Ethnographic study uncovers persistent caste-based exclusion in Dalit entrepreneurs, indicating that market mechanisms reinscribe privilege.
Key Points
To examine how state interventions and market structures interact with entrenched caste hierarchies to shape outcomes in marginalized entrepreneurship.
Conducted an ethnographic study of the Dalit entrepreneurial ecosystem in Tamil Nadu, India.
Analyzed bureaucratic language, state administrative procedures, and market interactions mediating business access.
Market spaces remain systematically embedded within traditional caste hierarchies, allowing social logics to dictate access and entrepreneurial motivations.
State-led initiatives to broaden market participation paradoxically discipline marginalized actors and reinforce caste privilege through bureaucratic procedures.
Neoliberal promises of commercial neutrality fail as market and governance vocabularies function as new instruments of social stratification.
Cite This Study
Avienaash E. Poovaragavan (2026) studied this question.