Sociology of South Asia

This edited volume moves the study of South Asia to the center of sociological analysis, bringing together recent scholarship across sites in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Pakistan, as well as in Ethiopia and the USA. This book situates the project of decolonizing the discipline within a rich transnational intellectual legacy and reveals how South Asia offers a uniquely generative site from which to rethink sociological practice. Recognizing local and global influences at their specific sites, the contributing authors highlight the historical ravages of colonialism and imperialism, modernization projects of the postcolonial era, and the kaleidoscopic ways in which gender, caste, class, and sexuality structure everyday life under neoliberalism today. The sociology of South Asia centers the voices and experiences of those marginalized by local and global systems of power in order to produce knowledge that advances interconnected projects of liberation.

Draws on original empirical work while speaking to theoretical questions around politics, labor, and culture Engages seriously with gender, class, and their intersections via a postcolonial and transnational perspective Brings together scholarship on the sociology of South Asia to chart novel theoretical paradigms

Autorentext

Smitha Radhakrishnan is LuElla LaMer Professor of Women's Studies and Sociology at Wellesley College, USA. She is the author of Appropriately Indian: Gender and Culture in a New Transnational Class (2011) and Making Women Pay: Microfinance in Urban India (2022), both from Duke University Press.

Gowri Vijayakumar is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University, USA. She is author of At Risk: Indian Sexual Politics and the Global AIDS Crisis (Stanford University Press, 2021) and has published in World Development, Qualitative Sociology, Social Problems, and Gender & Society, among other journals.

Inhalt

Chapter 1. Introduction.- PART I: THE STATE FROM CENTER TO MARGINS.- Chapter 2. Beyond State Control: How law enforcement disempowerment shapes crime and punishment in India.- Chapter 3. We Care for You: Traffic rules, police authority, and technological reform in Hyderabad, India.- Chapter 4. Multiple Modernities and Multiple Traditions: Gender, Sexuality, and Citizenship Debates in Postcolonial India.- Chapter 5. Veiled Sociology: The Epistemologies of Purdah in Gender Segregated Ethnography.- PART II: DISPOSSESSION, LABOR, AND RESISTANCE.- Chapter 6. Dalits and Dispossession: A Comparison.- Chapter 7. Market Reforms and Popular Mobilizations: The Politics of Resource Extraction in Bangladesh.- Chapter 8. (Hindu) Workers of India, Unite!: How Class Politics Shape Hindutva's Ascent in India.- Transparent Intrusions: Ethiopian Labor, Indian Textiles, and Global Markets.- PART III: CULTURE, EMBODIMENT, AND EVERYDAY LIFE.- Chapter 9. "Bodybuilding does not need American certifications": Global Fitness Culture in Contemporary Bengal.- Chapter 10. Of Tigers and Temples: The Jaffna Caste System in Transition During the Sri Lankan Civil War.- Chapter 11. Living on the Fault Lines: Women's Sexuality and Reproductive Health in Post-Disaster Nepal.- Chapter 12. Give in, cut your hairor it makes you a very strong person: Sikh Americans and Performing Embodied Identity as Belonging and Resistance.- Chapter 13. Afterword.