000			01901nam a22001697a 4500
020			_a978-1138667655
082			_a305.51220954 NAT
100			_aNatrajan, Balmurli
245			_aCulturalization of caste in India : identity and inequality in a multicultural age
260			_aLondon _bRoutledge _c2016
300			_axxiii, 207p _b22 cm ; Pbk
500			_aBook Well /12/2016-17 Rs.795/-
505			_aIntroduction Artisans Identities Culture Community Inequalities Reproduction Multiculturalism.
520			_aIn 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.
650			_aCaste--India _aCaste--Political aspects--India _aGroup identity--Political aspects _aGroup identity-- India
942			_cBK
999			_c102815 _d102815