Mapping the Elite: Power, Privilege, and Inequality

by Surinder S. Jodhka, Jules Naudet

Overview

This edited volume is dedicated to the study of social, economic, and political elites in India. It's contributors address some fundamental questions regarding India's social and economic elites, the change in their composition in recent years, their relationship with each other and with the rest of the social body, and the role of caste in the configuration and reconfiguration of social and economic elites by analysing elite discourses and representations and what they reveal of their social inscription in contemporary India. The editors have sorted this book into three broad themes. The first theme concerns elite spaces which explores the uneasiness of elites to handle public and private spaces and interests. The second theme concerns the trajectories of particular elite groups such as the dominant caste called the Kammas of Andhra Pradesh, the Jats of Uttar Pradesh, and Urban elites. The third and final theme concerns elite lives and practices of diverse elite groups. This book is addressed to not only the scholar community interested in the sociology of India's elites, but to any reader interested in knowing how recent social and economic change in India affects the lives and trajectories of its elites.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199491070
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	10/01/2019
Series:	Exploring India's Elite
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Surinder S. Jodhka, Professor, Centre for the Study of Social Systems,. School of Social Sciences. Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi,Jules Naudet, Research Fellow, CNRS Paris

Surinder S. Jodhka is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Jules Naudet is an alumnus of Sciences Po Paris and of the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (Hindi) and holds a doctorate in Sociology. His doctoral research focused on a comparative analysis of the experience of upward social mobility in France, in India and in the United-States.

Table of Contents

Foreword ix

Preface and Acknowledgements xiii

List of Abbreviations xv

Introduction 1

I Merit, Privilege, and Entitlements

1 The Meritocrats: The Indian Institutes of Technology and the Social Life of Caste Ajantha Subramanian 37

2 Heirs, Corporate Aristocrats, and 'Meritocrats': The Social Space of Top CEOs and Chairpersons in India Jules Naudet Adrien Allorant Mathieu Ferry 70

3 Issues of Entitlement Saurabh Dube 115

II Indian Elites and the Global Scene

4 Artefacts and Artifices of the Global: Practices of US Architects in India's National Capital Region Namita Vijay Dharia 139

5 Kula Gauravam, Transnational Migration, and Class Mobility: Reconfiguring the Dominant Caste Status in Coastal Andhra Sanam Roohi 162

6 'Take This Land': A Brief History of the Karnataka Golf Association Patrick Inglis 186

III Women at the Top: Gender Intersections

7 Reproducing Elite Lives: Women in Agarwal Family Businesses Ujithra Ponniah 217

8 For Things to Remain (Sort of) the Same, Everything Must Change: India's First-Generation Professional Elites and the Surreptitious Reproduction of Hierarchy Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen 246

9 The Secret Lives of Money: Understanding Elite Women of Delhi Parul Bhandari 274

Editors and Contributors 301