Theoretical Framework

This chapter helps us understand the limitations of the structural, binary of Civil Society versus Political Society binary as an approach to understanding the role of subaltern community leaders. Not only do I flesh out, in this chapter, the limitations of this approach in general but also analyse Chatterjee's response to his critics and add a “spatial dimension” to this debate. Drawing from the work of spatial theorists and anthropologists, I further problematise the civil versus Political Society binary by highlighting the question of “territoriality” and “non-state spaces” in shaping subaltern politics. In so doing, my conceptualisation of “fluid brokerage” pays attention to politics as a state of perpetual provocation wherein the State does not emerge as an orchestrating force but is seen to be dialectically constituted with the moral economy of subaltern struggles. I discuss how “territoriality” and “non-state actors” provide a more stable and emancipatory reading of subaltern politics, unlike the strategic, contingent, and nebulous nature of “Political Society”.