This book examines in rich detail the lives, struggles, and strategies of South Asian activists seeking to advance various political, social, and environmental causes. Through a series of case studies from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka on activists’ efforts, it elucidates how they mediate between different spheres that are often (and sometimes legally) kept apart: the political and the legal, the economic and the political, the local and the international.

The uniqueness of this book lies in its treatment of ‘civil society’ as a process brought into being by the actions of specific individuals whose struggles and experiences can profitably be examined for an understanding of everyday politics. The ethnographic studies lay bare how activists in the entire region continuously wrestle with the tensions between the tidy boxes of official classifications and the fuzzy categories of everyday life.



Table of Contents:

Preface Introduction: Making Civil Society in South Asia DAVID N GELLNER I: POLITICS The Biography of a Magar Communist ANNE DE SALES Creating ‘Civilized’ Communists: A Quarter of a Century of Politicization in Rural Nepal SARA SHNEIDERMAN Youth and Political Engagement in Sri Lanka SIRIPALA HETTIGE Can Women be Mobilized to Participate in Indian Local Politics? STEFANIE STRULIK Surveying Activists in Nepal DAVID N GELLNER and MRIGENDRA BAHADUR KARKI II: DEVELOPMENT Disciplined Activists, Unruly Brokers? Exploring the Boundaries between Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs), Donors, and the State in Bangladesh DAVID LEWIS Activists and Development in Nepal CELAYNE HEATON SHRESTHA From Big Game to Biodiversity: Middle-class Environmental Activists and Wildlife Conservation in Sri Lanka ARJUN GUNERATNE Civil Society and its Fragments WILLIAM F FISHER Glossary and Abbreviations Name Index Subject Index