| Summary/Abstract |
Civility is generally lost in translation in non-Western contexts, and tends to be limited to its liberal form in the social sciences. To address this impasse of West versus East, individual versus community, and political versus civil society, we seek to recover the idea of civility. In this special section, we understand civility as socio-cultural processes and politics that challenge the lack of publicness and commitment to public life, equality and justice in society. We suggest that civility provides insights into the social life of democracy and the lived challenges to social democracy. The essays in this special section critically explore and engage with the paradox of high democracy and low civility that plagues India, where democratic consolidation translates into limited justice and minimal equality, along with increased exclusion and performative violence against marginal groups. The papers in this special section offer fine-grained and detailed analyses of social interactions across India. In doing so, they make a strong case for shifting from analyses of formal democracy and civil society toward the question of civility. Such a move enables us to explore justice, equality and emancipation as social processes, struggles and experiences rather than as preconditions for democratic societies.
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