Cultivating Democracy

Mukulika Banerjee focuses on both India's institutional form and its democratic culture, arguing that the project of democracy is incomplete unless it is accompanied by a continual cultivation of active, republican citizenship. Covering the period from 1998-2013, Cultivating Democracy provides an anthropological analysis of the relationship of formal political democracy and the cultivation of active citizenship in a rural setting in India. Banerjee's analysis shows how India's agrarian village society produces the social imaginaries required for democratic and republican values. More broadly, she shows that democracy is not simply a product of institutional design but also requires continual civic cultivation by both parties and the citizens themselves.