
The Fall of Gods
Memory, Kinship, and Middle Classes in South India
Ester Gallo(Author)
OUP India (Publisher)
Published on 14. September 2017
Book
Hardback
352 pages
978-0-19-946930-7 (ISBN)
Description
Interrogating the cultural roots of contemporary Malayali middle classes, especially the upper caste Nambudiri community, The Fall of Gods is based on a decade-long ethnography and historico-sociological analyses of the interconnections between colonial history, family memories, and class mobility in twentieth-century south India. It traces the transformation of normative structures of kinship networks as the community moves from colonial to neo-liberal modernity across generations. The author demonstrates how past family experiences of class and geographical mobility (or immobility) are retrieved and reshaped in the present as alternative ways of conceiving kinship, transforming the idea of collective suffering and sacrifice, and strengthening the felt necessity of territorial, caste, and religious mingling.
Rich in anthropological detail and incisive analyses, the book makes original contributions to the understanding of connection between gendered family relations and class mobility, and foregrounds the complex linkages between political history, memory, and the private domain of kinship relations in the making of Indias middle classes.
Rich in anthropological detail and incisive analyses, the book makes original contributions to the understanding of connection between gendered family relations and class mobility, and foregrounds the complex linkages between political history, memory, and the private domain of kinship relations in the making of Indias middle classes.
Reviews / Votes
Ester Gallo has given a wonderfully nuanced, beautifully written, and innovative account of kinship, memory, and class in India. This is not only a major contribution to scholarship on class, it will be an important point of reference in the study of kinship and memory more widely.' * Janet Carsten, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom * This fascinating study challenges easy assumptions about the role of the past in the present and emphasizes the role of kinship studies as part of the analysis of class formation in South Asia and beyond. * Henrike Donner, Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom * A completely novel approach to understanding middle classes in modern India, at the intersections of caste, kinship, and mobility! An exceptional anthropological study and fascinating read. * Meenakshi Thapan, Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India *More details
Edition
UK edition
Language
English
Place of publication
New Delhi
India
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
6
Dimensions
Height: 224 mm
Width: 150 mm
Thickness: 28 mm
Weight
476 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-946930-7 (9780199469307)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
02/2018
1st Edition
OUP
€51.47
Available for download
Person
Ester Gallo is a lecturer in anthropology at the Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento, Italy, and Research Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS), European University Institute, Florence, Italy.
Content
- List of Figures, Graph, and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Kinship, Memory, and Indian Middle- Classes
- 1.: Some Moments in History
- 2: From Gods to Human Beings: Mapping Generational Histories
- 3: Debts of Identity: On Written Memories and Middle-Classness
- 4: The Illam and Its Dispersion
- 5: Recalling the Beauty of Impurity
- 6: Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration
- 7: On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration
- Conclusion: The Thin Elephant in a
- Crowded Shed
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Glossary
- Index
- About the Author