The Mass Culture Institute embodied the developmental state project to bring “culture” to the countryside through its network of cultural palaces, its support for provincial theatre troupes and musicians, and its culture caravans travelling from village to village equipped with a library, a moving stage, audio equipment, and film projectors. This lecture will be delivered virtually via Zoom.

Drawing on findings from existing literature and the author’s research, this lecture puts forth an institutional approach that takes membership in multiple, often competing communities into account, explaining how the salience of various arenas of authority associated with communities, and of nature of the social institutions within these arenas, affect politics and development. This lecture will be in-person at Ingraham 120.