Description

This presentation challenges some assumptions inherent in recent accounts of the virtues of civil society, social capital and participatory development. Favouring the concept of ?political society? It considers how local political intermediaries structure the interaction of the rural poor and the state in two locales in West Bengal. These relations are illustrated with the example of a national development scheme aiming to generate wage employment in the agricultural lean season. The findings imply that participatory development in a state like West Bengal, where civil society is poorly developed, needs to be considered in relation to particular constructions of local political society and the ?everyday? State.

René Véron is Associate Professor of Geography and active contributor to the International Development Studies programme at the University of Guelph. He has been involved in various research and policy-oriented projects in India focusing on rural and urban development issues in Kerala, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi.
His research has explored socioeconomic, environmental and political aspects of development including the impacts of crop markets on sustainable development, the implications of globalisation and related reform policies for rural livelihoods, as well as the politics around the implementation of poverty-alleviation schemes, the provision of elementary education or the introduction of urban air pollution measures.