The Fall of Gods
Memory, Kinship, and Middle Classes in South India
Price: 1195.00 INR
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ISBN:
9780199469307
Publication date:
13/06/2017
Hardback
352 pages
Price: 1195.00 INR
We sell our titles through other companies
Disclaimer :You will be redirected to a third party website.The sole responsibility of supplies, condition of the product, availability of stock, date of delivery, mode of payment will be as promised by the said third party only. Prices and specifications may vary from the OUP India site.
ISBN:
9780199469307
Publication date:
13/06/2017
Hardback
352 pages
Ester Gallo
Rich in anthropological detail and incisive analyses, The Fall of Gods makes original contributions to the understanding of connection between gendered family relations and class mobility, and foregrounds the complex linkages between political history, memory, and the ‘private’ domain of kinship relations, in the making of India’s middle classes.
Rights: World Rights
Ester Gallo
Description
Interrogating the cultural roots of contemporary Malayali middle classes, especially the upper caste Nambudiri community, The Fall of Gods is based on a decade-long ethnography and historico-sociological analyses of the interconnections between colonial history, family memories, and class mobility in twentieth-century south India. It traces the transformation of normative structures of kinship networks as the community moves from colonial to neo-liberal modernity across generations. The author demonstrates how past family experiences of class and geographical mobility (or immobility) are retrieved and reshaped in the present as alternative ways of conceiving kinship, transforming the idea of collective suffering and sacrifice, and strengthening the felt necessity of territorial, caste, and religious mingling.
Rich in anthropological detail and incisive analyses, the book makes original contributions to the understanding of connection between gendered family relations and class mobility, and foregrounds the complex linkages between political history, memory, and the ‘private’ domain of kinship relations in the making of India’s middle classes.
About the Author
Ester Gallo is a lecturer in anthropology at the Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento, Italy, and Research Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS), European University Institute, Florence, Italy.
Ester Gallo
Table of contents
List of Figures, Graph, and Tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Kinship, Memory, and Indian
Middle Classes
1. Some Moments in History
2. From Gods to Human Beings: Mapping Generational Histories
3. Debts of Identity: On Written Memories and Middle-Classness
4. The Illam and Its Dispersion
5. Recalling the Beauty of Impurity
6. Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration
7. On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration
Conclusion: The Thin Elephant in a
Crowded Shed
Notes
Bibliography
Glossary
Index
About the Author
Ester Gallo
Features
- Combines historical and ethnographic analysis of middle classes in contemporary India.
- Provides the readers with a rich discussion of many affective dimensions of family life in contemporary India, such as parenthood, reproduction, marriage, love, and intergenerational relations.
- Offers insights into the historical continuities between new middle classes and the traditional ones.
Ester Gallo
Review
‘Ester Gallo has given a wonderfully nuanced, beautifully written, and innovative account of kinship, memory, and class in India. This is not only a major contribution to scholarship on class, it will be an important point of reference in the study of kinship and memory more widely.’
—Janet Carsten, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
‘This fascinating study challenges easy assumptions about the role of the past in the present and emphasizes the role of kinship studies as part of the analysis of class formation in South Asia and beyond.’
—Henrike Donner, Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom
‘A completely novel approach to understanding middle classes in modern India, at the intersections of caste, kinship, and mobility! An exceptional anthropological study and fascinating read.’
—Meenakshi Thapan, Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India
Description
Interrogating the cultural roots of contemporary Malayali middle classes, especially the upper caste Nambudiri community, The Fall of Gods is based on a decade-long ethnography and historico-sociological analyses of the interconnections between colonial history, family memories, and class mobility in twentieth-century south India. It traces the transformation of normative structures of kinship networks as the community moves from colonial to neo-liberal modernity across generations. The author demonstrates how past family experiences of class and geographical mobility (or immobility) are retrieved and reshaped in the present as alternative ways of conceiving kinship, transforming the idea of collective suffering and sacrifice, and strengthening the felt necessity of territorial, caste, and religious mingling.
Rich in anthropological detail and incisive analyses, the book makes original contributions to the understanding of connection between gendered family relations and class mobility, and foregrounds the complex linkages between political history, memory, and the ‘private’ domain of kinship relations in the making of India’s middle classes.
About the Author
Ester Gallo is a lecturer in anthropology at the Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento, Italy, and Research Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS), European University Institute, Florence, Italy.
Reviews
‘Ester Gallo has given a wonderfully nuanced, beautifully written, and innovative account of kinship, memory, and class in India. This is not only a major contribution to scholarship on class, it will be an important point of reference in the study of kinship and memory more widely.’
—Janet Carsten, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
‘This fascinating study challenges easy assumptions about the role of the past in the present and emphasizes the role of kinship studies as part of the analysis of class formation in South Asia and beyond.’
—Henrike Donner, Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom
‘A completely novel approach to understanding middle classes in modern India, at the intersections of caste, kinship, and mobility! An exceptional anthropological study and fascinating read.’
—Meenakshi Thapan, Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India
Table of contents
List of Figures, Graph, and Tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Kinship, Memory, and Indian
Middle Classes
1. Some Moments in History
2. From Gods to Human Beings: Mapping Generational Histories
3. Debts of Identity: On Written Memories and Middle-Classness
4. The Illam and Its Dispersion
5. Recalling the Beauty of Impurity
6. Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration
7. On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration
Conclusion: The Thin Elephant in a
Crowded Shed
Notes
Bibliography
Glossary
Index
About the Author
