The Sociality, Sociology, Socio-Tech of Events and Vice Versa

Dimensi Sosial Teknologi merupakan suatu kajian untuk mengkritisi teknologi sebagai pembuka paradigma perubahan dalam interaksi sosial masyarakat. Dalam kurun waktu kini sejak terjadinya revolusi industri pada abad ke-17, masyarakat telah menjalankan suatu pola interaksi sosial cukup dengan kekuatan dari karya ciptaan manusia sendiri tanpa harus menggunakan semua potensi fisik manusia sendiri. Seiring berkembangnya jaman pun, pembaruan teknologi terus bergulir untuk memenuhi kebutuhan hidup individu.

This article explores histories of social separation, impermanent encounters, and lasting political alliances between Dalit (“untouchable”) Chamar male youth and members of the upper-caste Brahman community in a village in eastern Uttar Pradesh, North India. The entry of young Chamar people into educational institutions followed by political mobilization and, for some, the transition into employment, has led them to appropriate spaces often beyond the purview of previous generations. Against the backdrop of Chamar histories as agricultural laborers, powerless political subjects, and actors of religious marginality, new forms of masculinity, sociality, and class formation have come into being. The article focuses on young Chamar men’s involvement in village politics, particularly during the 2005 local elections. It is argued that village politics—rather than inter-caste friendships, which remain short-lived as a result of caste discrimination—has engendered an arena of sociality where caste-driven interest produce more durable social links between young low-caste men and members of the upper-caste community. As India’s political history illustrates, the episode of electoral politics analyzed in this article brings together differently situated communities within the nation, highlighting how the unresolved question of caste discrimination conflates with the compulsion to political power. If young Chamar men are the new protagonists in this history, their role is the outcome of broader changes in the consciousness around political participation and the opening up of democratic possibilities for minority populations in a postcolonial setting.

Keywords: affirmative action, Dalit, elections, Indian youth, local governance

Cite as: Rakopoulos, Theodoros, 2015, Egalitarianism, 2.2, http://egalitarianism.no/eventritual-syriza-elections-greece/ I am sipping salepi (salep), a popular hot beverage, in Thessaloniki's Aristotle square, at the evening of the 25 th of January, after the exit polls for what is hailed as a historical election are out. Lefties are gathered around me, chatting, chanting and even dancing: SYRIZA has won by a landslide. The salepi seller is a Greek from the Xanthi area, ethnically Turk, and stemming from what is conventionally, if unproblematically, called 'a Muslim background'. He belongs to one of the most marginalized and oppressed groups in Greece; his job is extremely precarious. He explains to me that he got a bus early that morning to visit Xanthi 1 and 'vote for that kid'; that kid being Alexis Tsipras, the 40-year old maverick leader of SYRIZA. Then he adds a phrase that elucidates the profound class immobility of the country: "I don't care; whoever wins, I shall still be on the streets, selling salepi; but I do care about the country, and the kid is the only moral person out there".