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Dr Craig Jeffrey

• Academic Profile
• Current Research
• Current Teaching
• Publications

Academic Profile

Craig Jeffrey's research examines the relationship between education, social change, and the politics of development in India. Before joining the School of Geography and the Environment in Oxford, he held a lectureship at the University of Edinburgh and was an Associate Professor of Geography and International Studies at the University of Washington. He holds affiliate professor positions at the Universities of Washington and Delhi.

Craig Jeffrey is a prominent contributor to debates on social and political change in India, as well as to discussions of global youth and education. In total, he has spent 38 months conducting field research in western Uttar Pradesh (UP), India, since 1996, mainly working in Hindi and Urdu, and employing a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods. This work has been supported by three major grants: two from the ESRC and one from the US National Science Foundation. He has written three research monographs. In the first - Degrees Without Freedom? Education, Masculinities and Unemployment in North India (Stanford University Press, 2008; Social Science Press, 2009; with Patricia Jeffery and Roger Jeffery) – he critiques mainstream approaches to the study of education within development studies through reference to the experiences of unemployed youth in UP. The second book - Timepass: Waiting, Micropolitics and the Indian Middle Classes (Cambridge University Press 2011; Stanford University Press, 2010) – examines young men 'hanging out' in urban Uttar Pradesh and their role in social and political change in north India. Craig has recently completed a third monograph with Stuart Corbridge and John Harriss titled India Today: Economy, Society, Politics (Cambridge: Polity). Craig Jeffrey is co-editor of Telling Young Lives: Portraits in Global Youth (Temple University Press, 2008; with Jane Dyson) which uses the stories of thirteen young people to reflect on issues of globalization, education, inequality, and changing family relationships across the world.

Dr Jeffrey has written numerous articles on his research in leading journals within Geography, Development Studies, Comparative Education, Anthropology, and Asian Studies, as well as in broader comparative journals and edited books. He has also collaboratively produced special issues of journals on youth transitions to adulthood in different global sites (in Youth and Society), non-elite cosmopolitanism in India, Ghana, Spain, and Bosnia-Herzegovina (in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space), and the everyday state in post-colonial settings (in Geoforum). He has given fifty invited lectures in the US, Europe, and India - for example in Princeton, Chicago, Columbia, Duke, Cambridge and Delhi.

Craig Jeffrey is co-editor, with Jane Dyson, of a new book series on Global Youth with Temple University Press (between 15 and 20 books planned). He currently serves on the editorial boards of four journals: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space; Work, Employment and Society; Journal of Geography in Higher Education; Geoforum; ISRN Education and Pacific Affairs.

Current Research

Craig Jeffrey's work combines insights derived from human geography, anthropology and development studies and draws upon the theoretical writing of a diverse range of authors, including Pierre Bourdieu, Judith Butler, Partha Chatterjee, and Amartya Sen. His research is underpinned by a commitment to long-term ethnographic field research in north India and a similar enthusiasm for drawing undergraduate and graduate students into the research process. He is currently working on a project funded by the National Science Foundation that examines how the 2007 victory of a low caste political party in Uttar Pradesh is transforming everyday politics in India. He is using interviews and participant observation to investigate the cultural geographies of Dalit (low caste) political operators – who call themselves 'new politicians' - and associated changes in the urban political landscape. Craig Jeffrey's current research interests also include youth mobilization across the world, the social impact of economic liberalization in South Asia, Muslim education, and religious communal politics in India.

Selected Research Projects (since 2001)

• Alchemists of the Revolution? The politics of educated unemployed youth
  Financial support from the ESRC; 2012-2015.
• Dowry Marriage in India
  Oxford-Princeton Collaborative Grant (with Professor Isabelle Clark-Deces in Princeton and Dr Jane Dyson in Oxford); £18,000.
• Lost in Transition? Comparative Analysis of Educated Unemployed Young Men
  St John's College Research Centre, Oxford University; £40,000.
• Fixing Futures: New Politicians and Low-caste Democratization in India
  Financial support from National Science Foundation (Geography panel co-sponsored by Political Science panel), USA; 2009-2011.
• Educated Underemployment and Intergenerational Politics in India
  Financial support from Royalty Research Fund, University of Washington, USA; 2007-2008.
• Democracy, Higher Education and Youth Cultures: Student Politics in North India
  Financial support from Economic and Social Research Council Research, UK; 2004-2005.
• Muslim Girls' Education in India, with Patricia Jeffery and Roger Jeffery
  Financial support from Ford Foundation; 2001-2002.
• Household Strategies, Schooling Regimes and Social Exclusion in Western UP, India, with Patricia Jeffery and Roger Jeffery
  Financial support from Economic and Social Research Council Research Grant; 2000-2002.
• Reimagining Corruption in India: Public-Sector Recruitment and Social Inequality
  Financial support from HSBC Holdings Small Research Grant Award administered by Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers; 2000-2001.

Teaching

Craig Jeffrey is interested in hearing from scholars who wish to conduct doctoral or post-doctoral work on international development, agrarian change, youth, class politics, and state/society relations, within and beyond south Asia. He has supervised over thirty postgraduate Masters and Doctoral dissertations in the UK and US.

Dr Jeffrey is a Fellow of St John's College, where he is responsible for advising undergraduates on their studies over the course of their three-year degrees. His goals as an educator are situated within the University of Oxford's mission of creating an excellent and accessible educational environment for students from a wide variety of backgrounds. He has for long been involved in initiatives that combine teaching, research, and community engagement. In 2000 he organized a symposium at the University of Edinburgh for seventy Scottish high school geography teachers in which school and university educators exchanged ideas. In 2007 he worked with five undergraduate students at the University of Washington over 12 weeks to develop theatre-based workshops for a federally-sponsored program designed to improve educational opportunities for students from low-income schools. He uses a diverse range of teaching methods, including narrative, role play, video, on-line discussion, and field trips. He has obtained a Professional Certificate in University Teaching in the UK and was twice nominated for the Distinguished Teaching Award at the University of Washington.

Current graduate students include:

• Andrea Koelbel
  Potentials and limitations of urban migration, in the context of education. Investigations on the case of Nepal
• Tanya Kumar
  Privatising Mumbai: a study of the impact of privatization on the residents of Mumbai's airport
• Sahar Romani
  Youth post-NGO: development and experiments in growing up in India

Selected Publications

Books:

• Corbridge, S., Harriss, J. and C. Jeffrey (forthcoming, 2011) India Today: Economy, Society and Politics. Polity Press.
• Jeffrey, C. (2010) Timepass: Youth, Class and the Politics of Waiting. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Cambridge University Press 2011. 232 pp. ISBN-10: 0804770735.
• Jeffrey, C., Jeffery, P. and R. Jeffery (2008) Degrees Without Freedom? Education, Masculinities and Unemployment in North India. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (2nd edition published in India by Social Science Press 2010, Hindi edition appearing with Prakash Publishers, Delhi, 2011). 256 pp. ISBN-10: 0804757429.
• Jeffrey, C., and J. Dyson (2008) Telling Young Lives: Portraits of Global Youth. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. 232 pp. ISBN: 1-59213-931-0.

Special Issues of Journals

• Jeffrey, C. and McFarlane, C. (2008) Performing Cosmopolitanism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26(3).
• Jeffrey, C. (2007) Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India. Geoforum, 38(4).
• Jeffrey, C. and McDowell, L. (2004) Youth in a Comparative Perspective: Global Change, Local Lives. Special issue of Youth and Society, 36(2).

Articles and Papers

• Jeffrey, C. (2011) Geographies of Children and Youth II: Global youth agency. Progress in Human Geography.
• Jeffrey, C., Philliou, C., Rogers, D. and Shryock, A. (in press, 2011) Fixers in motion. Comparative Studies in Society and History.
• Jeffery, R., Jeffery, P. and Jeffrey, C. (2011) Parhai Ka Mahaul? An educational environment in Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh. Chapter 6 in, De Neve, G. and H. Donner (eds.) (2011) The Meaning of the Local: Politics of place in urban India. Routledge, 238 pp. ISBN: 9780415596237.
• Jeffrey, C. (2011) Great expectations: youth in contemporary India. In, Clark-Deces, I. (ed.) A Companion to The Anthropology of India. Oxford, Blackwell. 568 pp. ISBN: 978-1-4051-9892-9.
• Jeffrey, C. (2010) Contradictory youth politics: student mobilisation in Uttar Pradesh. Chapter 6 in, Price, P. and A.E. Ruud (eds.) Power and Influence in India: Bosses, lords and captains. London, Routledge. ISBN: 978-0-415-58595-8.
• Jeffrey, C. (2010) Demoralizing developments: ethics, class, and student power in modern north India. Chapter 10 in, Pandian, A. and D. Ali (eds.) Ethical Life in South Asia. Indiana University Press. pp. 192-210. ISBN-13: 978-0-253-22243-5.
• Jeffrey, C. (2010) Timepass: youth, class and time in India. American Ethnologist, 37(3): 465-481.
• Jeffrey, C. (2010) Geographies of children and youth I: eroding maps of life. Progress in Human Geography, 39( 4): 496-505.
• Jeffrey, C. (2009) Fixing futures: educated unemployment through a north Indian lens. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 51(1): 182-211.
• Jeffrey, C., Jeffery, P. and Jeffery, R. (2008) Dalit revolution? New politicians in Uttar Pradesh. Journal of Asian Studies, 67(4): 1365-1396.
• Jeffrey, C. (2008) Waiting. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26(6): 954-958.
• Jeffrey, C. (2008) Generation nowhere: rethinking youth through the lens of unemployed young men. Progress in Human Geography, 32(6): 739-758.
• Jeffrey, C. (2008) Kicking away the ladder: student politics and the making of an Indian middle class. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26(3): 517-536. Reprinted in International Quarterly Asian Studies (in press, 2009).
• Jeffrey, C. and McFarlane, C. (2008) Performing cosmopolitanism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26(3): 472-480.
• Jeffery, P., Jeffery, R. and Jeffrey, C. (2008) Disputing contraception: Muslim reform, secular change and fertility. Modern Asian Studies, 42(3): 519-548.
• Jeffrey, C., Jeffery, R. and Jeffery, P. (2008) Schooling and/or madrasah education: gender and the strategies of Muslim young men in rural north India. Compare, 38(5): 581-593.
• Jeffery, P., Jeffery, R. and Jeffrey, C. (2008) From Sir Syed to Sachar: Muslim education in Bijnor District, Uttar Pradesh. Indian Journal of Secularism, 12(2): 11-35.
• Jeffrey, C. and Dyson, J. (2008) Introduction. In, Jeffrey, C. and J. Dyson (eds.) Telling Young Lives: Portraits of Global Youth. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. pp. 1-14.
• Jeffrey, C. (2008) From footballs to fixer: Suresh. In, Jeffrey, C. and J. Dyson (eds.) Telling Young Lives: Portraits of Global Youth. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. pp. 137-147.
• Jeffrey, C., Jeffery, P. and Jeffery, R. (2008) Zamir. In, M. Bannerjee (ed.) Muslim Portraits. New Delhi: Penguin.
• Jeffery, P., Jeffery, R. and Jeffrey, C. (2008) Afrozi. In, M. Bannerjee (ed.) Muslim Portraits. New Delhi: Penguin.
• Jeffery, P., Jeffery, R. and Jeffrey, C. (2007) Investing in the future: education in the social and cultural reproduction of Muslims in UP. In, M. Hasan (ed.) Living with Secularism: The Destiny of India's Muslims. New Delhi: Manohar. pp. 63-89.
• Jeffrey, C. (2007) Foreword. In, D. Behera (ed.) Childhood in South Asia. Oxford: Pearson Education. pp. x-xi.
• Jeffery, R., Jeffery, P. and Jeffrey, C. (2006) Patterns and discourses of the privatisation of secondary schooling in Bijnor, UP. In, Ősterheld, J. and K. Kumar (eds.) Education in Modern South Asia. New Delhi: Sage. pp. 96-117.
• Jeffrey, C., Jeffery, P. and Jeffery, R. (2006) Urbane geographies: education, unemployment and gender in rural Uttar Pradesh. In, Corbridge, S., Kumar, S. and S. Raju (eds.) Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies of India. New Delhi: Sage. pp 223-240.
• Jeffery, P., Jeffery, R., and Jeffrey, C. (2006) The first Madrasah: learned Mawlawīs and the educated mother. In, J-P. Hartung and H. Reifeld (eds.) Islamic Education, Diversity and National Identity: Dīnī Madāris in India Post 9/11. New Delhi: Sage. pp. 227-251.
• Jeffrey, C., Jeffery, P. and Jeffery, R. (2005) Reproducing difference? Schooling, jobs and empowerment in Uttar Pradesh, India. World Development, 33(12): 2085-2101.
• Jeffrey, C., Jeffrey, R. and Jeffery, P. (2005) When schooling fails: young men, education and low caste politics in north India. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 39: 1-38.
• Jeffery, R., Jeffrey, C. and Jeffery, P. (2005) Parhai ka Mahaul: an educational environment in Bijnor, India. In, De Neve, G. and H. Donner (eds) The Meaning of the Local: Politics of Place in Urban India. London: UCL Press. Pages 116-140.
• Jeffery, P., Jeffery, R. and Jeffrey, C. (2005) The mother's lap and the civilising mission: Madrasah education and rural Muslim girls in western Uttar Pradesh. In, Hasan, Z. and R. Menon (eds.) In a Minority: Essays on Muslim Women in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. pp. 108-148.
• Jeffery, R., Jeffery, P. and Jeffrey, C. (2005) Social inequality and the privatisation of secondary schooling in north India. In, Chopra, R. and P. Jeffery (eds.) Educational Regimes in Contemporary India. Sage: New Delhi. pp. 41-61.
• Jeffrey, C., Jeffrey, R. and Jeffery, P. (2005) Broken trajectories: Dalit young men and formal education. In, Chopra, R. and P. Jeffery (eds.) Educational Regimes in Contemporary India. Sage: New Delhi. pp. 256-275.
• Jeffrey, C. and McDowell, L. (2004) Youth in a comparative perspective: global change, local lives. Youth and Society, 36(2): 131-142.
• Jeffrey, C., Jeffery, P. and Jeffery, R. (2004) 'A Useless Thing!' or 'Nectar of the Gods'? The cultural production of education and young men's struggles for respect in liberalizing north India. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 94(4): 961-981.
• Jeffrey, C., Jeffrey, R. and Jeffery, P. (2004) Degrees without freedom: assessing the social and economic impact of formal education on Dalit young men in north India. Development and Change, 35(5): 963-986.
• Jeffery, P., Jeffery, R. and Jeffrey, C. (2004) Islamisation, gentrification and domestication: 'A girls' Islamic course' and rural Muslims in western Uttar Pradesh. Modern Asian Studies, 38(1): 1-52.
• Jeffrey, C. (2003) Bridging the gulf between secondary school and university-level geography teachers: reflections on organising a UK teachers' conference. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 27(2): 201-216.
• Jeffrey, C. (2003) Soft states, hard bargains: rich farmers, class reproduction and the local state in rural north India. In, Lerche, J. and R. Jeffery (eds.) Social and Political Change in Uttar Pradesh: European Perspectives. New Dehli: Manohar. pp. 225-246.
• Jeffrey, C. (2002) Caste, class and clientelism: a political economy of everyday corruption in rural north India. Economic Geography, 78(1): 21-42.
• Jeffery, R., Jeffrey, C. and Jeffery, P. (2001) Social and political dominance in western UP: a response to Sudha Pai. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 35(2): 213-236.
• Jeffrey, C. (2001) 'A fist is stronger than five fingers': caste and dominance in rural North India. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 25(2): 217-236.
• Jeffrey, C. (2001) A fist is stronger than five fingers: caste and dominance in rural north India. In, Bradnock, R. and G. Williams (eds.) South Asia in a Globalising World: a Reconstructed Regional Geography. Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education (revised version of a paper published in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers). pp. 205-228.
• Jeffrey, C. and Lerche, J. (2001) Dimensions of dominance: the state and class reproduction in Uttar Pradesh, India. In, Fuller, C. and V. Benei (eds.) The Everyday State in Modern India. London: Hurst and Company (revised version of a paper published in Development and Change). pp. 91-114.
• Jeffrey, C. (2000) Democratisation without representation? The power and political strategies of a rural elite in north India. Political Geography, 19(8): 1013-1036.
• Jeffrey, C. and Lerche, J. (2000) Stating the difference: state, discourse and class reproduction in Uttar Pradesh, India. Development and Change, 31(4): 857-878.
• Jeffrey, C. (1999) Dictionary definitions of 'Border/Borderlands,' 'Categories/Categorical', 'Deterritorialisation', 'Third Space', 'Travelling Theory', 'The West/Westernization'. In, McDowell, L. and J. Sharp (eds.) A Feminist Glossary of Human Geography. London: Arnold. pp. 20-21, 27, 55-56, 274-275, 281-282, 292-293.
• Jeffrey, C. (1997) Richer farmers and agrarian change in Meerut District, Uttar Pradesh, India. Environment and Planning, A, 29(12): 2113-212.

Recent Media Publications

• 2010 - "Neither Booming nor Backward", London Review of Books, 27/09/10.
• 2010 - "One Man One Bribe", London Review of Books, 12/06/10.
• 2010 - "Waiting", The Guardian, 23/05/2010.
• 2010 - "Sixty Years of Change in India", The Guardian, 25/01/10.
• 2009 - "Young, Educated and Jobless in India", The Guardian, 29/11/09.