The number of panels on “multiculturalism” and “cultural studies” at the AAA's annual meetings has increased significantly. Many anthropologists believe that the discipline has been in the vanguard of debates on racism and multiculturalism, that it stands for precisely those issues raised in the “culture wars”: the equal valuation of all cultures. Yet this is not the case.

Multiculturalism and cultural studies have emerged as counterdisciplinary formations which radically foreground race and racial identity precisely because anthropology cannot do so.

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.1998.100.1.70

Race and the culture of anthropology

This article explores recent critiques in feminist theory to examine how gender-based asylum cases and human rights reporting on South Asia rely upon the most static and patriarchal understandings of culture to establish a basis for intervention or advocacy. It argues that while cultural practices indeed reflect upon women’s status, for gender-based asylum cases the emphasis may be more effectively placed upon a particular political system’s denial of women’s rights, or upon the interface between culture and the political system, rather than upon “culture” itself.

/pdf/gendered-states-rethinking-culture-as-a-site-of-south-asian-826art26m2.pdf

Gendered states: Rethinking culture as a site of South Asian human rights work

This article reflects on the significance and relevance of continuing discussions and debates on the `opening up' of the social sciences. It argues that a balanced and comprehensive restructuring o...

Decentring Social Sciences in Practice Through Individual Acts and Choices

Indian Sociology and the Cultural Other

This article primarily assesses the articulations of Mappila Muslim identity in the public sphere formed in colonial Malabar, especially after the Malabar Rebellion of 1921. The colonial history of the public sphere in Malabar serves as a backdrop to a better understanding of the construction of present-day Muslim identity in Kerala in terms of power and domination. It is shown that a Muslim community that rebelled against the colonial state in northern Kerala earlier and came to be seen as aggressive, uncivilised and religiously fanatic, still faces strong resentment and distrust today, while the memory of subalternity remains present, too.

Kerala Muslims And Shifting Notions Of Religion In The Public Sphere

cultural and religious tradition. Ideally, a sociology of India should encompass all these groups and their traditions. It is, however, one of the characteristics of the discipline today that it has tended to emphasize the study of Hindus and their religious tradition; the study of non-Hindus and of their traditions has been sadly neglected by both Indians and foreigners. If we employ the criterion of the volume of available sociological literature, we find that studies on Hindus and their religious tradition are several times more than the studies on all the non-Hindus taken together. Even a casual perusal of the different bibliographies of sociological writings on India provides eloquent testimony of this disparity (see, for example, FurerHaimendorf 1958, and Patterson and Inden 1962). Other standard bibliographical works similarly reinforce this impression. This is so despite the fact that each of the different non-Hindu groups in Indian society would seem to claim attention in its own right on account of its influence upon Hinduism and its significance for constructing a complete picture of Indian social life in its diversity as well as unity. The volume of available sociological work on non-Hindu groups, by itself, would be a poor basis for asserting that their study has been neglected, or that it has not received adequate attention. On the strength of their numerical dominance and greater regional diversity, Hindus legitimately claim greater attention from the sociologist than any of the non-Hindu

Imtiaz Ahmad

Papers

For a Sociology of India