Community and Identities: Contemporary Discourses on Culture and Politics in India Paperback – 26 August 2013

This important volume of original essays interrogates contemporary debates, popular as well as academic, on the place of communities and cultural identities in India’s polity. In particular the contributors:

• Analyze some of the emerging concerns in the social and political life of contemporary India
• Deal with issues that are central to recent debates among social and political theorists, that is, community, identity, nation and civil society
• Present fresh perspectives on these issues which are of interest to most developing societies

Table of Contents:

Part One: Community and Identities, Conceptual Questions

• Introduction
• The Concept of Community in Indian Social Sciences
• An Anthropological Perspective
• In the Tracks of Community and Identity
• Deepening the Interrogation
• The Eclipse or the Renaissance of ‘Community’? The Career of the Concept

Part Two: Caste, Class and The Politics of Community Identities

• Is Caste Appeal Casteism? Oppressed Castes in Politics
• The Ambiguity of Categories
• Community and Identity in the Kapunadu Movement
• Narratives in the Re-Constitution of Communities
• Community, Identity and Politics
• The Baliapal Movement

Part Three: Globalization and the Spatial Rearticulation of Communities

• ‘Can You Talk Indian?’ Shifting Notions of Community and Identity in the Indian Diaspora
• The Spatiality of Community
• Evaluating the Impact of Globalization on Regional Identities

Part Four: Minorities, Women and Communities

• Fluid Boundaries
• Indian Christian Communities
• Community, Women Citizens and a Women’s Politics
• Index

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