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- Editorial’s Introduction Imagining Public Plural Spaces
Editorial’s Introduction Imagining Public Plural Spaces
Published in January - June 2026 (Vol. 1, Issue 1, 2026)

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Abstract
Authors (1)
Azeema Saleem
Centre for Studies of Plural S...Centre for Studies of Plural Societies (CSPS), New...Centre for Studies of Plural Societies (CSPS), New DelhiCentre for Studies of Plural Societies (CSPS), New Delhi
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Article Information
Published in:
January - June 2026 (Vol. 1, Issue 1, 2026)- Article ID:
- PCS110004
- Paper ID:
- PCS-01-000004
- Pages:
- 1-5
- Published Date:
- 2026-01-01
- JATS XML:
- JATS XML
How to Cite
Saleem, A. (2026). Editorial’s Introduction Imagining Public Plural Spaces. Politics, Culture and Society, 1(1), 1-5. https://jpcs.cspsindia.org/articles/PCS110004
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Beyond the Majoritarian Horizon: Examining the Indian Narrative of Minority Rights and Liberal Public Sphere
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Shadows of Peace: Hegemony, Violence, and the Unfinished Plural Public Sphere in Post-War Sri Lanka: A Critical Analysis of Easter Sunday Attacks in Sri Lanka
Sri Lankan Post-war public sphere was constructed with the aspiration of plural coexistence. Nevertheless, within a decade of the civil war’s end in 2009, coordinated suicide bombings on Easter Sunday in 2019 targeting Catholic churches and luxury hotels shattered that aspiration and exposed structural failures beneath it. This study investigates why ethno-religious intra-state conflict persists in post-war Sri Lanka despite sustained peacebuilding efforts, taking the Easter Sunday attacks as its analytical fulcrum. Using qualitative fieldwork at Katuwapitiya in Western Province, including in-depth interviews, discussions, observations, newspapers and academic articles, this study argues that the attacks cannot be understood outside the longer history of Sinhala-Buddhist hegemony structuring Sri Lankan statecraft since independence. Based on Gramsci’s hegemony, Ted Gurr’s relative deprivation theory and Gellner’s nationalism framework, the research demonstrates that the Easter Sunday bombings functioned simultaneously as a social declaration, a political instrument and an expression of unresolved ethno-religious tensions that post-war administrations failed to address. The findings highlight that political actors instrumentalized the attacks to consolidate majoritarian power, that extremist social movements depended on communal divisions, and that justice for victims remains systematically deferred. The research also reveals that although relations between Catholic and Muslim communities were seriously challenged by the attacks, grassroots solidarity and cooperation between neighbors remained resilient. This demonstrates a form of everyday pluralism that challenges narratives of permanent communal conflict often promoted by political actors.
Plural Market Publics: Digital Platforms and Women’s Economic Participation in Jaipur’s Handicraft Sector
In India’s handicraft sector, women have long been central to production yet excluded from visible market spaces and denied public authority within them. This paper asks what happens when selling moves online in the context of gendered spheres of craft production and entrepreneurship. Drawing on interviews with ten women entrepreneurs in Jaipur and observation of bazaars and digital selling practices, it examines how digital platforms enable middle-class women to enter new markets, build customer relationships, and establish legitimacy in ways the physical bazaar rarely allowed. The study finds not one market but several coexisting market publics: bazaars, exhibitions, and platform-based communities, each with its own rules of participation and recognition. This plurality is theorized as a plural public sphere. Women’s digital selling constitutes alternative market publics: arenas built through circulation, conversation and trust rather than shopfronts, and organized around values of craft, care and community as much as profit. Platforms do more than widen access: they alter the structure of participation. They reduce reliance on male intermediaries, create direct channels to customers, and allow women to appear, on their own terms, as market actors. Yet these opportunities remain uneven, reaching a resourceful section of the middle class: visibility must be maintained, authenticity performed, and unpredictable algorithms, platform dependence and rising labor demands managed. Digital platforms, the paper concludes, do not dissolve gendered market hierarchies but reorganize them, opening real yet conditional ground on which women negotiate recognition as legitimate economic actors. The paper thus contributes to discussions of gender, digital platforms, and economic inclusion.
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