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This study analyses new 'practices' and discussions among Dalit activists since the 1990s and shows how these practices have both shaped and changed social relations. It is an anthropological attempt to reach behind the surface of the contemporary Dalit movement.
Writing is crucial to anthropology, but which genres are anthropologists expected to master in the 21st century? This book explores how anthropological writing shapes the intellectual content of the discipline and academic careers. First, chapters identify the different writing genres and contexts anthropologists actually engage with. Second, this book argues for the usefulness and necessity of taking seriously the idea of writing as a craft and of writing across and within genres in new ways. Although academic writing is an anthropologist’s primary genre, they also write in many others, from drafting administrative texts and filing reports to composing ethnographically inspired journalism and fiction.
For over a decade, Jeremy Rinker, Ph.D. has interacted, observed, and studied Dalit anti-caste social movements in India. In this critical comparative approach to India’s modern anti-caste resistance, Dr. Rinker emphasizes the complex interdependence between narrative practices and social transformation in understanding the centuries old caste basis of India’s most fundamental of social conflicts. Through the comparative case study of three modern social movement organizations, this book provides a fresh lens to both better understand and potentially transform caste marginalization and oppression. Through theoretical analysis, auto-ethnographic field notes, and narrative storytelling, Dr...
The Curious Trajectory of Caste in West Bengal Politics: Chronicling Continuity and Change critically engages with the dynamics of caste in the politics of West Bengal which unlike other parts of India has remained relatively free from large scale caste based political mobilisation. The insignificance of caste in West Bengal politics has remained an enigma. Yet Caste question in West Bengal politics has remained under-researched. However, there has been a growing interest in the politics of caste in West Bengal in recent years and this interest has grown due to the end of the world’s longest serving democratically elected Communist government (1977-2011) that followed a class centric non-identitarian politics. It is in this backdrop that this book explores the reasons for the relative insignificance of caste in post-colonial West Bengal’s politics and also assesses the future possibilities of caste-based identity politics in the state.
The narrative of this book is built around the historical experiences of the Paraiyars of Tamil Nadu. The author traces the transformation of the Paraiyars from an ‘untouchable’ and socially despised community to one that came to acquire prominence in the political scene of Tamil Nadu, especially in early 20th century. Through this framework, the book studies a number of issues: subaltern history, colonial ethnography, agrarian systems, agrarian bondage, land legislations, and the interventions by missionaries and social and political organizations.
One of the only ethnographic studies of Dalit women, this book gives a rich account of individual Dalit women’s lives and documents a rise in patriarchy in the community. The author argues that as Dalits’ economic and political position improves, ‘honour’ becomes crucial to social status. One of the ways Dalits accrue honour is by altering patterns of women’s work, education and marriage, and by adopting dominant-caste gender practices. Simultaneously Dalits are asserting a distinct, politicised Dalit identity. Key to both,is the ‘respectability’ of women. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka
This work is a well-researched study of the last decades of the networks in the Global Justice Movement (GJM) and World Social Forums. It offers a novel perspective on the traditions of protest, ethics, organizational forms, and visions among activists than is usually presented in the literature on GJM, which largely focuses on Latin America, the United States of America, and Europe. It is an ethnographically rooted account of the two conflicting discourses-one among activists in GJM and the other emanating from the World Bank-that have become intertwined locally within the same circle of activists. The author argues that local and transnational activist networks, no longer spatially and territorially limited, have become entangled with forces understood under the paradigms of 'neoliberalism', and relations among activists have changed in unexpected ways. Through a vivid description of transnational movements, this book aims to make evident the not-so-obvious yet intricate links between the World Bank, the United Nations, popular rock stars, and historical knowledge production among activists in South Asia and Japan in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Beginning with the 1990s, the subject of caste has seen a profound increase in interest among scholars. What was until then approached as a fossilized tradition of the ritual-obsessed Hindus refusing to see the progressive spirits of the emerging world and studied as a branch of anthropology, suddenly began to be seen as a complex reality deeply embedded in a range of institutions and social practices, attracting scholars from a wide range of disciplines--sociology, political science, history, literature, and even economics. Underlying this opening of the subject of caste were many factors: epistemic, empirical, and political. Caste is no longer approached through the classical binaries of '...
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"This is a Ph.D. dissertation. This book is an anthropological study of the contemporary Dalit movement. With its base in India, it has grown steadily since the beginning of the 1990s. The activists, who protest against caste discrimination, interact today"