Author: Louis Dumont
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195654363
Category : Caste
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
This Book First Published In French In 1957 And Rendered In English In 1986, Is One Of The Most Comprehensive Ethnographic Descriptions Of An Indian Caste, And Indeed Of Village Life, In South India. A Classic.
Author: Louis Dumont
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 568
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Book Description
This is the first English translation of the classic work by Louis Dumont, one of the premier anthropologists and social theorists of his generation. Dumont traces the history and distribution of the Pramalai Kallars of south India: their culture, agricultural practices, economic and political organization, and the collective representations embedded in their social organization and religion. This work is particularly noteworthy as a structuralist ethnography and as the first step in Dumont's construction of a comprehensive structuralist theory of traditional Indian society.
Author: Anand Pandian
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822391015
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
How do people come to live as they ought to live? Crooked Stalks seeks an answer to this enduring question in diverse practices of cultivation: in the moral horizons of development intervention, in the forms of virtue through which people may work upon their own desires, deeds, and habits, and in the material labors that turn inhabited worlds into environments for both moral and natural growth. Focusing on the colonial subjection and contemporary condition of the Piramalai Kallar caste—classified, condemned, and policed for decades as a “criminal tribe”—Anand Pandian argues that the work of cultivation in all of these senses has been essential to the pursuit of modernity in south India. Colonial engagements with the Kallars in the early twentieth century relied heavily upon agrarian strategies of moral reform, an approach that echoed longstanding imaginations of the rural cultivator as a morally cultivated being in Tamil literary, moral, and religious tradition. These intertwined histories profoundly shape how people of the community struggle with themselves as ethical subjects today. In vivid, inventive, and engaging prose, Pandian weaves together ethnographic encounters, archival investigations, and elements drawn from Tamil poetry, prose, and popular cinema. Tacking deftly between ploughed soils and plundered orchards, schoolroom lessons and stationhouse registers, household hearths and riverine dams, he reveals moral life in the postcolonial present as a palimpsest of traces inherited from multiple pasts. Pursuing these legacies through the fragmentary play of desire, dream, slander, and counsel, Pandian calls attention not only to the moral potential of ordinary existence, but also to the inescapable force of accident, chance, and failure in the making of ethical lives. Rarely are the moral coordinates of modern power sketched with such intimacy and delicacy.
Author: Ajantha Subramanian
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067424348X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385
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Book Description
How the language of “merit” makes caste privilege invisible in contemporary India. Just as Americans least disadvantaged by racism are most likely to endorse their country as post‐racial, Indians who have benefited from their upper-caste affiliation rush to declare their country post‐caste. In The Caste of Merit, Ajantha Subramanian challenges this comfortable assumption by illuminating the controversial relationships among technical education, caste formation, and economic stratification in modern India. Through in-depth study of the elite Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)—widely seen as symbols of national promise—she reveals the continued workings of upper-caste privilege within the most modern institutions. Caste has not disappeared in India but instead acquired a disturbing invisibility—at least when it comes to the privileged. Only the lower castes invoke their affiliation in the political arena, to claim resources from the state. The upper castes discard such claims as backward, embarrassing, and unfair to those who have earned their position through hard work and talent. Focusing on a long history of debates surrounding access to engineering education, Subramanian argues that such defenses of merit are themselves expressions of caste privilege. The case of the IITs shows how this ideal of meritocracy serves the reproduction of inequality, ensuring that social stratification remains endemic to contemporary democracies.
Author: Edgar Thurston
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Caste
Languages : en
Pages : 536
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Book Description
Author: Lauren Miller
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000907910
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 755
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Book Description
The Routledge Companion to the Anthropology of Performance provides a cutting-edge, comprehensive overview of the foundations, epistemologies, methodologies, key topics and current debates, and future directions in the field. It brings together work from the disciplines of anthropology and performance studies, as well as adjacent fields. Across 31 chapters, a diverse range of international scholars cover topics including: Ritual Theater Storytelling Music Dance Textiles Land Acknowledgments Indigenous Identity Visual Arts Embodiment Cognition Healing Festivals Politics Activism The Law Race and Ethnicity Gender and Sexuality Class Religion, Spirituality, and Faith Disability Leisure, Gaming, and Sport In addition, the included Appendix offers tools, exercises, and activities designed by contributors as useful suggestions to readers, both within and beyond academic contexts, to take the insights of performance anthropology into their work. This is a valuable reference for scholars and upper-level students in anthropology, performance studies, and related disciplines, including religious studies, art, philosophy, history, political science, gender studies, and education.
Author: Carla Bellamy
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520262808
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 307
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Book Description
Carla Bellamy traces the long-term healing processes of Muslim and Hindu devotees of a complex in Northwestern India.
Author: Martha Ann Selby
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 0791472450
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
How perceptions of land and space influence social and aesthetic conditions in the Tamil region of India.
Author: Vijaya Ramaswamy
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538106868
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 519
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Book Description
The Tamils have an unbroken history of more than two thousand years. Tamil, the language they speak, is one of the oldest living languages in the world. The only people comparable to the Tamils in terms of their hoary past and vibrant present would be the Jews with one marked difference. The Tamils have always had their homeland 'Tamilaham' (alternately pronounced and spelt 'Tamizhaham') known today as Tamil Nadu which to them represents their mother and is revered by them as 'Tamizh Tai' literally ‘Tamil Mother’. This is in striking contrast to the Jews who have been through a long and arduous struggle to gain their homeland, a deeply contested site to this day with Hebrewisation of Israel being a key marker of Jewish identity in the region. Tamils, by contrast have a clear numerical majority in the region that now comprises Tamil Nadu and the language unites rather than divides adherents of different faiths. The second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Tamils contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 600 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Tamils.
Author: Stephanie Stocker
Publisher: transcript Verlag
ISBN: 3839438853
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303
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Book Description
Caste hierarchy has frequently been singled out as the overriding principle of Indian society. This book examines its significance among the highly-educated middle class in the Tamil town of Madurai. As part of their distinctive status as `educated persons', young graduates form egalitarian constellations by ostensibly subverting the boundaries inscribed by caste hierarchy. Stephanie Stocker explores how these friendships are maintained in wider social contexts, finding that the actors engage in supportive networks throughout career and marriage events. Instead of assuming these relationships to be of an entirely different, `alternative category', however, Stocker's study proposes a dynamic character of friendship which in fact remains in conjunction with Indian values of hierarchy.
