In India, caste groups ensure their durability in an era of
multiculturalism by officially representing caste as cultural
difference or ethnicity rather than as unequal descent-based
relations. Challenging dominant social theories of caste, this book
addresses questions of how caste survives the system that gave rise
to it and adapts to new demands of capitalism and democracy.
Based on original fieldwork, the book shows how the terrain of
culture captured by a new grammar of caste revitalizes castes as
cultural communities so that the culture of a caste is produced,
organized and naturalized in the process of transforming jati
(fetishized blood and kinship) into samaj (fetishized culture).
Castes are shown to not be homogenous cultural wholes but sites of
hegemony where class, gender and hierarchy over-determine the
meanings and materiality of caste.
Arguing that there exists a new casteism in India akin to a new
racism in the USA, built less on biology and descent and more on
purported cultural differences and their rights to exist, the book
presents an extended critique and a search for an alternative view
of caste and anti-casteist politics. It is of interest to students
and scholars of South Asian culture and society.
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