Social exclusion has in recent years received increasing attention from scholars and academics working on issues such as poverty, inequality and development. Indeed, already 15 years ago Else Øyen lamented the fact that the idea of social exclusion had made such rapid inroads into academia that scholars were now ‘running all over the place arranging seminars and conferences to find a researchable content in an umbrella concept for which there is limited theoretical underpinning’ (quoted in Sen 2000, 5). The present volume is the outcome of one such seminar, held in Aarhus in Denmark in the spring of 2010. The aim of the seminar was, however, not to provide further theoretical ‘underpinnings’ to the concept of social exclusion, but rather to examine its empirical applicability in contemporary India: How does an increasingly liberalized Indian economy contribute to processes of in- and exclusion? To what extent does the deepening of Indian democracy offer hitherto marginalized social groups new opportunities for pursuing strategies of inclusion through, or in opposition to, the state? And how does ‘development’ alter the social terrain on which inequalities are negotiated and played out? Finally, how are these processes intertwined? These and related questions emerged as focal points for discussion during the seminar, the spirit of which we seek to convey in this volume. The contributions contained here all seek to considerably expand the notion of social exclusion by applying it in the study of a broad range of cases.

Introduction

A little more than a decade ago, Sahlins (1999) argued that we are encountering an indigenisation of modernity, that is, the world is ‘being re-diversified by indigenous adaptations to the global juggernaut’. Exogenous elements are being integrated into and adapted to one's own culture. In passing one may note a small example of this constant process in Sahlins' quote itself: the term ‘juggernaut’, originating in present-day Orissa as an Anglicization of Lord Jagannath (Lord of the Universe), whose ‘powerful force’ is demonstrated in the annual car festival (rath yatra), apparently impressed the British colonisers. This cultural encounter not only led to the adoption of this word by the English language, the word itself also acquired a new meaning in the process.

More recently, such dynamics of indigenisation have been explored in relation to democracy in India (de Souza 2006; Michelutti 2007; Tanabe 2007), from which it has been demonstrated that democracies are equally culturally inflicted. Processes of democratisation depend largely on already existing socio-cultural configurations, depositions and repertoires.

Stig Toft Madsen is a Danish South Asianist affiliated with the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS). His interests range from Udupi catering and hoteliering in Goa and Gokarn to the relation between foreign jihadi guests and tribal hosts in Pakistan. His recent publications include ‘The Political Culture of Factionalism among Hindu Nationalists in Denmark’ (Critical Asian Studies 41 [2], 2009: 255–80, co-authored with Kenneth Bo Nielsen); and ‘EU-India Relations: An Expanded Interpretive Framework’, published in The Role of the European Union in Asia (Ashgate 2009). In his article ‘Being On and Being In: Exposure and Influence of Academic Experts in Contemporary Denmark’, forthcoming in Cultural Expertise and Litigation: Patterns, Conflicts, Narratives (Routledge), Madsen draws on his experience as a media commentator to discuss the role of the academic expert.

Kenneth Bo Nielsen is research fellow at the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo. An anthropologist by training, Nielsen has written on the Hindu diaspora in Denmark and on rural social movements in West Bengal, India. Recent publications include ‘Four Narratives of a Social Movement in West Bengal’ (South Asia 32 [3], 2009: 448–68); ‘Farmers’ Use of the Courts in an Anti-Land Acquisition Movement in India's West Bengal’ (Journal of Legal Pluralism 59, 2009: 121–44) and ‘Contesting India's Development? Industrialisation, Land Acquisition and Protest in West Bengal’ (Forum for Development Studies 37 [2], 2010: 145–70).