Contemporary India: A Sociological View

Globalization, Hindutva, and the Mandal agitation have transformed our social landscape over the last two decades and confronted us with new problems and possibilities. This book seeks to critically re-examine what popular common sense tells us about these and other contemporary concerns. Why are we so eager to claim modernity in some contexts and so anxious to disown it in others? How does the economy come to rival religion and history as a source of national identity? Where does the moral legitimacy of the middle class come from? What makes caste such a controversial criterion for public policy? Has globalization made regions irrelevant? These are some of the questions that Deshpande explores here.



Grounded in sociology but drawing upon recent developments in the other social sciences as well as national data on economic inequality, Deshpande analyses five select themes and the routes to understanding them � the strange mixture of anxiety and ambivalence that modernity provokes in India; the shaping of the nation by the ideologies of Hindutva and development; the pivotal role of the middle class in independent India; the relative invisibility of caste inequality despite the public prominence of caste; and the uneven impact of globalization on the geography of cultural regions.



While the book is specially written for the general reader interested in going beyond common sense, Deshpande�s fresh approach also makes it a must read for teachers and students of sociology and the other social sciences.

Pages : 224/ Hard Cover / Published 1/15/2003

About the author
Satish Deshpande studied economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, before going on to study sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has taught at the University of Hyderabad and is currently a researcher at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. His interests include the socio-cultural aspects of economic phenomena; caste and class inequalities in relation to social policy; spatial dynamics in contemporary society; and the history and politics of the social sciences in India.