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If right-populists have had enough of establishment experts, how do they replace them, with whom, and to what effect? Presenting the first in-depth analysis of India's new intellectual elite in the wake of a Hindu supremacist government, The New Experts investigates the power of appointed experts in normalising ideologies of governance, beyond party rhetoric. The New Experts presents an accessible narrative of how and why particular ideas gain prominence in elite policy and political discourse. Drawing on in-depth interviews and ethnographic research with national and international policy makers, politicians, bureaucrats, consultants, and journalists, this book analyses how political leaders in India strategically use modes of populist spectacle and established technocratic institutions to produce shared visions of glorified technological and hyper-nationalist futures. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available open access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.
Neo-Hindutva explores the recent proliferation and evolution of Hindu nationalism – the assertive majoritarian, right-wing ideology that is transforming contemporary India. This volume develops and expands on the idea of ‘neo-Hindutva’ –– Hindu nationalist ideology which is evolving and shifting in new, surprising, and significant ways, requiring a reassessment and reframing of prevailing understandings. The contributors identify and explain the ways in which Hindu nationalism increasingly permeates into new spaces: organisational, territorial, conceptual, rhetorical. The scope of the chapters reflect the diversity of contemporary Hindutva – both in India and beyond – which app...
This book offers a comprehensive and interdisciplinary account of religious identities in the Global South. Drawing on literature in various fields, Felix Wilfred analyzes how religious identities intersect with the processes of globalization, modernity, and postmodernity. He illustrates how the study of religion in the Global North often revolves around questions of secularism and fundamentalism, whereas a neo-Orientalist quality often attends study of religion in the Global South. These approaches and theorizing fail to incorporate the experiences of lived religion in the South, especially in Asia. Historically, the religions in the South have played a highly significant role in resistance to the domination by the colonial forces, an important reason for the continued attachment of the peoples of the South to their religious universe. This book puts the two regions and their scholarly norms in conversation with one another, exploring the social, political, cultural, and economic implications.
The essays in this volume explore the myriad ways in which caste (varna and jati) has been theorized and critiqued in multiple philosophical, religious, logical and narrative traditions in India. Spanning ancient, medieval and modern times, and in diverse classical and vernacular languages, the chapters show how the social fact of caste, and imaginations of kinship, community and humanity were historically subject to epistemological, spiritual, and existential debate in both elite and popular circles in India. Textual Lives of Caste Across the Ages seeks to bridge the interdisciplinary gap between historians and sociologists by focusing on texts that help us think across the sociological and...
The academy may claim to seek and value diversity in its professoriate, but reports from faculty of color around the country make clear that departments and administrators discriminate in ways that range from unintentional to malignant. Stories abound of scholars--despite impressive records of publication, excellent teaching evaluations, and exemplary service to their universities--struggling on the tenure track. These stories, however, are rarely shared for public consumption. Written/Unwritten reveals that faculty of color often face two sets of rules when applying for reappointment, tenure, and promotion: those made explicit in handbooks and faculty orientations or determined by union con...
Questions of the social implications of biotechnology and biological exchange (the extraction of human tissues such as blood, skin and organs for testing, storage and/or distribution for therapeutic or research purposes) have recently been brought strongly to the analytical fore across the social sciences. This book focuses on the variegated biopolitical milieus of this kind of exchange specifically in South Asia. It ranges widely – theoretically, thematically, and regionally – in examining South Asian variants of and engagements with diverse modes of biological exchange: caste, gender, and blood donation in Pakistan, DNA testing amongst a former Untouchable community in south India and ...
The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Humanism presents anedited collection of essays that explore the nature of Humanism asan approach to life, and a philosophical analysis of the keyhumanist propositions from naturalism and science to morality andmeaning. Represents the first book of its kind to look at Humanism notjust in terms of its theoretical underpinnings, but also itsconsequences and its diverse manifestations Features contributions from international and emergingscholars, plus renowned figures such as Stephen Law, CharlesFreeman and Jeaneanne Fowler Presents Humanism as a positive alternative to theism Brings together the world’s leading Humanist academics inone reference work
Over the past two decades anthropologists have been challenged to rethink the nature of ethnographic research, the meaning of fieldwork, and the role of ethnographers. Ethnographic fieldwork has cultural, social, and political ramifications that have been much discussed and acted upon, but the training of ethnographers still follows a very traditional pattern; this volume engages and takes its point of departure in the experiences of ethnographers-in-the-making that encourage alternative models for professional training in fieldwork and its intellectual contexts. The work done by contributors to Fieldwork Is Not What It Used to Be articulates, at the strategic point of career-making research...
Religious ideas, practices, discourses, institutions, and social expressions are in constant flux. This volume addresses the internal and external dynamics, interactions between individuals, religious communities, and local as well as global society. The contributions concentrate on four areas: 1. Contemporary religion in the public sphere: The Tactics of (In)visibility among Religious Communities in Europe; Religion Intersecting De-nationalization and Re-nationalization in Post-Apartheid South Africa; 2. Religious transformations: Forms of Religious Communities in Global Society; Political Contributions of Ancestral Cosmologies and the Decolonization of Religious Beliefs; Esoteric Tradition as Poetic Invention; 3. Focus on the individual: Religion and Life Trajectories of Islamists; Angels, Animals and Religious Change in Antiquity and Today; Gaining Access to the Radically Unfamiliar in Today’s Religion; Religion between Individuals and Collectives; 4. Narrating religion: Entangled Knowledge Cultures and the Creation of Religions in Mongolia and Europe; Global Intellectual History and the Dynamics of Religion; On Representing Judaism.
We live in times of increasing world uncertainty. Consumer culture in Asia has embodied such precariousness, with their unprecedented states of both prosperity and vulnerability. Works in this volume examine the consumer cultures that exist in today’s precarious Asia. They do this through culturally oriented, critical consumer research. How deeply has the consumer precariousness in Asia been intertwined with the sociohistorical patterning of consumption including class, gender, and other social categories? How do these problematics affect consumers’ identity projects, consumer rituals, and marketplace cultures? How is consumer precariousness aggravated by the governmentality of the super...