Minority Representation and Power
Rupa Subramaniam; Anshuman Mruthunjaya (Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford); Sohini Datta (University of North Bengal)
Political theorists increasingly recognize that the political systems of South and Southeast Asia have long been structured by exclusionary practices that marginalize minorities based on caste, ethnicity, religion, language, gender, and other intersecting factors, pushing them to the periphery of political, economic, and cultural life (Anderson, 1983; Chua, 2003; Kathirithamby-Wells, 2005; Scott, 2009; Uddin, 2017; Bertrand, 2021). Scholars such as Chatterjee (2004) and Mignolo (2007) have demonstrated how the colonial histories of these regions continue to shape racial and cultural hierarchies, embedding systemic barriers that sustain exclusion. While theorists like Young (1990) and Pitkin (1967) have stressed the importance of political representation in democratic societies, the question of minority representation in South and Southeast Asia remains deeply understudied.
Across the region, minority groups face exclusion from the political sphere in both overt and subtle ways. In India, Dalit movements, such as the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), have long fought for political participation, yet their struggles are routinely sidelined by the state and mainstream media (Guru, 2009). In Thailand, the Red Shirt Movement, representing largely lower-income groups, has been framed as a threat to national stability, justifying state repression (Hewison, 2011). Similarly, market-dominant minorities, such as the Chinese in Indonesia and the Philippines, have been politically targeted due to their economic influence, reinforcing narratives of exclusion (Chua, 2003). These cases illustrate how state power and biopolitical control are wielded to regulate who belongs within the nation-state, reinforcing hierarchies of political subjectivity.
To question how sovereign power perpetuates the exclusion of marginalized communities, and what mechanisms are in place that silence or invisibilize their struggles? Sovereign power, as described by Mbembe (2019) through necropolitics, determines who is allowed to live with dignity and who is relegated to a state of vulnerability or death. The state’s control over life and death aligns with Foucault’s biopower (2008), where political power governs not only who survives but also how they survive, often relegating marginalized groups to precarious labour conditions. These communities, stripped of political recognition, exist in a state of “bare life” (Agamben, 1998), surviving but not truly living, without access to the full rights of citizenship. As neoliberal policies intensify, as Fraser (2022) argues, vulnerable populations become expendable labour, their struggles ignored by both the state and media, reinforcing the erasure of their existence from the public narrative.
Given these exclusionary structures, how do marginalized groups navigate and assert their power? One way is through the creation of hybrid identities, as Bhabha (1994) suggests, which allows these communities to challenge the tension between cultural hegemony and resistance, resisting both forced assimilation and systemic exclusion. These hybrid identities offer a form of belonging while disrupting the dominant cultural narratives that seek to marginalize them. Furthermore, the idea of strategic essentialism proposed by Spivak (1988) provides a way for these groups to assert collective identities in order to gain political visibility, even if it means reinforcing certain stereotypes. This form of resistance disrupts the cycles of dehumanization imposed by necropolitics and biopower, carving out spaces where engagement, survival, and recognition are possible. Furthermore, Mouffe’s (2000) agonistic pluralism, which advocates for the creation of alternative spaces of political engagement within a broader hostile system, offers a powerful framework for how marginalized communities challenge and resist the dominant political structures that attempt to silence them.
As a result, this panel will move beyond advocating for incremental reforms in the existing systems, instead interrogating the very foundations of governance that determine who is excluded from political life. By engaging with critical sovereignty studies, biopolitical theory, and decolonial perspectives, this discussion will challenge dominant state-centric narratives, advocating for a reimagining of political representation and power in South and Southeast Asia.
Possible topics:
- Colonial legacies on political exclusion
- State, sovereignty, and exclusion
- Structural inequalities and governance
- Comparative studies on minority exclusion in South and Southeast Asia
- Intersectionality and marginalization
- Violence, law, and political subjectivity
- Theoretical and empirical analyses of necropolitics, biopower, and their effects on governance
- Neoliberalism, globalization, and economic dispossession
- Climate crisis and political dispossession
- Resistance, activism, and representation
- Subaltern agency and resistance
- Role of social movements in contesting state narratives and political marginalization
- Hybrid identities and strategic essentialism as forms of resistance
- New approaches to political participation and representation
