1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910790552503321

Autore

Guha Sumit

Titolo

Beyond caste : identity and power in South Asia, past and present / / by Sumit Guha

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Leiden : , : Brill, , [2013]

©2013

ISBN

90-04-25485-4

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (256 p.)

Collana

Brill's Indological library, , 0925-2916 ; ; volume 44

Disciplina

305.5/1220954

Soggetti

Group identity - South Asia - History

Caste - South Asia - History

Power (Social sciences) - South Asia - History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front Matter -- Governing Caste: The Study of State Power and Ethnic Rank in South Asia -- The Birth of Caste -- Territorial Power: The Spatial Dimension of Social Organization -- The Political Economy of Village Life -- A Locus of Sociopolitical Organization: The Household -- Ruling, Identifying, and Counting: Knowledge and Power in Eighteenth-Century India -- Empires, Nations, and the Politics of Ethnic Identity, c. 1800–2000 -- Afterword -- Bibliography -- Index.

Sommario/riassunto

Caste' is today almost universally perceived as an ancient and unchanging Hindu institution preserved solely by a deep-seated religious ideology. Yet the word itself is an importation from sixteenth-century Europe. This book tracks the long history of the practices amalgamated under this label and shows their connection to changing patterns of social and political power down to the present. It frames caste as an involuted and complex form of ethnicity and explains why it persisted under non-Hindu rulers and in non-Hindu communities across South Asia.