Dear All,

I hope that we have managed to settle that, contrary to what Ajay was worrying about initially, we have no intention to separate the ‘political’ from the ‘social and cultural.’ Nobody wanted to conceptualise the ‘political’ in a way that has ‘nothing to do with the social aspect of community life.’ Once again, Gurpreet’s intervention is very useful in dispelling any suspicion of a pernicious reductionism here. The point is that we should not flee very quickly to the ‘social and cultural’ to prove that we are not prioritising an institutional reality over a broader variety of social relations when we talk about ‘political community.’ Ajay’s second message is encouraging in that respect. What dampens my enthusiasm is that, not for the first time, I do not quite understand what he means by talking about an elitist and top-down ‘liberal route’ in conceptual analysis.   
However, I would like to highlight a point from Ajay's first message that really stuck into me: ‘Political community is useful as long as it provides an axis to look at the interface between different domains but not in just taking these domains as given but what can be made in terms of reorganising them, in order ‘displace’ the existing power relations.’ So, according to Ajay, the concept of ‘political community’ is useful as long as it contributes to subverting the current power relations. What he advocates is scholarship with a very clear ideological agenda. That agenda is not opened up for critical reflection, although it is meant to set the point of our inquiries, and it profoundly influences the framing Ajay would be ready to accept. I am very uncomfortable with this. It puts some of our disagreements in a different light. An ideologically motivated agenda is certainly not something that we can ever agree on. 

Best,
Mátyás