Everyday Life in South Asia

Front Cover
Diane P. Mines, Sarah Lamb
Indiana University Press, 2002 - Religion - 504 pages

This vivid anthology of ethnographic writing on South Asia focuses on the daily lives of people in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Firsthand accounts portray the ways ordinary people live and make their worlds through growing up and aging, arranging marriages, exploring sexuality, negotiating caste hierarchies, practicing religion, participating in politics and popular culture, enduring violence as nations are built, and moving abroad to make new lives. An international group of scholars present a diverse range of contemporary life situations and perspectives, including peasant girls in rural Rajasthan and advertising executives in Mumbai; untouchable sharecroppers and high-caste landlords; intimate, multi-generational households and street youth involved in modern gangs; South Asian--American children of high-powered professionals and refugees displaced by national conflict, among many others. The lively text provides lucid introductions to the questions involved in understanding gender, caste, religion, globalization, nationalism, and other key issues as they affect this important region.

Contributors: Joseph S. Alter, J. Bernard Bate, E. Valentine Daniel, Robert Desjarlais, Sara Dickey, Gautam Ghosh, Ann Grodzins Gold, Benedicte Grima, Kim Gutschow, Kathleen Hall, Patricia Jeffery, Roger Jeffery, Pradeep Jeganathan, Nita Kumar, Sarah Lamb, Mark Liechty, McKim Marriott, William Mazzarella, Diane P. Mines, Mattison Mines, Serena Nanda, Kirin Narayan, Steven M. Parish, Gloria Goodwin Raheja, Paula Richman, Susan Seizer, Susan Seymour, Margaret Trawick, Ruth Vanita, Viramma (with Josiane Racine and Jean Luc Racine), Susan S. Wadley, and Jim Wilce.

 

Contents

Introduction
1
Introduction
7
Allah Gives Both Boys and Girls 23
23
Youth and the Contradictions
37
The Role of Suffering in Womens Performance of Paxto
48
Love and Aging in Bengali Families 56
56
The Autobiographical Will and Testa
69
Introduction
81
The Feast of Love
249
The Delusion of Gender and Renunciation
261
Yolmo SpiritCallings in Nepal
275
Tunes Rising from the Soul and Other Narcissistic
289
NationMaking
303
Outsiders at Home? The South Asian Diaspora
326
Why Do Hindus and Muslims Fight? Children
337
Everyday Life
357

Offstage with Special Drama Actresses in Tamil Nadu
116
Consumption and the Production
132
MaleMale Love Difference
146
A Hijras Story
159
Social Distinctions of Caste and Class
167
Hierarchy
174
High and Low Castes in Karani
190
The Erasure of Everyday Life in Colonial Ethnography
199
Class Mobility in Urban India
214
Seven Prevalent Misconceptions about Indias Caste System
227
The Hindu Gods in a South Indian Village
236
Interviews with High School Students in Eastern Sri Lanka
366
Globalization Public Culture
381
Cultural Enclosure and Corporate
387
A Diaspora Ramayana in Southall
400
British Sikh Lives Lived in Translation
412
SecondGeneration
425
Unexpected Destinations
440
REFERENCES
455
CONTRIBUTORS
487
INDEX
493
Copyright

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