Buch, Englisch, 256 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 389 g
Bards and Indian Modernity
Buch, Englisch, 256 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 389 g
ISBN: 978-0-19-530775-7
Verlag: Oxford University Press
Based on three years of anthropological fieldwork in the Indian state of Rajasthan, Casting Kings explores the manner in which semi-nomadic performers known as Bhats understand, and also subvert, caste hierarchies. A number of scholars have recently contended that caste is invented and thus a fiction of a kind. But focus in these studies is typically placed on the way caste is imagined according to the agendas and desires of elite Westerners such as colonial
officials. In this book, by contrast, the author argues that Bhats themselves understand the imaginative dimensions of caste relations. Indeed, such insights are shown to lie at the heart of the Bhats traditional profession of praise- and insult-singing. Likewise, the author demonstrates how the ability to
cleverly rework and even sabotage lingering caste inequalities continues to form the basis for Bhat claims to status and dignity in contemporary India.
