Servitude

Abstract

Women municipal councillors in Dehradun, India, represent themselves as social workers, in affectionate relationships with their constituents. Yet often they are positioned as servants, required to undertake petty work on behalf of an ungrateful citizenry. This chapter argues that collective forms of affect make possible, if not probable this positioning. Affective practices of supplication during election campaigns resonate in the relationships between constituents and elected representatives, making durable what is most often considered only a temporary inversion of social hierarchies on election day. A moral atmosphere of clientelism makes political actors susceptible to engendering suspicion and disdain in others, further emboldening an assertive citizenry to make demands that far exceed their entitlements. These collective conditions shape the possibilities for self of women municipal councillors; becoming a ‘servant’ reveals the limits of their self-authorship.