The Local-level Social Life of Global Ideologies

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How do global political ideologies, such as communism, become locally rooted and perpetuated over generations? Stanford University anthropologist, Dr. Sharika Thiranagama, will address this question through an investigation into the micro-processes through which ideological affiliations are perpetuated in everyday sociality. The research will be conducted in the southern Indian state of Kerala. This is an appropriate site for the research because in 1957, Kerala saw the installation of the first ever democratically elected communist government and communist parties have been part of the ruling coalition ever since. Communism in Kerala has survived the collapse of the Soviet Union and the waning of the organized left in most of the world. This project addresses the question of why and how this has come about. While much research in the social sciences evaluates and measures political affiliation through the examination of electoral votes and formal institutions, Dr. Thiranagama will instead examine the percolating and pervasive effects of political ideologies through how they are manifested in everyday practices in the family and in public spaces. This project will both contribute to an understanding of how political ideology might persist by shaping non-political realms of people's lives and also to an understanding of the long afterlife of the communist movement outside of the Soviet, Chinese, and Eastern Europe Bloc. The research will be carried out in Kerala in the districts of Palakkad and Kannur, both of which have long been communist strongholds. Dr. Thiranagama will focus on exemplary institutions: the public library system and the private "communist family." Both have been deeply implicated in the public and private promulgation of communism in Kerala. Kerala's unique library movement introduced reading rooms, mass literacy, deliberative political discussion and communism into everyday life. The "communist family" sought to reconfigure ethics and the practice of intimate life. Data will be gathered in two neighborhoods and with library users and staff using a mixed methods approach, including interviews, participant observation, household surveys, and life history interviews. In addition, archival research will be undertaken to construct longitudinal social histories of the library and the family. Findings from this research will help to understand one of the enduring questions of modern times: how global ideologies are taken up and made to persist in ordinary people's daily lives.