During the Covid-19 pandemic, China was known for its onerous zero-Covid policy, which required tremendous work at the local governance level. This paper examines the extent to which the state penetrated local society with its Covid-related governance, and in what manner. What role did local residents play in this governance? Based on through two years of ethnographic work, this research examines Covid-related communications in WeChat groups of thirteen gated communities (xiaoqu weixin qun), which were intersections of physical and digital spaces to which people were confined during pandemic-related lockdowns. Findings, analyzed through a theoretical framework of governmentality, reveal that governance at the community level functioned only partially, as residents lacked familiarity with local bureaucratic actors. Nevertheless, the state machine functioned indirectly by constantly creating cultural and material conditions that impacted citizens' conduct. In response, citizens engaged in self and mutual governmentality by aligning their pragmatic everyday decisions with the state's agenda.
This article examines the dynamics of clientelism within Dayak communities in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, focusing on how ethnic institutions sustain long-term intermediary networks that operate beyond electoral cycles. In contrast to mainstream scholarship, which often emphasizes transactional and temporary forms of electoral clientelism, this study focuses on the role of the Dayak Customary Council (Dewan Adat Dayak or DAD) as a social network structure that mediates access to state resources and consolidates local elite power through institutional capture. The study examines how DAD integrates customary structures into the state's bureaucratic hierarchy, from the village to provincial levels as well as through customary law (kedamangan) institutions. The findings reveal that political actors capitalize on their Dayak ethnic identity to secure investment flows and long-term political support within bureaucratic arenas. This article expands understanding of clientelism by showing that institutionalized ethnic networks in Indonesia can generate stable patronage arrangements in which ethnic organizations function as permanent intermediaries within the country's decentralized governance system.
In 1907, after months of prospecting across India, the little-known and remote hamlet of Sakchi in Singhbhum was chosen by Jamshetji Nusserwanji Tata (1839-1904), founder of the Tata Group, as the location for India's first indigenously owned iron and steel works. This paper examines the construction of an institutional cultural memory of what would become the planned city of Jamshedpur as an integral part of India's industrial heritage, steeped in ideas of progress, modernity and cosmopolitanism. The article juxtaposes this cultural memory with the lived experiences and memories of Jamshedpur inhabitants who have witnessed its transformation in response to and beyond the institutional narrative of the ideal steel city. Finally, the article discusses the immediate and long-term impacts of communal riots in 1964 and 1979 and the ways in which this violence is remembered or forgotten. In doing so, the article argues that public and private histories and memories of Jamshedpur intersect, overlap, and negotiate with each other in ways that complicate and contradict a carefully cultivated discourse of model industrial urbanism that has been erected on a foundation of manufactured cosmopolitanism.
