Malini Ranganathan et al., "Corruption Plots: Stories, Ethics, and Publics of the Late Capitalist City" (Cornell UP, 2023)
New Books in Critical Theory
00:00
The Corrupt Middle Class
I love the notion of middle class outsourcing corruption because it exactly gets at the point that we're trying to make. They kind of absolve themselves of this action that is beneath them supposedly, while very much abetting and puppeteering it from above. It's part of actually what I think what hasn't been identified so much in the literature on class in urban India. The discourse of being meritorious and getting where you're getting because it's of your hard work doesn't actually reveal at all the ways in which your family might have gotten favors over time," says author Ravi Agrawal. "What actually may be full of compromised ethics but it's something that as a grouping
Transcript
Play full episode
