Shantanu Nevrekar

I am broadly interested in the study of community, self, and political economy in postcolonial India. I am currently conducting ethnographic fieldwork amongst cooperative credit institutions – banks and credit societies – in the state of Maharashtra in Western India. Cooperatives have been shaped by, and have also contributed to, the deepening of a community-based, hierarchical, and associational economic life in postcolonial India. I focus on how cooperative credit institutions have negotiated but also influenced the presence of eminent persons, castes, associations, and the state in Indian public life. These cooperatives run as state-supported, democratic, and bureaucratic institutions, embedded in the politics of Western India. They provide political parties, associations, and individuals the pathways to produce and reproduce status, wealth, and power. Engaging with the members, employees, and directors of these cooperatives, I study how they approach debt, kinship, and social life, and how they narrate the continuities and transformations in these. By following the work and lives of these people within and outside the cooperatives, I will examine the ongoing dynamics of community, democracy, and capital in India.

My theoretical interests include histories of capitalism and economic thought, colonialism and postcolonialism, anthropology of state and bureaucracy, and caste studies. Before coming to Stanford, I completed an M.A. in Development Studies from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and an M. Phil. in Sociology from Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi.