The caste system, its salient characteristics, and its subtle and more obvious
transformations, coupled with its persistence and pervasiveness, have been central to …

By drawing on her extensive fieldwork in India and on the adjacent theoretical literature,
Barbara Harriss-White describes the working of the Indian economy through its most …

Scholars of modern Indian history have often pointed to the continuities in the colonial
constructs of Indian society and the nationalist imaginations of India. The village was an …

Social science literature on caste tends to view it as a peculiar institution of the Hindus,
emanating from their past tradition and religious beliefs/scriptures. This view also presumes …

Caste has invariably been seen in unitary terms, as a pan-Indian reality without any
significant variations in its structure or ideology. While it was sanctioned through some …

Based on a revisit to two villages of Haryana after a gap of 20 years (1988-89 and 2008-09),
this paper provides a historical overview of the process of development and change in a …

Interrogating the cultural roots of contemporary Malayali middle classes, especially the
upper caste Nambudiri community, The Fall of Gods is based on a decade-long …

This article questions the dichotomy of 'classical anthropological topics/traditional
fieldwork'versus 'contemporary topics/multi-sited imaginary'and interrogates the role of …

The 1980s saw an increasing enthusiasm for decentralisation and good governance in
developing countries. Citing an ethnographic study of the office of Tehsil Mayor in Kharalpur …

The literature on the political sociology of caste identity/mobilisations in contemporary India
and her democratic political process generally focuses primarily on macro analysis of …