000 02924cam a22002058i 4500
020 _a9781009273121
082 0 0 _a305.5122 SUN (TB)
_223/eng/20220822
084 _aHIS017000
_2bisacsh
100 1 _aSunandan, K. N.,
245 1 0 _aCaste, knowledge, and power :
_bways of knowing in twentieth-century Malabar /
_cK.N. Sunandan.
300 _a229p.
504 _aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
505 0 _aAcknowledgements -- Notes on transliteration -- Introduction: Caste, knowledge, and power -- An Ashari world of knowing -- An Ashari world of ignoring -- A Nampoothiri world of Acharam -- Nampoothiris and the order of knowledge -- Asharis and the order of knowledge -- Postscript: Towards an artisanal way of practice of knowing -- Bibliography -- Index.
520 _a"Caste, Knowledge, and Power explores the emergence of knowledge as a measure of human in the colonial and casteist contexts in twentieth-century Malabar, India. It undertakes a comparative study of two caste communities in Malabar-Asharis (carpenter caste) and Nampoothiris (Brahmins) for their varied interactions with and intervention in the emerging colonial forms of knowledge production. The author argues that the caste location determined not only the presence or absence in the system of knowledge production, but also the cognitive process of knowing and hence the very idea of what is considered as knowledge. In other words, it engages less with the marginalization of the oppressed castes in the modern institutions of knowledge production, which has already been discussed widely in the scholarship. Rather, the author focuses on how the modern colonial-brahminical concept of knowledge invalidated many other forms of knowing practices and how historically caste domination transformed from the claims of superiority in acharam (ritual practices) to the claims of superiority in possession of knowledge. In short, the book investigates the transformations of caste practices in twentieth-century India and the role of knowledge in this transformation and in the continuation of these oppressive practices. It also diverges from the tradition of considering colonial power as the determining force and actions of the communities as response to this power. The author situates the domination and subordination as interaction and indicates that, in India, colonial modernity emerged as colonial-brahmanical modernity. The periodization-twentieth century-is also indicative of moving away from the dominant classification of colonial and postcolonial, and hence posits the argument that postcolonial practices of knowledge are a continuation of the colonial-brahmanical practices formed in the first half of the twentieth century"--
650 0 _aCaste
_zIndia
650 0 _aLearning and scholarship
_zIndia
650 0 _aPower (Social sciences)
_zIndia
650 7 _aHISTORY / Asia / South / General
942 _cBK
999 _c664065
_d664065