Search

Caste in the South Asian context is a deeply felt phenomenon, practised through bodily and sensory regimentation, and the prescriptive social organization of bodies in space. These relationships between caste and embodiment have historically been closely regulated in norms around the partaking, sharing and cooking of food, and meat in particular. This paper examines how these gastronomic prescriptions endure and take on new meanings in digital food media, which disrupts physical space and food's relationships to the body and sensory experience. Drawing on two years of ethnography with creators who produce home-cooking content in the emerging Indian "creator economy," this paper considers how caste is embodied, articulated and remediated online during a time of violent Hindu nationalist food politics in India. How is caste articulated even when it is not explicitly named by creators in their posts? How are caste-based disgust and humiliation, and conversely, caste intimacy elicited by creators as they labor for the creator economy? Bringing together feminist and anti-caste theories of experience, articulation and embodiment, the paper theorizes caste as affect, and in doing so, illuminates how it comes to have a digital life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the first-borns among the matrilineal Garos, and their statuses, positions, privileges and responsibilities. Interestingly this ascribed status is rather fluid among them, and thus the paper discusses the circumstances which lead to a change in the status that was bestowed by birth, reiterating the fact that birth alone is not the criterion in the status given to the "first-born". The paper follows the narrative style and uses the auto-ethnographical methodology since it discusses the author's own experiences and community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the legends surrounding the enigmatic figure of Zafar Khan Ghazi, whose tomb still stands at Tribeni (West Bengal, India), a major Hindu pilgrimage spot on the River Ganga. Zafar Khan has been seen variously as the spearhead of the Turkish conquest in late thirteenth-century Bengal, a harbinger of early Islam, and a founder of one of the first Sufi lineages in the region. It illustrates the conflicted nature of the ghazi pir figure, idealized as a Muslim warrior and martyr, but also remembered as a champion of the poor, a composer of odes to the river Ganga in Sanskrit, and a historical bridge between Muslims and Hindus. Examining the architecture of Zafar Khan's mosque and tomb built on the ruins of a Vishnu temple, along with iconic portrayals of the gaji in contemporary Bengali magalakabya verse poetry, the paper locates Zafar Khan as an interstitial and contradictory figure at the margins of what is commonly understood as Hindu devotional worship and iconoclastic Islam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Raikas are the largest group of nomadic pastoralists of India. Each year after the rains, hundreds and thousands of shepherds embark in collective camps on migratory journeys that can span distance of up to 1200 kms and last up to nine months. The present paper is an attempt to study the social structure among Raika. Fieldwork has been done in two villages predominantly inhabitated by Raikas, Raika Ki Dhani and Manpur Bakdi in Pali Sirohi Belt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the developing world, rapid urbanization is leading to new social relations and new conflicts between urban and (formerly) rural populations. This paper examines this process of change through a detailed examination of changing rural–urban relations in the town of Darjeeling, in the Himalayan foothills in Eastern India. In Darjeeling, increased rural mobility, accelerated rural-to-urban migration and the increased participation of rural people in local politics have led to major changes in the town. We demonstrate that the upward trajectory of rural classes who were previously subordinate is leading the more established urban residents to feel threatened, resulting in a redrawing of local political issues along rural–urban lines and a reconfiguration of class consciousness and social relations. The urban middle class, whose opportunities in the town have stagnated or declined, see rural migrants as a source of competition for increasingly scarce resources and blame them for the overall decline in the quality of urban life. They mobilize their (predominantly cultural) capital to reinforce markers of cultural distinction between them and the rural migrants and to delegitimize the political gains they have made. We argue that rural–urban conflict is emerging as the chief source of tension in the town and that this tension is largely grounded in class issues. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

• Community-led solar energy projects in India are analyzed using the grassroots innovation literature. • The status of community energy projects in the US, Europe and India and presented. • Three case studies, namely DURGA, Barefoot College and Rampura solar project, are reviewed. • Case studies are consistent with social justice concerns, such as participation, equitable distribution of benefits and recognition of marginal communities. Sustainable technologies for social mobilization and community empowerment are contemporary phenomena of grassroots innovation movements. The origins of the grassroots innovations appear in the appropriate technology movement of the 1970s, the People's Science Movement of the 1980s, and more recently, the Social Movement Organization as seen in the cases of the Honey Bee Network in India and the Social Technology Network in Brazil. This paper articulates the community energy movement in India in the framework of 'grassroots innovations for sustainability'. The paper presents three fine case studies of off-grid community energy initiatives namely, the Dungarpur Renewable Energy Technologies Private Limited, (DURGA), the Barefoot College and the Rampura Community Solar Power Plant (CSPP). The case studies represent three different kind of business models of community energy projects – a private limited company, a market-based model and a village energy committee (VEC) model. Therefore, they are representative of different grassroots innovations in off-grid energy projects. The case studies exemplify how off-grid community energy projects may manifest an embedded character of the grassroots innovations and address energy poverty and social justice concerns, such as community participation, equitable distribution of benefits, representation of marginalized communities. The case studies also demonstrate that the grassroots innovations in off-grid energy projects may enhance social mobilization, community empowerment and sustainability. To conclude, the findings of this research show that grassroots innovations in technology and sustainable development are consistent with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]