There is considerable evidence that dowry payments in India have not only increased over the last five decades, but that the custom has spread into regions and communities where it was never practiced before. The aim of this thesis is to understand why these changes have occurre…
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This dissertation examines the role of social inequality in the allocation of individuals to different types of employment. It tests three related hypotheses—first, whether India has minority enclave markets built by socially disadvantaged individuals rejected by the primary mar…
This dissertation tracks the emergence of literary narratives by and about Dalit communities in India from the 1950s to the 1990s. Examining the literary texts from a historical materialist perspective, I explore their articulation of self-identity and resistance against the cas…
Chapter 1 involves an empirical evaluation of primary school language policies and their impact on various labor market outcomes. Our results indicate a remarkably high English skill premium in the labor market. A 1% increase in the probability of learning English raises weekly …
I begin this project by introducing the Dalits, the so-called untouchables, of India. I then scrutinize their predicament through two Christian moral imperative lenses, human dignity and social visibility. In the first Chapter, I engage the first context of my dissertation: the …
The stigmatization of the Osu people in Igbo society has manifested itself in many Pentecostal churches in Owerri, giving rise to segregation and hatred. Greeted with hostility within the Church, the Osu Christians have adopted measures to curtail the mistreatment directed again…
The growth of a nationalist consciousness in the literature of the late colonial period in India dates back to the 1880s, when both native and European Orientalists began to suggest the idea that the uniqueness of a “nation” was a function of the living cultural forms of the sub…
Most scholarly accounts of Dravidian nationalism have focused on tracing the socio-economic and political dimensions of the movement. This primary emphasis has precluded scholarly interest and a deeper understanding of the important regional, socio-cultural and religious roots o…
Instability is a persistent theme in literary depictions of Lima, Peru, from throughout the long eighteenth century. The city’s geographical instability, marked by earthquakes that took place in 1687 and 1746, also affected social and economic structures of a viceregal society i…
This dissertation is grounded in my position as a research practitioner and all the observations, analysis and discourse foregrounds that position. It traces the history of Bharatanatyam aesthetics between 1930 to 2020 through the lens of spectacularization.
This dissertation establishes how the 3000 year old discriminatory institution of Caste, continues to impact human capital accumulation, and restricts economic inclusion among the elites of the Bengali society, despite the latter's widely acknowledged progressive and liberal sta…
This thesis lies at the intersection of two broad themes in economics: education and identity. Education is a primary tool for building human capital in economies. It has been recognised as the driver of economic prosperity via research and innovation (Barro 2001; Aghion et al. …
This research examines how non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working on rural development in Andhra are structured to challenge or reinforce existing hierarchies in the society based on caste and gender, by focusing on NGO leadership. The right to equality as a fundamental r…
This dissertation analyses how the hegemony of Hindu nationalism has structured the narratives of Hindu Partition survivors and recruited them in service of a putative Hindu nation. Using an interpretive approach, this dissertation analyses politics as culture. It is based on fo…
This thesis is an exploration of the relationship between Dalit activism and literature through an analysis of literature published in the 21st century. I argue that contemporary literature has a fundamentally different relationship with the activist project than that of forty y…
This dissertation has been a study of how changes in types of social stratification (over time, space, and social location) impact upon how people are ordered and relate to each other, and how they are grouped. I ask where there are competing systems of stratification, how are m…