Suchergebnisse

In the upper caste imagination, the general notion of caste has mostly been limited to marriage, reservation, and politics. However, the everyday nature of caste often lies in the state of dismissal or un-acknowledgement by the upper caste. This letter is addressed to individuals/ communities who assume the position of upper caste and it aims to ignite conversations with an open mind and heart about the lives of those at the other end of the caste spectrum. A key focus of this letter is on Food—an important aspect of our lives where casteism is blatant and brutal. The letter explores a history of food practices and also addresses how food choices aid in discrimination and social exclusion of communities even in contemporary times. Using a lens of 'psyche of the oppressor', we discuss how food practices shapes an upper caste individual's psyche along the factors of delusion of caste superiority, socially favored caste behavior and intergenerational transmission of caste attitudes. The letter does not comment on individual choices or preferences; it rather focuses on the system in which vegetarianism is considered supreme, which facilitates in ignoring the pluralities of the country and thereby pushing the 'other' into margins/ peripheries and does not take cognizance of their culture and history.

Well-functioning groups enforce social norms that restrain opportunism, but the social structure of a society may encourage or inhibit norm enforcement. Here we study how the exogenous assignment to different positions in an extreme social hierarchy - the caste system - affects individuals' willingness to punish violations of a cooperation norm. Although we control for individual wealth, education, and political participation, low caste individuals exhibit a much lower willingness to punish norm violations that hurt members of their own caste, suggesting a cultural difference across caste status in the concern for members of one's own community. The lower willingness to punish may inhibit the low caste's ability to sustain collective action and so may contribute to its economic vulnerability.

Because the census originally took up caste questions during the colonial period, the idea that such classifying and categorising was used for the purpose of domination took hold. In independent India there was a refusal to use caste in the census. This did not in any case lead to any lessening of caste divisions and conflicts; atrocities on dalits have continued; new life seems to be coming in the brutal traditionalism of many khap panchayats. The caste structure is being transformed in an era of globalisation, but survives in changing form. However, for purposes of understanding a complex social structure of inequality in order to transform it and formulate policies that will eventually annihilate caste, it is necessary to gather information, and the census is the best means for that. The method should be self-identification: there can be a simple question and people can respond (if they don't admit to caste they can say 'none' or 'Indian' or 'mixed'). The record of mixed (from mixed marriages) will also be useful in monitoring the decline of casteism.

For almost a century from 1860, regional theatre was the foremost arena for the negotiation of upper-caste cultural dominance within the making of a middle-class Maharashtrian identity. Although emerging forms of Marathi middle-class theatre such as the sangeet natak were nourished by lower-caste performative genres like the lavani and the tamasha, the interests of lower-caste performing communities have been successfully marginalised within the regional cultural sphere. Significantly, the influence of sangeet-natak between 1880 and the 1920s was linked to its emergence as a viable format that addressed critical gaps within the dynamics of the regional sphere. This article explores these processes of cultural ascendance and marginalisation by considering the formal, organisational and ideological manoeuvres through which upper-caste agents were able to establish the normative categories, institutional networks and theatrical practices that rendered lower-caste performance forms apparently irrelevant and invisible.

The Caste: How Italian Politicians Have Become Untouchable, by Sergio Rizzo and Gian Antonio Stella, is reviewed.

Contemporary India's political landscape is characterized by a great deal of social upheaval. This is the result of growing democratic consciousness which is increasingly conflicting with the forces of domination, authoritarianism and hegemony. Against this backdrop, this volume provides an understanding of these forces in both historical and analytical terms. In particular, the seminal essays gathered here explore the specificities of the crucial social categories of class, caste and gender, while simultaneously drawing attention to the arenas in which they intersect

The caste system enables one group of citizens as dominant another group is oppressed. Tamil Nadu, the so-called Periyar Land, takes pride in dropping caste tags and eliminating caste titles. Verily we have to introspect that we have truly eliminated the caste tags from the public space. India's majority media is heavily dominated by the upper-caste. Social media provided a new platform for ordinary citizens to share their thoughts. Meanwhile, this modern cyberspace and the public sphere enabled by Facebook are free from caste and caste tags. This study will examine how the dominant castes' identities are constructed on Facebook. It will also explore how Facebook enables caste solidarity and caste consolidation rather than caste annihilation. It will investigate the caste discourse of three dominant castes, that is, Nadar, Thevar and Vanniyar on Facebook. Netnography will be employed in this study with participant observation focused on online fieldwork. The study focused on the collection of archival data as it used existing messages, rather than having any researcher interaction with the online community. The posts with hashtags #Nadar, #Thevar and #Vanniyar will be analysed using thematic analysis.