Privileged Minorities: Syrian Christianity, Gender, and Minority Rights in Postcolonial India Contributor(s): Thomas, Sonja (Author), Sivaramakrishnan, K. (Editor), Kaimal, Padma (Editor) |
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ISBN: 0295743824 ISBN-13: 9780295743820 Publisher: University of Washington Press OUR PRICE: $103.95 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: November 2018 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Gender Studies - History | Asia - India & South Asia - Social Science | Anthropology - Cultural & Social |
Dewey: 305.681 |
LCCN: 2018002613 |
Series: Global South Asia |
Physical Information: 0.63" H x 6" W x 9" (1.10 lbs) 224 pages |
Themes: - Cultural Region - Indian - Cultural Region - Asian |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Although demographically a minority in Kerala, India, Syrian Christians are not a subordinated community. They are caste-, race-, and class-privileged, and have long benefitted, both economically and socially, from their privileged position. Focusing on Syrian Christian women, Sonja Thomas explores how this community illuminates larger questions of multiple oppressions, privilege and subordination, racialization, and religion and secularism in India. In Privileged Minorities, Thomas examines a wide range of sources, including oral histories, ethnographic interviews, and legislative assembly debates, to interrogate the relationships between religious rights and women's rights in Kerala. Using an intersectional approach, and US women of color feminist theory, she demonstrates the ways that race, caste, gender, religion, and politics are inextricably intertwined, with power and privilege working in complex and nuanced ways. By attending to the ways in which inequalities within groups shape very different experiences of religious and political movements in feminist and rights-based activism, Thomas lays the groundwork for imagining new feminist solidarities across religions, castes, races, and classes. |