Everyday Life in South Asia

This vivid anthology focuses on the daily lives and experiences of people living in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Firsthand ethnographic accounts portray the ways ordinary people live and make their worlds through growing up and ageing, arranging marriages, exploring sexuality, going to school, negotiating caste hierarchies, practising religion, participating in popular culture, enduring violence as nations are built, and moving abroad to make new lives. Drawing from anthropology, history, religious studies, and other fields, scholars from South Asia, the United States, and the United Kingdom present the diversity of life situations and perspectives in contemporary South Asia. Essays are organised around six themes: the family and the life course; genders; practising religion; social distinctions of caste and class; nation-making; and globalisation, public culture and the South Asian diaspora.The selections portray peasant girls in rural Rajasthan and advertising industry executives in Mumbai; "untouchable" sharecroppers and high-caste landlords; intimate, multi-generational families and street youth involved in "modern" gangs and drugs; South Asian American children of high-powered professionals, and refugees from violence who have fled abroad only in desperation. The essays on gender move from women in traditional arranged marriages, to women who forego marriage as professional actresses, to men in same-sex relationships, to transgendered hijras. The variety of religions of South Asia are portrayed with essays on Hindu deities and festivals, Muslim story-tellers and singers, Buddhist nuns in remote Kashmir, and a Yolmo shamanic healer. This accessible and engaging book provides an introduction to the region that will appeal to students, specialists, and all readers interested in South Asian culture and social life.