Search results

Rich in anthropological detail and incisive analyses, 'The Fall of Gods' makes original contributions to the understanding of connection between gendered family relations and class mobility, and foregrounds the complex linkages between political history, memory and the private domain of kinship relations, in the making of Indias middle classes.

Cover Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- Notes on Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: South Asian Migration and Religious Pluralism in Europe -- 1 A Universal Hinduism? Dancing Coloniality in Multicultural London -- 2 'Our Future will be in India': Travelling Nuns between Europe and South Asia -- 3 The Status and Role of the Norwegian-Pakistani Mosque: Interfaith Harmony and Women's Rights in Norway -- 4 The Mobility of Religion: Settling Jainism and Hinduism in the Belgian Public Sphere -- 5 Sikh Associational Life in Britain: Gender and Generation in the Public Sphere -- 6 Temple Publics as Interplay of Multiple Public Spheres: Public Faces of Sri Lankan Tamil Hindu Life in Switzerland -- 7 Buddhist, Hindu, Kirati, or Something Else? Nepali Strategies of Religious Belonging in the UK and Belgium -- 8 Hindutva and its Discontents in Denmark -- 9 Sikhs in Italy: Khalsa Identity from Mimesis to Display -- 10 'Our Lady of Carmo is the Patroness of our Family': Migration, Religion and Belonging of Portuguese-Goan Brahmans Converted to Catholicism -- 11 Ganesha Caturthi and the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora in Paris: Inventing Strategies of Visibility and Legitimacy in a Plural Monoculturalist Society -- 12 From Sanskrit Classicism to Tamil Devotion: Shifting Images of Hinduism in Germany -- 13 A Suitable Faith: Catholicism, Domestic Labour and Identity Politics among Malayalis in Rome

The article explores the semantic and experiential meanings of diaspora within the context of global Catholicism. Drawing from research conducted in Italy, the United Kingdom, and Turkey with the reformist movement known as the Neocatechumenal Way (NCW), the analysis delves into the broader question of how the refashioning of global religions is transforming the relation between people, places, and belonging and is contributing to the emotional, practical, and organizational dimensions of diaspora. The discussion first delves into the role of new missionary subjects in cementing a new proximity between the world Catholic population and Mediterranean and Middle-Eastern holy centers of Catholicism. Second, it draws from current definitions of diaspora to consider how a diasporic identity is constructed by dispersed NCW communities in daily lives and rituals. The analysis goes beyond the dimensions of ethnicity and migration, and claims the need to reassert the importance of religious case studies in our understanding of contemporary diaspora. The case of the NCW holds relevance here, insofar as it unravels how a reformist movement, by gaining progressive institutionalization within the Catholic Church, is also undermining some of its consolidated features by creating renewed cartographies of religious belonging. The article argues that the traditional semantics of diaspora—those developed in religious paradigms—deserve renewed attention in the social sciences in order to map ongoing transformations in world religions, and the attendant shifting identifications that characterize even more institutionalized religions like Catholicism.

Recenti studi antropologici hanno sottolineato l'importanza di sviluppare nuove prospettive d'indagine sulle élite. Questo ambito di studi č tuttavia rimasto marginale sia da un punto di vista teorico che etnografico. Nel campo degli studi Asiatici, i pochi lavori sull'argomento hanno analizzato l'emergere di una nuova classe imprenditoriale transnazionale. Minore attenzione č stata invece dedicata al rapporto fra mobilitŕ internazionale e formazione di nuove élite. L'articolo analizza tale rapporto nel contesto specifico dell'India Meridionale, focalizzandosi sul rapporto fra discorsi e pratiche di emigrazione, formazione di nuove élite e trasformazioni nelle gerarchie tradizionali.

Abstract Immigration from South Asia to Italy is a recent phenomenon and novel in that the pioneer migrants are often married or single women rather than men. In this article I explore the relationship between a 'feminization of migration' and the construction of masculine identities among Malayali migrants from Kerala, South India, who experience migration directly or indirectly through marriages with Malayali women living and working in Rome. The interest in focusing on the relation between women's pioneer role as migrants and their husbands' experiences of migration is to show how men's identity is represented through their conjugal bond with migrant women working in the domestic sector and to understand how masculinity is constructed and contested within and with reference to different places.

This article explores the relation between women's active engagement with trans-national migration and transformations in the meanings and practices of marriage through the lens of gender relations and generational change. After reconstructing the history of Malayali migration in Italy, I will show how ideologies and practices surrounding marriage and dowry, far from being confined to one country, are subjects of negotiation between different contexts and heterogeneous household expectations. My conclusions are two-fold. I will argue that the relation between women's transnational migration and changes in household relations and practices should be understood as a dialectical process. Second, I will argue that the analysis of transnational marriages through the perspective of life-cycle transformations and generational change is a basic condition for understanding how multiple meanings of modernity inform processes of change in contemporary Malayali marriage.

This innovative book analyses the role gender plays in the relationship between globalisation, migration and reproductive labour. Exploring the gendered experiences of migrant men and the social construction of racialised masculinities in the context of the 'international division of reproductive labour' (IDRL), it examines how new patterns of consumption and provision of paid domestic/care work lead to forms of inequality across racial, ethnic, gender and class lines. Based on an ethnographic analysis of the working and family lives of migrant men within the IDRL, it focuses on the practices and strategies of migrant men employed as domestic/care workers in Italy. The authors highlight how migrant men's experiences of reproductive labour and family are shaped by global forces and national public policies, and how they negotiate the changes and potential conflicts that their 'feminised' jobs entail. They draw on the voices of men and women of different nationalities to show how masculinities are constructed within the home through migrant men's interactions with male and female employers, women relations and their wider ethnic network. Bridging the divide between scholarship on international migration, care work and masculinity studies, this book will interest sociologists, anthropologists, economists, political scientists and social policy experts

This innovative book analyses the role gender plays in the relationship between globalisation, migration and reproductive labour. Exploring the gendered experiences of migrant men and the social construction of racialised masculinities in the context of the 'international division of reproductive labour' (IDRL), it examines how new patterns of consumption and provision of paid domestic/care work lead to forms of inequality across racial, ethnic, gender and class lines. Based on an ethnographic analysis of the working and family lives of migrant men within the IDRL, it focuses on the practices and strategies of migrant men employed as domestic/care workers in Italy. The authors highlight how migrant men's experiences of reproductive labour and family are shaped by global forces and national public policies, and how they negotiate the changes and potential conflicts that their 'feminised' jobs entail. They draw on the voices of men and women of different nationalities to show how masculinities are constructed within the home through migrant men's interactions with male and female employers, women relations and their wider ethnic network. Bridging the divide between scholarship on international migration, care work and masculinity studies, this book will interest sociologists, anthropologists, economists, political scientists and social policy experts.