Surinder S. Jodhka
Showing all 8 books
Rural’ and ‘urban’ are the foremost categories through which social life has been visualised and engaged with in modern and contemporary times.
The idea of the ‘rural’ or the ‘village’ has been of particular significance in India. British colonisers represented India to the world as a land of ‘village republics’. This representation was so influential that even the nationalist leaders accepted it uncritically. ...
Who exactly are the middle classes in India? What role do they play in contemporary Indian politics and society, and what are their historical and cultural moorings? The authors of this volume argue that the middle class has largely been understood as an ‘income/economic category’, but the term has a broader social and conceptual history, globally as well as in India. To begin with, the middle class is not a homogeneous category but is shaped by ...
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.
Contents: Preface. Introduction: the idea of caste. Part I: Hierarchies and the politics of citizenship. 1. Pollution and prejudice: vestiges of untouchability in rural ...
China and India - the two emerging economies with growing influence the world over - are also undergoing profound social and cultural change. While China introduced a variety of economic and political reforms in 1978, India initiated economic reforms only in 1991. These shifts produced significantly higher rates of growth than witnessed during the preceding decades. The rapid pace of economic growth in both these countries transformed their economies in many ...
This volume presents a set of readings which primarily focus on the social, political and cultural aspects of village life. A few readings discuss issues of agrarian change and the economy of rural India. A comprehensive introduction provides a detailed historical analysis of the study of rural India, the changes in rural social life, and the forces shaping life in villages today. The articles, drawn from writings over four decades (1972 to 2010), cover various ...
This important volume of original essays interrogates contemporary debates, popular as well as academic, on the place of communities and cultural identities in India's polity. In recent years, India has witnessed the rise of a variety of new social movements, particularly among women, farmers, Dalits, tribals and ethnic groups. These movements have raised issues which cannot be easily encompassed within the framework of the dominant theoretical and political ...
Such are the constraints of disciplinary boundaries that even when scholars come together in a collective effort to analyse recent processes, their focus narrows down to specific themes, invariably privileging one kind of methodological or conceptual framework over others. The present volume of essays - the outcome of a seminar, 'Changing social formations in Contemporary India', organized under the auspices of the School of Social Sciences of Jawaharlal Nehru ...