India’s Middle Class


Book Description

This book is one of the first ethnographic studies to examine the complexities of lifestyles of the the upwardly mobile middle classes in India in the new millennium. It reveals an original theory on cosmopolitan Indianness and urbanisation in the age of globalisation.




Class and Culture in Urban India


Book Description

A striking development of recent times has been the explosive growth of fundamentalist forms of Christianity in the Third World. This book, the first ethnography of an urban Protestant community in India, traces the emergence of this kind of religiosity and shows how it now challenges the liberal doctrines and practices introduced by the missionaries. Caplan portrays fundamentalism as a species of popular culture favored by those far removed from centers of power and privilege. He also explores the nature of the south Indian urban class order, the manner of its reproduction, and its involvement with religious processes.




Youth, Class and Education in Urban India


Book Description

Urban India is undergoing a rapid transformation, which also encompasses the educational sector. Since 1991, this important new market in private English-medium schools, along with an explosion of private coaching centres, has transformed the lives of children and their families, as the attainment of the best education nurtures the aspirations of a growing number of Indian citizens. Set in urban Kerala, the book discusses changing educational landscapes in the South Indian city of Kochi, a local hub for trade, tourism, and cosmopolitan middle-class lifestyles. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, the author examines the way education features as a major way the transformation of the city, and India in general, are experienced and envisaged by upwardly-mobile residents. Schooling is shown to play a major role in urban lifestyles, with increased privatisation representing a response to the educational strategies of a growing and heterogeneous middle class, whose educational choices reflect broader projects of class formation within the context of religious and caste diversity particular to the region. This path-breaking new study of a changing Indian middle class and new relationships with educational institutions contributes to the growing body of work on the experiences and meanings of schooling for youths, their parents, and the wider community and thereby adds a unique, anthropologically informed, perspective to South Asian studies, urban studies and the study of education.




Youth, Class and Education in Urban India


Book Description

Urban India is undergoing a rapid transformation, which also encompasses the educational sector. Since 1991, this important new market in private English-medium schools, along with an explosion of private coaching centres, has transformed the lives of children and their families, as the attainment of the best education nurtures the aspirations of a growing number of Indian citizens. Set in urban Kerala, the book discusses changing educational landscapes in the South Indian city of Kochi, a local hub for trade, tourism, and cosmopolitan middle-class lifestyles. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, the author examines the way education features as a major way the transformation of the city, and India in general, are experienced and envisaged by upwardly-mobile residents. Schooling is shown to play a major role in urban lifestyles, with increased privatisation representing a response to the educational strategies of a growing and heterogeneous middle class, whose educational choices reflect broader projects of class formation within the context of religious and caste diversity particular to the region. This path-breaking new study of a changing Indian middle class and new relationships with educational institutions contributes to the growing body of work on the experiences and meanings of schooling for youths, their parents, and the wider community and thereby adds a unique, anthropologically informed, perspective to South Asian studies, urban studies and the study of education.




Being Middle-class in India


Book Description

Hailed as the beneficiary, driving force and result of globalisation, India’s middle-class is puzzling in its diversity, as a multitude of traditions, social formations and political constellations manifest contribute to this project. This book looks at Indian middle-class lifestyles through a number of case studies, ranging from a historical account detailing the making of a savvy middle-class consumer in the late colonial period, to saving clubs among women in Delhi’s upmarket colonies and the dilemmas of entrepreneurial families in Tamil Nadu’s industrial towns. The book pays tribute to the diversity of regional, caste, rural and urban origins that shape middle- class lifestyles in contemporary India and highlights common themes, such as the quest for upward mobility, common consumption practices, the importance of family values, gender relations and educational trajectories. It unpacks the notion that the Indian middle-class can be understood in terms of public performances, surveys and economic markers, and emphasises how the study of middle-class culture needs to be based on detailed studies, as everyday practices and private lives create the distinctive sub-cultures and cultural politics that characterise the Indian middle class today. With its focus on private domains middleclassness appears as a carefully orchestrated and complex way of life and presents a fascinating way to understand South Asian cultures and communities through the prism of social class.




The Meaning of the Local


Book Description

By zooming in on urban localities in India and by unpacking the 'meaning of the local' for those who live in them, the ten papers in this volume redress a recurrent asymmetry in contemporary debates about globalisation. In much literature, the global is associated with transnationalism, dynamism and activity, and the local with static identities and history. Focusing on a range of locales in India's metropolitan areas and provincial small towns, the contributions move beyond the assertion that space is socially constructed to explore the ways in which social and political relations are themselves spatially and historically contingent. Using detailed ethnography, the authors highlight the vitality of place-making in the lives of urban dwellers and the centrality of a 'politics of place' in the production of power, difference and inequality. The volume illustrates how urban spaces are increasingly interconnected through wider social and spatial processes, while local boundaries and group-based identities are at the same time reconstructed, and often even consolidated, through the use of 'traditional' idioms and localised practices. All contributions relate detailed case studies of everyday activities to a range of contemporary debates that highlight various spatial aspects of cultural identities, economic restructuring and political processes in India. The volume provides an interdisciplinary perspective on urban life in rapidly changing political and economic environments. It offers a contribution to policy-orientated debates on urban livelihoods and urban planning as well as a wealth of ethnographic material for those interested in the spatial dimensions of urban life in India.




Within the Limits


Book Description

India’s ‘new’ middle classes have gained increasing prominence in media, political, and public imaginings since the liberalization of the economy in the 1990s. As a growing number of Indians living in an extraordinary variety of socio-economic circumstances are identifying as middle class, a concrete definition of this category remains elusive. Within the Limits explores what being ‘middle class’ means to those who identify as such. Set against the backdrop of the south Indian city of Hyderabad, this work highlights the importance of moralized language of respectability and cosmopolitanism in the production of class and gender in India. The book charts how diverse understandings of the moral limits of middle-class being shape consumption patterns, education strategies, attitudes toward caste, shifting marriage ideals, and youth cultures of fashion and dating in the city.




Living Class in Urban India


Book Description

Many Americans still envision India as rigidly caste-bound, locked in traditions that inhibit social mobility. In reality, class mobility has long been an ideal, and today globalization is radically transforming how India’s citizens perceive class. Living Class in Urban India examines a nation in flux, bombarded with media images of middle-class consumers, while navigating the currents of late capitalism and the surges of inequality they can produce. Anthropologist Sara Dickey puts a human face on the issue of class in India, introducing four people who live in the “second-tier” city of Madurai: an auto-rickshaw driver, a graphic designer, a teacher of high-status English, and a domestic worker. Drawing from over thirty years of fieldwork, she considers how class is determined by both subjective perceptions and objective conditions, documenting Madurai residents’ palpable day-to-day experiences of class while also tracking their long-term impacts. By analyzing the intertwined symbolic and economic importance of phenomena like wedding ceremonies, religious practices, philanthropy, and loan arrangements, Dickey’s study reveals the material consequences of local class identities. Simultaneously, this gracefully written book highlights the poignant drive for dignity in the face of moralizing class stereotypes. Through extensive interviews, Dickey scrutinizes the idioms and commonplaces used by residents to justify class inequality and, occasionally, to subvert it. Along the way, Living Class in Urban India reveals the myriad ways that class status is interpreted and performed, embedded in everything from cell phone usage to religious worship.







Adolescence in Urban India


Book Description

Set against the backdrop of social change and globalization, this book presents the contents and contours of adolescence in contemporary urban India. Based on the trends derived from a series of mixed-method studies with adolescent girls and boys, and parents from urban upper middle class families, it explores adolescents’ and parents’ interpretations of the stage of adolescence, illustrates views on parenting, and discusses approaches to interpersonal disagreements to derive a framework of the parent-adolescent relationship. Drawing from the cultural-contextual perspective of human development, the book in its essence offers a culturally and contextually sensitive model of adolescence that is shaped along the central tenets of family interdependence, harmony, and sensitivity to parental concerns. Highlighted as well are aspects that have remained mostly unexplored, for example, adolescents’ capacity for empathy and perspective taking, and emerging issues of autonomy in a primarily relational culture. At a broader level, the book reflects upon the interplay of cultural continuity and change, and contributes to an understanding of globalizing influences on human development. Overall, the depiction of adolescent development captured in the book has significant implications for enhancing family relationships and fostering self-growth---elements that are crucial for positive youth development.The book will be of immense use to scholars in human development, psychology, and allied fields as well as to practitioners who work with adolescents.