Degrees Without Freedom? should be essential reading for academics engaged in research and scholarship around development, education, Dalit identities, youth experiences and social capital, as well as those working on contemporary India more broadly. Yet it goes further than this, for in its critical interrogation of the reality of education's capacity to transform people's lives, it is of importance to a wide range of scholars and even activists for whom ideas of education form the centrepiece of their approaches to development and normative strategies for promoting social justice. Through an exploration of the post-educational experiences of young men in Uttar Pradesh in Northern India, Degrees Without Freedom? attempts to take Dreze and Sen's (1995) arguments of education as a social good one step further, exploring the wider entrenched social factors that shape the experiences of young men trying to 'negotiate employment markets, acquire respect and express cultural and political ideas ' (2008:31).
What is particularly compelling from the outset, is that whilst chapter one offers an introduction to the arguments of the book, outlining the research strategy and operationalising the key concepts of un/under employment and what 'educated' means, it also identifies key omissions from the study, including actual experiences of the education system and the experiences of young women who, the authors argue, do not seek employment and social status in the same way that men do. This does not, however, diminish the book, but rather, ensures that what the reader is offered is an analysis with clear parameters. This first chapter also identifies key debates and ideas with which the authors will critically engage, including the work of Willis, Connell and Bourdieu. Chapter two then gives a detailed exploration of the context of the study, offering a nuanced understanding of rural Bijnor in the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and the ways it is being increasingly shaped by processes of liberalisation. The authors detail how this is resulting in high unemployment, exacerbated by the demand for jobs by increasing numbers of young educated men. This then lays the foundation for an exploration, in chapter three, of the cultural production of education both as a form of social capital and izzat (respect), as well as a complex signifier of 'modern' and 'traditional', 'civilised' and 'uncivilised' lifestyles. The book's central argument is based around four key chapters that explore what the authors call 'analytical sets' of men. It is the experiences of these sets of men that are fundamental to understanding the issues around realising and achieving the transformative potential of education. Illuminating examples are drawn from a rich data set that demonstrates the value (and importance) of ethnographic conversations in social research. The sets of un/under employed young men come from the rising and prosperous high caste Jats; the politically active lower caste Dalits; young Muslim men whose vulnerable situation was exacerbated post 9/11 and finally a category that was a mix of the above but dominated by poorer Dalits-Chamars-a group of men noted for their melancholy outlook grounded in a recognition of the degree to which they are out-competed by higher caste men. The book then reveals the different ways in which the groups engage with education, noting the employment potential that arises, but locating this in relation to the structural inequalities that constrain the availability of work for the different groups within the region of study. Each substantive chapter explores the ways in which these different sets understand their situation and how they renegotiate their positions in society and in the marketplace. Disenfranchisement and alienation are