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Changing Contours of Legitimacy in Neighbourhoods: Reflections from a Town in North Kerala

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Legitimacy

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology ((PSUA))

Abstract

Drawing predominantly on the ethnography of two neighbourhoods in Thalassery in North Kerala, India, Abraham explores the ways in which the neighbourhood is a site of legitimacy in everyday life and the transformations that have taken place in this respect. She asks, how does a neighbourhood influence the everyday lives of people? Given dramatic changes in the nature of residential neighbourhoods in Kerala, and following other social, political and economic changes, how has the social control and legitimacy garnered in the neighbourhood changed? Abraham explores competing and conflicting sources of legitimacy at the level of the neighbourhood, including some of the events through which legitimacy may come to be eroded.

I am grateful to Italo Pardo and Giuliana Prato for inviting me to participate in the very stimulating six-day workshop in Sicily, Italy, on Erosions of Legitimacy and Urban Futures: Ethnographic Research Matters and for detailed comments on my paper. I would like to thank all the participants for comments and for stimulating discussions over those six days.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Abraham (2010) for the influence of a neighbourhood on education and employment and on veiling practices.

  2. 2.

    For example, the issue of competing sources of legitimacy between the state and citizens was explored among others by Pardo (2018), Prato (2018), Andrews (2018); between state and civic/grassroots organisations by Boucher (2018) and Krase and Krase (2018); between the state and residents of a building by Hurtado-Tarazona (2018); and between citizens and financial institutions by Atalay (2018), all revised and expanded for this volume. These papers not only explore the contours of legitimacy in drawing from and extending Weber’s three ideal types of legitimacy (see Weber 1978 [1922]) but also look at how different ideas about legitimacy may compete in everyday life drawing a distinction between what is legitimate and what is legal, for example, or processes of legitimation in different contexts.

  3. 3.

    For a review, see Prato and Pardo (2013); also Schwirian (1983).

  4. 4.

    See Sampson et al. (2002). One exception was Massey’s study in which he discussed urban concentrations in which the poor would be exposed to crime, disease and violence and concentrations of affluence which ‘enhance the benefits and privilege of the rich’ (1996: 395).

  5. 5.

    For example, the neighbourhood around the Thiruvangad Sree Rama temple is predominantly Nayar, while the neighbourhood around the Jaganatha Temple is predominantly Thiyya.

  6. 6.

    Following standard anthropological practice, both names of neighbourhoods have been changed to protect the identity of the people I write about.

  7. 7.

    The Thiyyas are a numerous caste group that traditionally ranked below the Nayars and suffered the injustices and disabilities of caste. As a result of educational opportunities opened by the Basel Mission and the British in Malabar, several Thiyya entered in to modern bureaucratic jobs by the early twentieth century.

  8. 8.

    In a bride’s house this was also the time when an odd number of relatives of the groom come with all the clothes the bride will wear for her wedding.

  9. 9.

    The oil lamp that was lit to attach a sacred element to this gesture of reciprocity.

  10. 10.

    Even when a decision has been made, the deal is presented as though it needs approval. This is one way of showing respect and seeking a person’s involvement.

  11. 11.

    Prior to Sree Narayana Guru’s reforms in marriage ritual there was no priest and the ceremony would be conducted by a local elder.

  12. 12.

    In practice, the nattu mukhyasthan was a neighbourhood elder from the same caste of the bride’s family. Significantly, during the anti-Brahman movement in Tamil Nadu substantial changes in terms of caste organisation took place at the level of the neighbourhood. Kathleen Gough (1971) described the changes in the nature of the street, such that earlier, for example, at weddings, the headman of the caste communities of the bride and the groom would witness the exchange of gifts and check that the amount of bridewealth corresponded to that promised when the marriage was being agreed. By the 1950s, when Gough did her fieldwork in the multi-caste street in Kumbapettai, the headman of the street was witness to the exchanges and promises made at the final meeting to arrange the marriage despite the fact that each caste was still endogamous (Gough 1971: 41).

  13. 13.

    See, for example, Besnier (2009), Nakassis (2010) and Ong (1987).

  14. 14.

    For a visual flavour of both sex segregation in everyday life and the performance of respectability, see Mukhopadhyay (2007). For a discussion of the play of respectability in the political life of women, see J. Devika and Benita V. Thampi (2012). See Phadke (2007) for a discussion of Mumbai.

  15. 15.

    Kerala was the first state in India to have a democratically elected communist government (first voted to power in 1957).

  16. 16.

    The scene of a daily casual wager reading the newspaper on a veranda during his tea break is distinctive of Kerala.

  17. 17.

    The less said the better about other processes that can follow from this process of identification!

  18. 18.

    See Pardo (1996) on the working of ‘big men’ in a neighbourhood in Naples.

  19. 19.

    In recent years a similar violence in different parts of the country has been unleashed against women, minorities or Dalits.

  20. 20.

    In Devaloor which has a long history of political activism, there are several memorials to people who have been martyred. These memorials may comprise a bust of the person or some other construction or may just be a bus stop dedicated to the memory of the person.

  21. 21.

    As discussed earlier the effective unit of the caste was the neighbourhood.

  22. 22.

    See, for example, Pardo (1996) for a description of the twists and turns of everyday relationships in a neighbourhood in Naples highlighting not only everyday conflicts but also uncertainties that characterise neighbourhoods. For a rich literature on how violence reconstitutes neighbourhoods in multiple ways (see, e.g., the work of Das 1990 and of Chatterji and Mehta 2007) and how neighbourhoods come to be constituted through memory post-violence (Arif 2009). For example, Chatterji and Mehta describe the way the communal violence of 1992–93 in Mumbai ‘reconstituted the neighbourhoods on the basis of religious affiliation, emptying them of occupational and religious solidarities’ (2007: 16).

  23. 23.

    This was the most starkly played out in a recent case in Kerala in which an inter-faith marriage was made controversial.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Delhi University, New Delhi, India

    Janaki Abraham

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, UK

    Italo Pardo  & Giuliana B. Prato  & 

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Abraham, J. (2019). Changing Contours of Legitimacy in Neighbourhoods: Reflections from a Town in North Kerala. In: Pardo, I., Prato, G.B. (eds) Legitimacy. Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96238-2_6

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