Everyday routines and the making of youth politics in Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

This article illustrates some of the practices that turn young student men into political activists. It shows how everyday routine practices bring order and meaning to a social field of hierarchical competition and conflict amongst young men at Dhaka University. The focus is on those practices that make and shape the organisations everyday, involving and bringing people together in a collective of activism and exclude others. Routines continuously reconstruct relations of hierarchy, organisational order and operation, which on one hand, transform individuals from students into activists, on the other hand, it produces structured hierarchies and operational logics. It makes activism and shapes organisations. The article concludes that a focus on the internal dynamics of mobilising organisations, mundane intimate interactions and the display of public practices, can pay dividends when it comes to a deeper understanding of the formation of political activism.

KEYWORDS:

• Routines
• political mobilisation
• youth politics
• Bangladesh

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Morten Koch Andersen specialises in the study of the interdisciplinary nexus of violence, human rights and corruption with a special focus on the administration of justice, legal reform and institutional practices.

ORCID

Morten Koch Andersen http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2142-1050

Notes

1 Though, the two organisations I examine ordinarily dominate the campus, many other student organisations are active, from Shibir (the student organisation of Jamaat-e-Islami), to numerous cultural, regional and issue-based groups, and a plethora of left-wing organisations.

2 This applies especially at Eid, when student activists need money to visit their families outside of Dhaka.

3 The Teacher–Student Centre, situated in the centre of the university campus, containing a guest house, the university reporters’ association, and a theatre stage.

4 Popularly named ‘Bangabandhu’ (friend of Bangladesh), and often referred to as the ‘Father of the Nation’ (Ziring 1992, 76).

5 Rahman was the commanding officer of the liberation forces who in 1971 declared victory over the Pakistani army (Maniruzzaman 2003, 199–215).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Det Frie Forskningsråd | Samfund og Erhverv [grant number DFF–4003-00099] and the EU European Research Council (ERC-2011-StG - N° 284080 - AISMA)/UK Economic and Social Research Council.