Home  About us  Contact
 

Lower Castes (lower + caste)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences100%

Selected Abstracts

Resource Accessibility and Vulnerability in Andhra Pradesh: Caste and Non-Caste Influences

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 4 2007
Lee Bosher
ABSTRACT Coastal Andhra Pradesh in southern India is prone to tropical cyclones. Access to key resources can reduce the vulnerability of the local population to both large-scale disasters, such as cyclones, and to the sort of small-scale crises that affect their everyday lives. This article uses primary fieldwork to present a resource accessibility vulnerability index for over 300 respondents. The index indicates that caste is the key factor in determining who has assets, who can access public facilities, who has political connections and who has supportive social networks. The ,lower' castes (which tend to be the poorest) are marginalized to the extent that they lack access to assets, public facilities and opportunities to improve their plight. However, the research also indicates that the poor and powerless lower castes are able to utilize informal social networks to bolster their resilience, typically by women's participation with CBOs and NGOs. Nevertheless it is doubtful whether this extra social capital counterbalances the overall results which show that , despite decades of counteractions by government , caste remains a dominant variable affecting the vulnerability of the people of coastal Andhra Pradesh to the hazards that they face. [source]

Persecution of Indian Christians

DIALOG, Issue 2 2002
Monica Melanchthon
Christians are one among many minority religious groups in India that face "persecution.""Persecution" here relates to the unjust treatment of lower classes in the Hindu caste system; it is not only Christians that are persecuted, but all those who fall in the lower castes. Part of the animosity towards Christians, then, is due to the fact that many Christian schools have been built to educate the masses thereby upsetting the existing caste system; furthermore, Christianity preaches a classless gospel. Persecution of Christians in India takes place under the guise that Christian Missionaries are covertly trying to convert Hindu,Indian society to the western cult of individualism. Government propaganda, laws, and programs designed to thwart Christian efforts, feed off of this mentality. Unfortunately, there are certain Christian groups that feed off of the misery of people in an unjust caste,system, offering salvation through conversion. These groups do not help matters at all; in fact, they add fuel to the fire. [source]

Changing Status in India's Marginal Music Communities

RELIGION COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 4 2009
Zoe Sherinian
The renegotiation of the performance of an instrument or genre associated with pollution or a degraded social status has been a significant theme in recent ethnomusicological literature on marginalized Indian music communities. These communities include Dalits (outcastes), lower castes, devadasis (hereditary temple dancers), women, and rural poor. Through a review of this literature and film production, I describe four positions taken by these communities and the impact on performance that these changes have brought: (i) discontinuance and rejection, (ii) replacement, (iii) maintenance of performance, yet rejection of caste or community duties, and (iv) reclamation of the music and identity as creditable. [source]

Resource Accessibility and Vulnerability in Andhra Pradesh: Caste and Non-Caste Influences

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 4 2007
Lee Bosher
ABSTRACT Coastal Andhra Pradesh in southern India is prone to tropical cyclones. Access to key resources can reduce the vulnerability of the local population to both large-scale disasters, such as cyclones, and to the sort of small-scale crises that affect their everyday lives. This article uses primary fieldwork to present a resource accessibility vulnerability index for over 300 respondents. The index indicates that caste is the key factor in determining who has assets, who can access public facilities, who has political connections and who has supportive social networks. The ,lower' castes (which tend to be the poorest) are marginalized to the extent that they lack access to assets, public facilities and opportunities to improve their plight. However, the research also indicates that the poor and powerless lower castes are able to utilize informal social networks to bolster their resilience, typically by women's participation with CBOs and NGOs. Nevertheless it is doubtful whether this extra social capital counterbalances the overall results which show that , despite decades of counteractions by government , caste remains a dominant variable affecting the vulnerability of the people of coastal Andhra Pradesh to the hazards that they face. [source]