The DOI matches its Crossref record; 5 of the 5 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
blurred boundaries: the discourse of corruption, the culture of politics, and the imagined state
Abstract
In this article I attempt to do an ethnography of the state by examining the discourses of corruption in contemporary India. I focus on the practices of lower levels of the bureaucracy in a small north Indian town as well as on representations of the state in the mass media. Research on translocal institutions such as “the state” enables us to reflect on the limitations of participant‐observation as a technique of fieldwork. The analysis leads me to question Eurocentric distinctions between state and civil society and offers a critique of the conceptualization of “the state” as a monolithic and unitary entity. [the state, public culture, fieldwork, discourse, corruption, India]
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Citations
Cites
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BackgroundNotes on the Difficulty of Studying the State (1977)
ABRAMS, P. (1988) · Journal of Historical Sociology · doi:10.1111/j.1467-6443.1988.tb00004.x · Cited by 2,463
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Klitgaard, R. (2019) · doi:10.1525/9780520911185 · Cited by 1,423
Cited by
Ribot, J. C., & Peluso, N. L. (2003) · Rural Sociology · doi:10.1111/j.1549-0831.2003.tb00133.x · Cited by 2,355
The Anthropology of the State in the Age of Globalization: Close Encounters of the Deceptive Kind
Trouillot, M. (2001) · Current Anthropology · doi:10.1086/318437 · Cited by 749
City of Strangers : Gulf Migration and the Indian Community in Bahrain
Gardner, A. M. (2010) · doi:10.26530/oapen_627411 · Cited by 221
Heyman, J. M. (1998) · Critique of Anthropology · doi:10.1177/0308275x9801800203 · Cited by 175
Religious Politics in Turkey: From the Birth of the Republic to the AKP
Lord, C. (2018) · doi:10.1017/9781108638906 · Cited by 174
Hybrid Political Order and the Politics of Uncertainty: Refugee Governance in Lebanon
Stel, N. (2020) · doi:10.4324/9780429434716 · Cited by 79
Dealing with the digital panopticon: the use and subversion of ICT in an Indian bureaucracy
Veeraraghavan, R. (2013) · Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development: Full Papers - Volume 1 · doi:10.1145/2516604.2516631 · Cited by 44
(2017) · Cited by 31
Cards and carriers: migration, identification and surveillance in Kerala, South India
Prasad-Aleyamma, M. (2018) · Contemporary South Asia · doi:10.1080/09584935.2017.1407293 · Cited by 28
Grassroots Politics and Oil Culture in Venezuela
Strønen, I. Å. (2017) · doi:10.1007/978-3-319-59507-8 · Cited by 24
Carmona, R. (2024) · Climate Policy · doi:10.1080/14693062.2023.2194267 · Cited by 10
Garrido, M. (2025) · Comparative Studies in Society and History · doi:10.1017/s001041752500009x · Cited by 6
“Sometimes you don’t know how to move” cultural savviness and learning the ropes of bureaucracy
Lang, L. (2019) · Journal of Organizational Ethnography · doi:10.1108/joe-01-2018-0005 · Cited by 1
Metadata
- Authors
- GUPTA, A.
- Venue
- American Ethnologist
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 1995-05
- Volume
- 22
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 375-402
- ISSN
- 0094-0496 (ISSN-L)
- 1548-1425
- OpenAlex
- W1976427270
- Cited by
- 2,521
- References
- 5
- FWCI
- 69.21
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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