Ethnic Entrepreneurship and Shifting Identity Markers: Historical and Comparative Analysis of the Relationships Between Categories of Practice and Contentious Repertoires in the Collective Mobilisations Among the Sikh Community, India

Sikh ethnic entrepreneurs have historically resorted to different identity markers or categories of practice, from religion to language and region, to define and mobilize the Sikh community depending both on the institutional context the nature of the interlocutor, that is the changes of the categories of practice in the process of identification/categorization, and of the nature of the goal to pursue. We notice that the use of the religious marker tends to turn out to be a source of radicalization and violence, whereas the use of the linguistic or regional marker proved to be the vector of more peaceful collective action. Hence, the dual problematic we want to address in this paper is the following: Firstly, how and according to which constraints ethnic entrepreneurs both select and construct identity markers to mobilize the concerned community?, secondly how and to what extent the nature of the identity marker adopted by ethnic entrepreneurs in the process of differentiation tends to run and shape the collective action repertoires adopted during mobilizations? Based upon original monographic empirical material gathered during numerous field research in Indian Punjab effectuated in the frame of a Phd. thesis in political science, our communication intends to validate the hypothesis that these two questions must first be answered as it is the process of construction of difference and the modes of collective action that determine mobilizations’ potential to run and shape the processes of differentiation and identification, which is the main concern of this panel.