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Caste in Contemporary India
Caste is a contested terrain in India's society and polity. This book explores contemporary realities of caste in rural and urban India. Presenting rich empirical findings across north India, it presents an original perspective on the reasons for the persistence of caste in India today.
Caste
Caste is a complex, dynamic, and enduring aspect of Indian social life. Combining the most up-to-date research on caste with a rigorous exposition of its various dimensions-as an institution, as a traditional practice, and as power and humiliation-this short introduction will prove to be an indispensable starting point towards understanding caste in India.
Mapping the Elite
This edited volume is dedicated to the study of social, economic, and political elites in India. It's contributors address some fundamental questions regarding India's social and economic elites, the change in their composition in recent years, their relationship with each other and with the rest of the social body, and the role of caste in the configuration and reconfiguration of social and economic elites by analysing elite discourses and representations and what they reveal of their social inscription in contemporary India. The editors have sorted this book into three broad themes. The first theme concerns elite spaces which explores the uneasiness of elites to handle public and private s...
The Indian Middle Class
Who exactly are the middle classes in India? What role do they play in contemporary Indian politics and society, and what are their historical and cultural moorings? The authors of this volume argue that the middle class has largely been understood as an ‘income/ economic category’, but the term has a broader social and conceptual history, globally as well as in India. To begin with, the middle class is not a homogeneous category but is shaped by specific colonial and post-colonial experiences and is differentiated by caste, ethnicity, region, religion, and gender locations. These socio-economic differentiations shape its politics and culture and become the basis of internal conflicts, contestations, and divergent political worldviews. The authors demonstrate how the middle class has acquired a certain legitimacy to speak on behalf of the society as a whole, despite its politics being inherently exclusionary, as it tries to protect its own interests. Further, perceived as an aspirational category, the middle class has a seductive charm for the lower classes, who struggle to shift to this ever elusive social location.
Inequality in Capitalist Societies
Inequality is one of the most discussed topics of our times. Yet, we still do not know how to tackle the issue effectively. The book argues that this is due to the lack of understanding the structures responsible for the persistence of social inequality. It enquires into the mechanisms that produce and reproduce invisible dividing lines in society. Based on original case studies of Brazil, Germany, India and Laos comprising thousands of interviews, the authors argue that invisible classes emerge in capitalist societies, both reproducing and transforming precapitalist hierarchies. At the same time, locally particular forms of inequality persist. Social inequality in the contemporary world has to be understood as a specific combination of precapitalist inequalities, capitalist transformation and a particular class structure, which seems to emerge in all capitalist societies. The book links the configurations to an interpretation of global domination as well as to symbolic classification.
Village Society
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India’s Villages in the 21st Century
Post India’s economic liberalization in the 1990s, the village ceased to be central to ongoing sociological concerns. As a result, the period saw a marginalization of rural life and agrarian economy in the national imagination. However, in the 21st century as India transforms, so does its rural life. This book revisits the realities of contemporary rural India, exploring the trajectories of change across regions such as those in rural economies, the relationship of villages to the outside world, and the dynamics of caste inequalities. The volume puts together 14 papers based on empirical studies carried out by sociologists, social anthropologists, and economists over the past 15 years to begin a holistic conversation on contemporary rural India which continues to be an important site of social, political, and economic activities. India’s Villages in the 21st Century stresses diversity as a fundamental structure of Indian economy and society and illustrates the point by focusing on the economies, patterns of settlements, and organization of social and political life in India’s villages.
Interrogating India's Modernity
A collection of essays by seminal commentators on contemporary Indian society, this volume outlines the state of current scholarship on the issues of caste, ethnicity, modernity, identity, and democracy in India, and a comprehensive survey of the debates and contestations in these fields. It has been put together in the honour of Professor Dipankar Gupta, whose significant contribution to Indian sociology has defined the way sociology is learnt, taught, and practiced in South Asia.
Contested Hierarchies, Persisting Influence
"Why another book on caste? Hasn’t enough research been conducted on the subject; and doesn’t writing on or about caste help keep it alive? The continued significance of caste in India’s public life is said to be because of the reservation policy or because of electoral politics, with caste being viewed as a convenient mode of securing a stable vote bank. Contested Hierarchies, Persisting Influence shows, however, that caste survives beyond electoral politics and quotas. Caste-based divisions continue to matter not only in the village, but also in modern-day urban life, business, institutions of higher education, and many other spheres of contemporary social practice. The chapters in t...
Dalit Women's Education in Modern India
Inspired by egalitarian doctrines, the Dalit communities in India have been fighting for basic human and civic rights since the middle of the nineteenth century. In this book, Shailaja Paik focuses on the struggle of Dalit women in one arena - the realm of formal education – and examines a range of interconnected social, cultural and political questions. What did education mean to women? How did changes in women’s education affect their views of themselves and their domestic work, public employment, marriage, sexuality, and childbearing and rearing? What does the dissonance between the rhetoric and practice of secular education tell us about the deeper historical entanglement with modern...
