’s and Donald Trump’s elite rhetoric in Hungary and the United States, respectively, we inductively document varieties of hijacked victimhood in their political communication, showing how Orbán leverages historical suffering and resistance while Trump constructs economic and value-based harms for dominant groups. Making both conceptual and empirical contributions, we argue that at the heart of hijacked victimhood is a reversal of the victimizer–victim dichotomy, a new portrayal of moral orders, a teleological ordering of past and future harms, and a mobilization of security threats—all used to preserve or expand a dominant group’s power.

Closing ranks: Leadership and the mundanization of the extraordinary in military history

Using examples from military history, this paper takes Alvesson and Sveningsson’s ‘Extraordinarizaton of the Mundane’ article and inverts it. They suggested that what counted as ‘leadership’ was not the acts of formal leaders but the interpretive work of subordinates, who rendered mundane actions by leaders – such as chatting to employees – as extraordinary. Here, I suggest that the reverse process also occurs – the mundanization of the extraordinary. In this case subaltern groups are given mundane tasks to inhibit their achievement of extraordinary tasks, or, when extraordinary tasks are achieved, those same tasks are rendered mundane by their superordinates and thus devalued. Even when successful challenges to this hierarchy of value are made the superordinate culture tends to close ranks against the upstarts and reaffirm the status quo ante, or simply deny the possibility of subaltern groups achieving something so extraordinary.

Monopoly on doubt: Post-mortem examinations in Israel, 1950s-1980s.

This article examines the durability of high post-mortem examination rates in Israel between the 1950s-1980s. Previous studies overlooked the issue of medical authority and the social history of autopsy, focusing on policy, technological development, and conflict between science and religion. By contrast, our analysis brings together the medical interest in unlimited research of dead bodies and the power relations between doctors and subaltern groups in Israel. Based on the Israeli State Archives, the Hebrew University Archives, and the daily press, we argue that medical biopolitical aspirations and the public shaped the history of postmortem examinations in Israel. High rates were embedded in the medical construction of doubt regarding the cause of death that only physicians could resolve by autopsy. Civilian protests led to a temporary decrease in the 1960s, while political and medical intervention brought about a gradual resurgence in post-mortem rates in the 1980s.

Happiness among subaltern groups: Dalits in India and blacks in South Africa

This study has two purposes; the first is to test differences between dominant and subordinate groups in India and South Africa. For India, the comparison is between caste groups: the dominant “forward castes” and the subordinate “non-forward castes”. For South Africa, the comparison is between racial groups: whites as a dominant group and non-Whites (Blacks, Coloured, and Asians) as a subordinate group. The second purpose of the study is to compare happiness levels between India and South Africa with a view to rigorously establishing where happiness is greatest and what its drivers are. These issues are examined using data from the World Values Survey (WVS). Covering in excess of 250,000 respondents drawn from 90 countries, and available for the period 1994–2014, WVS remains the most widely accessible database on well-being. This study establishes that, in general, Indians were happier than South Africans in this period, meaning that the predicted probability of being happy was, on average, higher in India (84.2%) than in South Africa (81.1%). Another important finding was that persons from the dominant groups were more likely to be happy in South Africa than in India but that persons from the subordinate groups were more likely to be happy in India than in South Africa.

Beyond the Elite Gaze: A Comparative Study to Unveil the Subaltern Voices Through Gurdial Singh’s The Last Flicker and Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance

In every society, there are some segments of people who are wealthy and have supreme authority over the means of production. They tend to exploit those with limited or no access to socio-economic opportunities. In postcolonial terms, these people are referred to as subalterns who are systematically excluded from a society’s established structures. It also speaks about those people who are discriminated against based on race, gender, caste, status, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or religious affiliations. Literature plays a pivotal role in subaltern lives by providing them assistance through which they can express themselves freely. The present study tries to explore the voices of subaltern subjects by bringing on surface the oppression, violence, and suppression through Gurdial Singh’s The Last Flicker (1964) and Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance (1995). Though these writers come from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and ethnicities, their works depict the mutual concept of the inhuman treatment of the subaltern subjects. Their protagonists are unconventional and rebellious. They make their own identity even though consistently suppressed by dominant ideologies. The author’s concern for the downtrodden and subaltern characters is visible through their writings. Both authors explore themes of marginalization, socio-political issues, and the impact of power structures on subaltern groups.

A MILLION MUTINIES IN THE WILDERNESS: READING SUBALTERN INSUBORDINATION OF COLONIAL AUTHORITY IN PERSPECTIVE

To retrieve the voices of the subalterns from the pages of history, they need to be reiterated repeatedly. The voices of the subalterns were frequently ignored in the mainstream historical writings, and when they were recorded, they were chastised in the name of spontaneity and impulsiveness. Their resistance, history, and experience have got subsumed into the elitist record of the events, and they could not be expressed the way they should have been. This paper tries to record the little experiences of the subaltern groups and the stories of their resistance to the colonial authorities. These petty resistances were not the armed revolts or the organized insurgency against the colonial rule which could overthrow the colonial government in a short span of time. Rather, these were a million little mutinies with limited reach but they were no less effective in challenging the colonial narratives and the image they were trying to portray. These small resistances stood against the self-validating, self-authenticated colonial discourse and consequently posed serious threat to their authority. These little mutinies were not recorded properly due to their constricted scale and the lack of a wider and organized approach. This paper aims to foreground how effective and incisive these little mutinies were in their retaliation to the colonial discourse with which they paved the way to the larger aim of the decolonization of the mind. This paper tries to record the reactions, often in the form of satire, laughter, and even a sniff or a calculated silence, of the subalterns against the colonial authority and interpret them as a counter-narrative to the colonial one.

Entangled pathways of the Plantationocene: early colonial monocropping, subaltern agrobiodiversity, and aridity in Andalus (Spain) and Coastal Peru

ABSTRACT The long-term (AD 1300–1800), multi-scale interactions of monocropping and subaltern agri-food systems of Andalus (Spain) and coastal Peru reveal the entangled transformations of the Plantationocene. Historically convergent colonial monocultures (wheat, sugar, cotton, sheep, cattle) entangled with the divergence and plurality of resilient yet precarious diverse-food affordances of subaltern groups (peasants, indigenous people, enslaved persons, Mudejares, Moriscos). Using political ecology, the comparative cases illuminate how Plantationocene colonial entanglements were shaped through spatial movements and social-environmental affordances of biota, populations, and institutions. New empirical understanding and a novel conceptual and analytical framework offer insight into Plantationocene pathways, alternatives, and struggles.

The Rise and Fall of Diplomacy from Below: The Rebel Cooperation of Ya Basta!

ABSTRACT Under what conditions are radical alternatives to state-led diplomacy feasible? Diplomatic studies have so far denied attention to those diplomatic practices taking place without national mediation. Building on the concept of diplomacy from below (DFB), the article aims to understand under what conditions this newly theorised form of alternative diplomacy is possible in contexts of armed violence. To do so, we present the case of the diplomatic action of the (post)autonomist Association Ya Basta! between 1997 and 2004. The study adopts an interpretivist approach, reconstructing activists’ stories along four conflict scenarios (Mexico, Palestine, Colombia, and Iraq). The empirical analysis allowed for formulating a “working hypothesis” according to which DFB is feasible only among groups sharing an ideological background and under minimum-security conditions for freedom of movement and physical integrity. The paper innovates debates on (para)diplomacy and opens a new research agenda on diplomatic interactions between subaltern groups in (post)conflict scenarios.

Interpreting and Power: Re-articulating Colonial Memories in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible

This article investigates the damage enforced on interpreters in colonial and postcolonial settings. It explores the subordination of an African interpreter working for an American missionary in the Congo, as presented in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible (1998). This is an unexplored area in the novel, and the article shows how the interpreter falls amongst the subaltern groups. The intertwined narratives about the colonization of the Congo and the oppression of women parallel the marginalization of the interpreter. The latter evokes former colonial memories of the subjugation, even the enslavement of translators in the former Portuguese Empire. Theoretically, the article is underpinned by Micheal Cronin’s ideas on translation and power and Lawrence Venuti’s poststructuralist views, which devalue symmetrical approaches to translation. Finally, this work argues how translation can be a means of subordination by the oppressor and empowerment by the oppressed. Ultimately, the interpreter’s independent voice becomes a symbolic revelation of the means marginalized groups should use to overcome dominance and imperialism.

Orchestrating self-empowerment in tribal India: Debt bondage, land rights, and the strategic uses of spirituality

Spirituality strategically enables self-empowerment in a clandestine movement of Adivasis which this paper calls ‘the Programme’. To explain how social movements and action organisations can orchestrate spirituality, this paper examines how the Programme helps landless rural people overcome debt bondage and gain land by employing spiritual repertoires. The paper addresses the question how, in the context of an increasingly tribalised politics in India, spiritual orchestration allows some Scheduled Tribes to make substantive economic gains, especially on debt freedom and land rights. The paper draws on an analysis of qualitative data collected through workshops, interviews and visits to villages across several Indian states, which has been anonymised to protect identities and avoid divulging sensitive information. The study finds that spirituality supports self-empowerment in three ways: first, it provides motivation and ideological reinforcement for people engaging in struggles against debt bondage and for land rights; second, it makes tribal identity more visible and helps groups make claims as indigenous owners; third, it offers groups protection from reprisals and creates platforms for engaging powerful actors. These findings are significant because, for activists and scholars who work with subaltern groups in India or other contexts, they demonstrate that the orchestration of spirituality can strengthen action repertoires for self-empowerment and help groups secure or protect economic and social gains. The paper adds insights to research on social movements and organisations on how to strengthen the ‘weapons of the weak’; it contributes empirical knowledge about how strategies to overcome debt and exploitation can succeed; and it underscores the importance of protecting freedom of religion and belief in development practice.

Jaffa's contested heritage trails: Using city walking tours to study, affirm, and protest the politics of space and memory

The article concerns the role of heritage sites and performances in fuelling as well as resisting colonial domination over space and memory in the city of Jaffa. Using this case study, it maps the ways urban planning, preservation practices, and a spectrum of official and grassroots walking tours can enhance or challenge cities’ official memory lanes and paths of erasure. The article draws on a study conducted between 2017 and 2020 on the politics of heritage tours in landscapes of forced displacement, utilizing an expanded multilingual walk-along qualitative methodology. It contributes to the expanding scholarship on performances and tourism as relevant fields for the study of political geography. Based on a series of inventories of interactions between bodies and contested heritage sites in Jaffa, the article argues for the theoretical need to extend research on the politics of memory and/or architecture to include how different actors and subaltern groups animate those elements through their bodies, movements, memories, and stories.

The journey of subalternity in Gayatri Spivak’s work: Its sociological relevance

This article explores Gayatri Spivak’s journey of subalternity, demonstrating the empirical and sociological salience of this category beyond its theoretical and epistemic features, by highlighting its potential for increasing our understanding of society and bringing about social change. This argument contests assumptions in the literature about an epistemic/empirical fracture in Spivak’s work, recasting her theoretical frameworks as sociologically relevant. Moreover, it demonstrates that this sociological reading, although it goes ‘against the grain’ of Spivak’s own reticence about understanding subalternity sociologically, is well-founded: the theoretical-epistemic aspects of Spivak’s subalternity contribute to analyses about the situation of subaltern groups under colonialism and neoliberal globalisation and the means by which that subordination can be challenged. This illustrates that her conceptions of subalternity maintain sociological specificity vis-a-vis vague characterisations of subordination (e.g. oppression). Spivak’s later reflections on subalternity then grapple with the sociological deadlocks of her early approach: the disentanglement between subalternity and class exploitation. Her work thus delineates an explanatory matrix, interweaving sociological, philosophical and literary tools to explore entangled aspects of the subaltern condition. This systematic reading of Spivak’s approach expands and contests current scholarship, highlighting its sociologically compelling aspects and indicating the analytical and transformative potential of her matrix for future sociological debates on subalternity.

The rise and fall of political outsiders: Political opportunity structure and (de-)mobilization in Paraguay (2008–2012)

Unlike left outsiders in contexts of steadfast traditional opposition in Latin America, Fernando Lugo refrained from intensifying the conflict with the political establishment and mobilizing subaltern groups to push through progressive policies after winning the 2008 elections. Ultimately, conservative interests pushed through impeachment proceedings and forced him out of office prematurely, and Lugo yielded to their will instead of using the interbranch stalemate to instigate popular resistance. For their part, the popular sectors did not mobilize to pressure the Lugo government, nor did they stand firmly against the president’s impeachment. The article aims to answer why Lugo flopped as a political broker and why Paraguayans did not mobilize to Lugo’s defense by developing a two-level argument that combines the institutional supply side that determines the actors’ mobilization capacity and the demand side of movement issue-framing that conditions actors’ willingness to mobilize. First, the organizational and representative pathologies of the left parties persisted into Lugo’s reign and curtailed the capacity of the mobilization brokers to forge ties between otherwise separate organizations in society and to serve as a veto gate in power centers. Second, community leaders and social actors did not engage in active issue-framing processes to construct new meanings to orient their collective action. The article draws on interview data, public opinion polls, and archival works to substantiate the argument and contributes to social movement literature by highlighting the role of political leadership’s strategic choices and its interactions with opponents and allies (inside and outside power centers) in realizing favorable political opportunity and remolding clientelistic ties to mobilize social constituencies.