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Initially introduced and hailed as means of offering more democratic and facilitative policing, but increasingly subject to question by protestors, Police Liaison Teams (PLTs) are one of the primary tactical options used by Public Order Police in the UK. This paper will analyse the deployment of PLTs over the 14 days of the global COP26 summit in Glasgow in 2021. The police plan for the event emphasised Human Rights, dialogue and facilitation, but some protest groups accused PLTs of ‘intelligence-gathering’ and urged activists not to speak to them. This paper draws on participant observation and interviews with both police and protestors to analyse the deployment of PLTs at the summit and consider why some groups chose not to engage with the liaison officers. Responding to calls for more evidence-based analyses of PLT deployment, we highlight the difficulties of police-protestor liaison at a Global Summit and outline why protest groups might choose not to engage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In advance of the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) summit in Glasgow in 2021, Police Scotland insisted that human rights and facilitation would be central to their operation. When the event passed off peacefully, without any of the mass arrests and disorder seen at previous iterations of COP, the Police declared it a huge success. We draw on research with activists and officers to scrutinize this claim and analyse the policing of COP26. Literature on protest policing suggests that global summits are distinctive, because the interplay between the security of Heads of state and other dignitaries, the local community and protestors is heavily biased in favour of security at such events. We suggest that this remains the case, despite the police emphasis on facilitation. We conclude that the ‘human-rights-based approach’ to policing is poorly defined and unevenly implemented and means different things to police and protestors. A fundamental rethinking of existing approaches and priorities is required for it to be meaningful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COP26 Climate Summit held in Glasgow in November 2021 was expected to attract mass protests. Given the climate crisis and the increase in direct action in the UK, the police anticipated huge numbers with the potential for significant disorder. Despite this, Police Scotland insisted that they were committed to facilitating peaceful protest. Drawing on ethnographic observation and interviews with both police and protestors, this paper offers analysis of a contentious event during the large set-piece demonstration on Saturday 6 November. It focuses on the containment of a small group of Young Communists to ask what this tells us about ‘facilitation’, crowd theory, and police-protestor relations. Whilst fairly insignificant in terms of numbers, we argue that the YCL containment offers valuable insights into protest policing and facilitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the enfranchisement of 16- and 17-year olds in the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum, much research continued to prioritise questions of how education influences young people's political engagement. By contrast, this paper advances an original focus on educational outcomes of youth political participation and investigates how political engagement might have educational consequences. Shortly after the referendum, we interviewed a strategic sample of first-time voters aged 16–20, who had voted 'yes' to Scottish independence. We re-interviewed a sub-sample 3 years on, facilitating longitudinal analysis and novel qualitative data. Our analysis demonstrates how, from the perspective of remarkably engaged participants, referendum engagement has three kinds of educational consequences. First, participants describe learning about politics through referendum participation and their subsequent reflection on it. Second, participants understood their political engagements as informing their trajectories into and through post-compulsory education, including subject choices. Third, participants discussed learning about themselves and their career aspirations, 'growing up' and developing 'mature' political attitudes, via ongoing, shifting political engagement. This article contributes significant new insights about youth political engagement and lowering the voting age, by showing how young people understand their political participation as influencing their formal educational pathways and informal learning, about politics and themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civility is generally lost in translation in non-Western contexts, and tends to be limited to its liberal form in the social sciences. To address this impasse of West versus East, individual versus community, and political versus civil society, we seek to recover the idea of civility. In this special section, we understand civility as socio-cultural processes and politics that challenge the lack of publicness and commitment to public life, equality and justice in society. We suggest that civility provides insights into the social life of democracy and the lived challenges to social democracy. The essays in this special section critically explore and engage with the paradox of high democracy and low civility that plagues India, where democratic consolidation translates into limited justice and minimal equality, along with increased exclusion and performative violence against marginal groups. The papers in this special section offer fine-grained and detailed analyses of social interactions across India. In doing so, they make a strong case for shifting from analyses of formal democracy and civil society toward the question of civility. Such a move enables us to explore justice, equality and emancipation as social processes, struggles and experiences rather than as preconditions for democratic societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 2009 and 2014, Thirumavalavan, the leader of the largest Dalit party in Tamil Nadu, served as an MP in Delhi. This paper draws on research with the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK or Liberation Panther Party) to raise a number of key questions about representation and democracy in a multi-level federal system. Although they are a minor party, their experience of national politics offers insights into the workings of party systems in India. The paper considers the extent to which they are constrained by alliance partners and political rules-of-the-game. It then considers the question of representation, and asks what the VCK managed to achieve in Thirumavalavan's constituency of Chidambaram and the extent to which they could raise issues at the national level both through formal and disruptive means. Finally, the paper reflects on the advantages and disadvantages for a small party of having a foothold in the Centre and draws out the lessons of the VCK's experience for our understanding of Indian politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue of Contemporary South Asia seeks to capture the diversity and situatedness of the caste experience and deepen our understanding of caste dynamics and lives in the twenty-first century. In this Introduction, we highlight the continuing salience of caste, offer an overview of theoretical understandings of caste and foreground the importance of analysing caste in the present as a dynamic form of human relations, rather than a remnant of tradition. Following on from this, we highlight the increasingly global spread of caste and reflect on what happens to caste-based social relations when they traverse continents. In conclusion, we introduce the papers that make up this special issue. Taken together, they speak to changes in attitudes towards caste, but also the persistence of caste-based identities and dynamics in India and Britain. Even though the papers presented in this special issue work with the assumption of caste being a reality in and among the Indians, caste-like status hierarchies have existed in most, if not all, societies, and they continue to persist and intersect with other forms of differences/inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent caste conflicts have revolved around discourses of honour, caste pride and shame. Although Dalit movements have been at the receiving end of the violence and have condemned the casteism underpinning it, they operate within a society in which questions of honour are highly significant. Dalit women activists are trapped in an unenviable position within the twin structures of caste and patriarchy, both of which speak to debates about group boundaries and honour. Taking the recent violence as its starting point, this paper draws on interviews with and observations of Dalit women in the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (Liberation Panther Party) in Tamil Nadu to chart how discourses of honour both facilitate and constrain their capacity to act. For all the party’s emphasis on women’s rights, women activists face an uphill struggle to secure recognition, respect and responsiveness both within the party as well as wider society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the use and meaning of the term ‘real estate' in Indian lexicon, with examples of its use by politicians, brokers and businessmen.

This paper reports on innovations in public order policing during the protests surrounding the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Parliamentary Assembly in Edinburgh, November 2009. When masked anarchist protesters determined to ‘smash NATO’ gathered on the streets on the first morning of the Assembly, they were initially confronted by three plainclothes police negotiators rather than a line of riot police. In this paper, we draw on empirical data to offer an analysis of these developments and gauge the extent to which they meet the stated intentions of the police to ‘facilitate lawful protest’. Whilst welcoming the shift in attitudes and approach towards political protest, we argue that the accent on facilitation in this operation ultimately appeared neither innovative nor effective in practice and frequently reverted to styles of policing designed to contain protest. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Oratory is an important aspect of Tamil culture, and people delight in the poetic flourishes of podium speakers. It is no surprise, therefore, that the leader of the largest Dalit movement in Tamilnadu is revered for linguistic prowess. The significance of movement utterances, however, extends beyond content and style. In recent decades, Dalit rhetoric has increasingly promised to 'hit back'. Although these perorations have been credited with instilling a sense of pride, courage and assertiveness into previously submissive social groups, such analyses often take movement oratory at face value. A more contextualised reading of such speech-acts reveals that whilst 'hitting back' can restore a sense of pride, it can also undermine Dalit agency by reinforcing their characterisation as victims. In a vicious circle, radical rhetoric stokes the fires of caste conflict, which then inspires further tales of victimisation. Celebrations of Dalit lyricism, therefore, need to be tempered by an appreciation of its context and consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2005 225,000 people marched through Edinburgh enjoining the G8 to 'Make Poverty History'. The coalition's own assessment of their campaign highlighted the importance of media by focusing on the extent of media coverage. Media outlets, however, have their own agendas. Detailed analysis of newspaper coverage preceding the G8 Summit suggests a disjuncture between campaign objectives and media frames. This paper explores how far newspaper accounts of G8-related protests were 'framed' in terms of social movement aims, and how far in terms of anticipated violence. Our findings lead us to caution against an uncritical equation of 'coverage' and 'success', offering a more nuanced account of the interplay between social movements and media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Movement rhetoric invites us to consider: ‘Which is violence?’ But it is clear that the lines between violent acts are indeterminate. When is ‘self-defence’ ‘retaliation’? When does revenge become an offence to be avenged and when does liberatory violence become oppressive? This paper tries to provide an understanding of the issues and discourses that label the Dalit Panthers as violent. Dalit movements in Tamilnadu operate in a social sphere coloured by acts of violence. Such groups understandably talk about ‘hitting back’ and ‘asserting their rights’, yet violence is never an isolated act. By viewing violence as processual, I draw on various theorists to argue that the ‘will to violence’ is bound up with cultural expectations, meanings and identities. This allows us to grasp the relational character of violence and its centrality to the construction of social identities. Furthermore, shifting the emphasis of analysis from the act of harm to incorporate the wider implications reveals the spatial and social patterns that ensue. The concept of a ‘repertoire of protest’ is useful here in highlighting how violent protest may be complementary to (or feed into) ‘normal’ politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outbursts of collective violence are often (understandably) met by expressions of outrage or condemnation. ‘How is it,’ accounts muse, ‘that ordinary people can commit such atrocities?’ This article argues that an exclusive focus on the violent act can contribute little to our understanding. Instead, it seeks to elucidate the routine processes and actions that serve to render violence acceptable (even banal) as a mode of action. Exclusive identities and a powerful rhetoric of honour, pride, and shame persuade people that violence is either desirable or even necessary in a given context. Following Billig's account of banal nationalism, I argue that grasping these mundane day-to-day processes is essential for an understanding of collective violence. The article draws on research amongst caste-based movements in South India to support this argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dalit (ex-Untouchable) movements across Tamilnadu are struggling to achieve equality, justice and an end to caste based discrimination. Over the past decades they have succeeded in entering parliamentary politics in the state. Many of the movements that have contributed to the current profile of Dalit politics organized on the basis of a ‘Dalit’ identity. Increasingly, however, Dalit activists in Tamilnadu have come to stress more parochial and ‘primordial’ identities and adopt ever more specific objectives. The premise of identity politics is that social categories can and should represent themselves and assert their own priorities and agendas, but who defines the category and how representative are they? This paper teases out the contradictory aspects of such mobilization and interrogates the strategies of Tamil Dalit movements before considering whether the discourse of human rights can help transcend the impasse of identity politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]