Between Civic and Political Engagement: Ontology of Information as a Right

<strong>CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF LAW AND GOVERNANCE Jawaharlal Nehru University</strong> SEMINAR SERIES <strong>GITIKA DE</strong> ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, HINDU COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF DELHI on <strong>Between Civic and Political Engagement: Ontology of Information as a Right</strong> <strong>Abstract : </strong>What is the nature of a right such as the right to information? What are the possible ontologies of such a right? Drawing on archival records of the Right to Information Movement and ethnographic fieldwork in Rajasthan, I seek to explore the processual, contextual, and phenomenological bases of a right to information to argue that: (a) the claim to a right to information was made meaningful through an appeal to civic virtue orchestrated by social movement mobilisation, (b) an interpretation of information among social agents was generated through contestations within a habitus of normative and power relationships and networks and the specific conjuncture of civic mobilisation, and (c) information as a right functions in the dynamic contestation between the state and society in the latter's claim to other social rights. By locating rights in the diversity of political and social experiences, I seek to understand the right to information in the embeddedness of structures, processes, and identities. <strong>30 October 2015</strong> <strong>ABOUT THE SPEAKER:</strong> Gitika De is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Hindu College, University of Delhi, and is currently an Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR) Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Governance (CSLG), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, researching on the interface between social movements, lawmaking and policy with a focus on the Right to Information movement. Her research interests are broadly in the areas of Political Sociology, with particular emphasis on the study of political structures and processes, social movements and/or contentious politics, sociology of rights, anthropology of public policy and anthropology of violence.