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Indrajit Roy will talk about the central arguments in his recently published book which challenges the ongoing scholarly debates on poor people's negotiations with democracy. It demonstrates the varied ways in which the poor engage with their elected representatives, political mediators and dominant classes in order to advance their claims. Roy explains the variations by directing attention to the dynamic interaction between the opportunity structures available to the poor and the social relations of power in which they are embedded. He analyses these intersections as 'political spaces' which both enable and constrain popular practices. Through examination of the 'political spaces' available to the poor in four different localities, Roy outlines a new analytic framework to understanding poor people's politics. Based on these observations, the book makes a strong case for an approach to democracy that appreciates people's ambivalences towards democracy. Roy urges researchers of democracy to step beyond either enthusiastic narratives - the inevitability of democracy or apocalyptic accounts of democracy's impending death.

Speaker: Dr Indrajit Roy, Lecturer, Department of Politics, University of York

Dr Roy obtained his doctorate in development studies from the University of Oxford. His doctoral dissertation, titled ‘Capable subjects: Power and politics in eastern India’, offered a politicised reading of Amartya Sen’s capability approach.  Since then, he has held the ESRC Future Research Leader Fellowship at the Oxford Department of International Development (ODID). He continues to hold a Junior Research Fellowship at Wolfson College, University of Oxford and is also Research Associate at ODID.

Areas of interest

Democracy; societal transitions; social citizenship; political economy; comparative politics; international political economy; poverty and inequality; emerging markets; and development politics.