Neoliberal pedagogies of Pahari enterprise: Youth in provincial North India

Abstract

This paper draws on one year of field research by the primary author in Gopeshwar, North India, to discuss how young men develop ideas of personality development in a university setting. We argue that the young men studied here followed an agenda of developing entrepreneurial selves that differed from pedagogies of neoliberal enterprise in other parts of India. Contrary to widespread calls to overcome provincialism, young men in Gopeshwar tended to arrange their pedagogical programmes around cultural practices that they considered to be ‘authentically’ regional, especially through emphasising regional sociality, the Garhwali language, and spirit possession as a means of cultivating entrepren..