Blocked by Caste

Blocked by Caste PDF Author: Sukhadeo Thorat
Publisher: OUP India
ISBN: 9780198081692
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book explores contemporary patterns of economic discrimination faced by Dalits and religious minorities like Muslims in urban labour market as well as other markets in rural areas. It examines reasons contributing to inequality, consequences of exclusion, and suggests possible remedies.

Blocked by Caste

Blocked by Caste PDF Author: Sukhadeo Thorat
Publisher: OUP India
ISBN: 9780198081692
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book explores contemporary patterns of economic discrimination faced by Dalits and religious minorities like Muslims in urban labour market as well as other markets in rural areas. It examines reasons contributing to inequality, consequences of exclusion, and suggests possible remedies.

The Caste of Merit

The Caste of Merit PDF 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.

Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India

Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India PDF Author: David West Rudner
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520376536
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
David Rudner's richly detailed ethnographic and historical analysis of a South Indian merchant-banking caste provides the first comprehensive analysis of the interdependence among Indian business practice, social organization, and religion. Exploring noncapitalist economic formations and the impact of colonial rule on indigenous commercial systems, Rudner argues that caste and commerce are inextricably linked through formal and informal institutions. The practices crucial to the formation and distribution of capital are also a part of this linkage. Rudner challenges the widely held assumptions that all castes are organized either by marriage alliance or status hierarchy and that caste structures are incompatible with the "rational" conduct of business. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.

Caste in Contemporary India

Caste in Contemporary India PDF Author: SurinderS. Jodhka
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351572628
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
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.

Castes of Mind

Castes of Mind PDF Author: Nicholas B. Dirks
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400840945
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. In academic and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, marking it as fundamentally different from other places while expressing its essence. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern phenomenon--the product of a concrete historical encounter between India and British colonial rule. Dirks does not contend that caste was invented by the British. But under British domination caste did become a single term capable of naming and above all subsuming India's diverse forms of social identity and organization. Dirks traces the career of caste from the medieval kingdoms of southern India to the textual traces of early colonial archives; from the commentaries of an eighteenth-century Jesuit to the enumerative obsessions of the late-nineteenth-century census; from the ethnographic writings of colonial administrators to those of twentieth-century Indian scholars seeking to rescue ethnography from its colonial legacy. The book also surveys the rise of caste politics in the twentieth century, focusing in particular on the emergence of caste-based movements that have threatened nationalist consensus. Castes of Mind is an ambitious book, written by an accomplished scholar with a rare mastery of centuries of Indian history and anthropology. It uses the idea of caste as the basis for a magisterial history of modern India. And in making a powerful case that the colonial past continues to haunt the Indian present, it makes an important contribution to current postcolonial theory and scholarship on contemporary Indian politics.

The Grammar of Caste

The Grammar of Caste PDF Author: Ashwini Deshpande
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199088462
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
Is the caste system disappearing? Are traditional hierarchies being replaced by competing equalities? Do globalization and liberalization automatically result in diminishing disparities? Are modern labour markets intrinsically meritocratic and efficient? Challenging the dominant discourse and demolishing various myths, this book provides answers to these and other critical questions on caste in its contemporary avatar. Linking the economics of caste with its politics, sociology, and history, this innovative book provides a stimulating assessment of continuities and changes in caste disparities over the last two decades. Deshpande uses rich empirical data to uncover how contemporary, formal, urban sector labour markets reflect a deep awareness of caste, religious, gender, and class cleavages. She convincingly argues that discrimination is neither a relic of the past nor is it confined to rural areas, but is very much a modern, formal sector phenomenon. This insightful book is an important step towards a multidisciplinary dialogue for understanding (and mitigating) inequalities based on birth and descent.

Caste

Caste PDF Author: Isabel Wilkerson
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0593230272
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions—now with a new Afterword by the author. #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, O: The Oprah Magazine, NPR, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, New York Post, The New York Public Library, Fortune, Smithsonian Magazine, Marie Claire, Slate, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews Winner of the Carl Sandberg Literary Award • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • National Book Award Longlist • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist • PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Longlist • Kirkus Prize Finalist “As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.” In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched, and beautifully written narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their outcasting of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity. Original and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

Patrons of the Poor

Patrons of the Poor PDF Author: Narayan Lakshman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199088357
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Why has there not been more progress with reducing poverty in India? Patrons of the Poor offers a rich and contemporary account of politics and policymaking in India, as it seeks to provide an answer to this vital question. Despite unprecedented economic growth, the last twenty years have witnessed a growing divergence across Indian states in terms of their poverty alleviation records. In that context, and given that state governments are responsible for a wide range of redistributive policies, this book analyses trends in state politics and policymaking. Based on the analysis, it explains why some Indian states have managed to reduce poverty more effectively than others. Using detailed case studies from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, the author examines the policymaking processes and political histories of these states. He argues that patterns of caste dominance combined with the degree of competition in populist policies can significantly explain whether states adopt pro-poor policies or not. Lakshman's analysis combines a deep reading of state-specific political and sociological data with a range of interviews with top political leaders, senior bureaucrats, and academics to corroborate his core argument.

The New Wind

The New Wind PDF Author: Kenneth David
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110807750
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 557

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Book Description


Homo Hierarchicus

Homo Hierarchicus PDF Author: Louis Dumont
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226169634
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 542

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Book Description
Louis Dumont's modern classic, here presented in an enlarged, revised, and corrected second edition, simultaneously supplies that reader with the most cogent statement on the Indian caste system and its organizing principles and a provocative advance in the comparison of societies on the basis of their underlying ideologies. Dumont moves gracefully from the ethnographic data to the level of the hierarchical ideology encrusted in ancient religious texts which are revealed as the governing conception of the contemporary caste structure. On yet another plane of analysis, homo hierarchicus is contrasted with his modern Western antithesis, homo aequalis. This edition includes a lengthy new Preface in which Dumont reviews the academic discussion inspired by Homo Hierarchicus and answers his critics. A new Postface, which sketches the theoretical and comparative aspects of the concept of hierarchy, and three significant Appendixes previously omitted from the English translation complete this innovative and influential work.