Lucia Michelutti Author & Editor

Dr Lucia Michelutti is Research Fellow at the London School of Economics (LSE), Department of Anthropology. She has worked extensively on popular politics, caste, race, religion and democracy in North India (1998-2000; 2001; 2007) and more recently in Venezuela (2005-2006). She received her MA and PhD from the LSE. Michelutti currently holds a four year ESRC Research Fellowship for a project which comparatively investigates the social and cultural practices of popular politics and the dynamics of new forms of socialism in Latin America (Venezuela) and South Asia (India) including the role of religion in politics, and the dynamics of identity politics (caste and Muslim community in India and afro-Venezuelan community in Venezuela). The author has published various articles on caste and politics. Some of them include: ‘"We (Yadavs) are a Caste of Politicians": Caste and Modern Politics in a North Indian Town’ (2004); ‘The Vernacularisation of Democracy: Popular Politics and Political Participation in India’ (2007); ‘We are Kshatriyas but We Behave like Vaishyas: Diet and Muscular Politics among a Community of Yadavs in North India’ (forthcoming). Michelutti is presently writing her next book drawing from her recent fieldwork in Venezuela. The monograph, provisionally entitled Reborn Socialism: The Everyday Live of Hugo Chavez’s Revolutionary Venezuela, explores how anti-capitalist and socialist political discourses have regained power in contemporary times.