This book examines in rich detail the lives, struggles and strategies of South Asian activists seeking to advance various political, social and environmental causes. Through a series of case studies from Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka on activists' efforts, it elucidates how they mediate between different spheres that are often (and sometimes legally) kept apart-the political and the legal, the economic and the political, the local and the international.

The uniqueness of this book lies in its treatment of 'civil society' as a process brought into being by the actions of specific individuals whose struggles and experiences can profitably be examined for understanding everyday politics.

The ethnographic studies lay bare how activists in the entire region continuously wrestle with the tensions between the tidy boxes of official classifications and the fuzzy categories of everyday life.