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The Oxford Handbook of Caste

Online ISBN:
9780191998355
Print ISBN:
9780198896715
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

The Oxford Handbook of Caste

Surinder S. Jodhka (ed.),
Surinder S. Jodhka
(ed.)
Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University
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Surinder S. Jodhka is a Professor of Sociology at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He researches on social inequalities, caste, and its articulation in contemporary India, rural/agrarian change, and the political sociology of community identities. His recent publications include India’s Villages in the 21st Century: Revisits and Revisions (co-edited with Edward Simpson, OUP, 2019); Mapping the Elite: Power, Privilege, and Inequality (co-edited with Jules Naudet, OUP, 2019); A Handbook of Rural India (Orient Blackswan, 2018); Contested Hierarchies, Persisting Influence: Caste and Power in Twenty-First Century India (co-edited with James Manor, Orient Blackswan, 2018); Inequality in Capitalist Societies (co-authored with Boike Rehbien and Jesse Souza, Routledge, 2018); The Indian Middle-Class (co-authored with Aseem Prakash, OUP, 2016); Caste in Contemporary India (Routledge, 2015/2018); Caste: Oxford India Short Introductions (OUP, 2012). He is among the first recipients of the ICSSR-Amartya Sen Award for Distinguished Social Scientists, for the year 2012.

Jules Naudet (ed.)
Jules Naudet
(ed.)
Centre for South-Asian and Himalayan Studies, EHESS, Paris
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Jules Naudet is a CNRS Associate Research Professor at the Centre for South-Asian and Himalayan Studies (CESAH) at EHESS, Paris, an Associate Researcher at the Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi, and a 2021–2022 CASBS Fellow at Stanford University. His earlier work looked at upward social mobility in India, the US, and France and he is the author of Stepping into the Elite (OUP, 2018), a book that revisits the classical question of the experience of moving from one class to another. He also co-edited Justifier l’ordre social with Christophe Jaffrelot (University Press of France, 2013) and is the co-author, with Serge Paugam, Bruno Cousin, and Camila Giorgetti, of Ce que les riches pensent des pauvres (Le Seuil, 2017), a comparative analysis of the representations of the poor by the inhabitants of upper-class neighbourhoods in Paris, Delhi, and São Paulo. Naudet holds several editorial positions. He is a member of the editorial board of SAMAJ (South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal) as well as the co-editor-in-chief of La Vie des Idées/Books & Ideas, an online journal hosted by the Collège de France. Along with Surinder Jodhka, he co-edits the book series Exploring India’s Elite. He also co-organizes the research seminar ‘Sociology of Inequalities in India’ at the EHESS, in Paris (along with Joël Cabalion, Mathieu Ferry, Odile Henry, Clémence Jullien, and Olivier Roueff). Naudet currently devotes his research to the study of the Indian and French economic elites.

Published online:
23 January 2024
Published in print:
16 October 2023
Online ISBN:
9780191998355
Print ISBN:
9780198896715
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

Beginning with the 1990s, the subject of caste has seen a profound increase in interest among scholars. What was until then approached as a fossilized tradition of the ritual-obsessed Hindus refusing to see the progressive spirits of the emerging world and studied as a branch of anthropology, suddenly began to be seen as a complex reality deeply embedded in a range of institutions and social practices, attracting scholars from a wide range of disciplines-sociology, political science, history, literature, and even economics. Underlying this opening of the subject of caste were many factors: epistemic, empirical, and political. Caste is no longer approached through the classical binaries of ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’; the ‘East’ and the ‘West’; or the ‘closed’ and ‘open’ systems of stratification. With the growing consolidation of caste-based identities among those ranked lower down in the hierarchy since the 1990s, raising questions of citizenship and dignity, the subject has acquired a new salience. As the emerging research shows, the realities of caste on the ground have always been diverse across regions, often contested and ever changing. This Handbook presents a wide range of essays written by authors representing diverse academic disciplines and perspectives, bringing together the emerging trends in the research, imaginations, and lived realities of caste.

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