Caste hierarchy has frequently been singled out as the overriding principle of Indian society. This book examines its significance among the highly-educated middle class in the Tamil town of Madurai. As part of their distinctive status as `educated persons', young graduates form egalitarian constellations by ostensibly subverting the boundaries inscribed by caste hierarchy. Stephanie Stocker explores how these friendships are maintained in wider social contexts, finding that the actors engage in supportive networks throughout career and marriage events. Instead of assuming these relationships to be of an entirely different, `alternative category', however, Stocker's study proposes a dynamic character of friendship which in fact remains in conjunction with Indian values of hierarchy.

Introduction: Towards a Cultural-Politics of Ethics in Everyday Practice -- Managing Diversities: Frontiers, Forest Communities and Little Kingdoms -- Local Society and Kingship: Reconsidering 'Caste', 'Community' and 'State' -- Early Colonial Transformation: Emergence of Wedged Dichotomies -- Consolidation of Colonial Dichotomy: Political-Economy and Cultural Identity -- Postcolonial Tradition: The Biomoral Universe -- Cash and Faction: 'The Logic of the Fish' in the Political-Economy -- Ritual, History and Identity: Goddess RāmacaṇḍīFestival -- Recast(e)ing Identity: Transformations from Below -- Vernacular Democracy: A Post-postcolonial Transformation -- Conclusion: Beyond the Postcolonial.

This Book Attempts To Lay Bare The Deep Roots Of Social Inequality In Indian Society. It Focuses On Three Most Disadvantaged Groups Of People, Namely, The Sudras, Women And The Untouchables. A Clear Understanding Of These Roots Has Been Thought Indispensable For Seeing The Problem Of Inequality In Perspective.

This book draws upon nearly seven decades of first-hand experiences from the ground to understand social exclusion, and movements and efforts for social justice in India. The author, a renowned champion of social justice for deprived social classes, delves into the roots of discrimination in Indian society as well as explains why caste discrimination still persists and how it can be effectively countered. The volume: examines the caste system and its socio-economic ramifications from the perspective of Dalits, and Socially and Educationally Backward Classes; explores the nuances of the Gandhi–Ambedkar debate on the status and liberation of Dalits and synthesis of the approaches of Gandhi, Ambedkar, Narayana Guru and Marx in resolving certain key issues; analyses legal, economic, social and cultural frameworks to understand caste system and related concepts such as ‘untouchability’, atrocities, reservation, etc. in contemporary India; and provides practical insights into the Constitution-based comprehensive measures required to remedy the consequences of caste system and establish social equality in a holistic manner. The book will interest scholars and researchers of social exclusion and social justice, Dalit, Adivasi and Backward Classes studies, sociology and social anthropology, politics, law and human rights, as well as policy-makers, think tanks and NGOs in the field.

"Analyses the confrontation between Evangelical missionaries from Victorian England and low caste communities in the Hindu social order, in the social setting of Travancore, an Indian native state tucked away in the South-west corner of the Indian peninsula. However, the problems like social stratifcation and cultural change dealt with by the author in the book concern a much wider field than Travancore or India along."--Dust jacket flap

Since the 1980s, society’s wealthiest members have claimed an ever-expanding share of income and property. It has been a true counterrevolution, says Pierre Rosanvallon—the end of the age of growing equality launched by the American and French revolutions. And just as significant as the social and economic factors driving this contemporary inequality has been a loss of faith in the ideal of equality itself. An ambitious transatlantic history of the struggles that, for two centuries, put political and economic equality at their heart, The Society of Equals calls for a new philosophy of social relations to reenergize egalitarian politics. For eighteenth-century revolutionaries, equality meant understanding human beings as fundamentally alike and then creating universal political and economic rights. Rosanvallon sees the roots of today’s crisis in the period 1830–1900, when industrialized capitalism threatened to quash these aspirations. By the early twentieth century, progressive forces had begun to rectify some imbalances of the Gilded Age, and the modern welfare state gradually emerged from Depression-era reforms. But new economic shocks in the 1970s began a slide toward inequality that has only gained momentum in the decades since. There is no returning to the days of the redistributive welfare state, Rosanvallon says. Rather than resort to outdated notions of social solidarity, we must instead revitalize the idea of equality according to principles of singularity, reciprocity, and communality that more accurately reflect today’s realities.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.