Filippo Osella

Social mobility in Kerala : modernity and identity in conflict

Acknowledgements Preface 1. Introduction 2. Working for Progress 3. Marriage and Mobility 4. Consumption: Promises of Escape 5. Religion as a Tool for Mobility 6. Mobility and Power 7. Micropolitics, or the Political in the Personal 8. Conclusions Glossary Notes Bibliography Index

Migration, modernity and social transformation in South Asia: An overview

Human movement - and how it should be controlled - has become a major political issue in recent years. This volume reopens discussions on movement both within rural areas, and between villages, towns and cities - aspects and types of migration on which contemporary anthropology and sociology are largely silent - in South Asia. The book demonstrates how economic considerations apart, migrations are `projects of transformation’, in which migrants forge new identities and challenge the existing order.

Articulation of physical and social bodies in Kerala

This paper uses ethnography from Kerala to examine the concept of sneham, simultaneously an oily bodily fluid and the quality of nurturant affection. Sneham, which flows and circulates within and between persons in intimate moral relations, is the joint lubricant essential to the health of both physical and social bodies. Connections between snehams two meanings are traced, and snehams role in the foundation of a powerful metaphor—patronlemployer as father— is examined, drawing upon two domains of ethnography:—popular knowledge about bodily health and physical characteristics; and gift exchanges within the family and between landowners and labourers.

Rule by records : land registration and village custom in early British Panjab

When the British took the Panjab in the 1840s their first act was to establish landholding registers in every village, through a system of village records and district reports. Rule by Records examines the formation of this dual system in a particular locality and reconstructs the nature of agrarian relations for the period immediately before British rule, demonstrating the way in which registration transformed what it was intended to preserve. The result challenges established concepts and procedures in both history and sociology.

Indian Punjabi skilled migrants in Britain: of brain drain and under‐employment

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the careers of skilled migrants from Indian Punjab. This study complicates the normalization of skilled migration as a “win‐win” situation by examining the career trajectories of skilled migrants from the Indian Punjab who are trying to establish themselves in Britain.Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines 20 life history interviews undertaken with skilled migrants from the Indian Punjab to Britain, in IT, media, law and hospitality industries, health and welfare professionals, and student migrants.Findings – Skilled migrants were able to migrate on their own auspices through migration economies in Punjab. Once in Britain, however, they were directed to universities and labour markets in which they were not able to use their skills. They experienced under‐employment, devaluation of their qualifications and downward mobility, which forced them into ethnic and gendered markets within their home networks and created ambivalence about migrant success...

Food, Memory, Community: Kerala as both 'Indian Ocean' Zone and as Agricultural Homeland

The Kerala region in India can be said as an exceptional state especially when one tries to understand the stereotypical assumption of South Indian food. People in the Kerala region are non-vegetarian as they eat rice and fish. Keralas openness to outside influences such as new foods and new people, is notable and quite different from mainstream South Indian patterns, which tend towards conservatism, closure and valorization of the familiar and the local. Meanwhile, there are certain items associated strongly with a community identity and are the very food items which are the ones people seem most attached to. They are the foods that evoke food memory, which comfort and provoke desire and appetite, which are the subject of nostalgic longing. They are the distinctive festive community-identified foods which are the most highly-appreciated in open discourse and discussion about meals.

Malabar Secrets: South Indian Muslim Men's (Homo)sociality across the Indian Ocean

Abstract This article is concerned with transformations in forms of male sociality and same-sex intimacy among Muslim men from Kozhikode (formerly known as Calicut) in Kerala, South India. I focus in particular on the way in which the globalisation of capital and labour markets – in particular, long-term migration to the Gulf countries of West Asia, a predominantly male affair – has produced novel forms and spaces of homosociality. By highlighting long-term religious and trade connections between Kozhikode and the Arabian Peninsula, the article problematises hegemonic representations of masculinities and same-sex relations in India as an expression of a specifically “Indian culture” and provides a more nuanced understanding of the effects of the disciplining power of heteronormativity associated with Indian modernity.

Migration, Transnationalism, and Ambivalence: The Punjab–United Kingdom Linkage

This chapter investigates developments in the Punjab–UK transnational space, a long-standing and extensive migration corridor. Within India’s diverse migration history, Punjab’s specificity is its particular historical connection with the UK, despite criss-crossing colonial and postcolonial migrations across the globe. We juxtapose field research in the UK and Punjab and show that transnationalism appears and works differently when viewed from either location—highlighting the differentially empowered nature of transnational space, as well as irresolvable ambivalences that are worked into transnational relationships. We reconsider the transnationalism paradigm through five interrelated arguments. We demonstrate the complexity of transnational space, which exceeds the binary sending–receiving country relationship that characterizes the literature. We find that transnationalism is not merely produced “from below” by the activities of migrants and diaspora, but is orchestrated and formalized by various arms of the Indian and British states. Moreover, illicit flows of people are also produced by the governance of migration. Transnational connectivity does not diminish individuals’ desire for a single, solid citizenship and nationality beyond the pragmatism attached with citizenship. Finally, we argue for historicizing of transnational networks and appreciation of the social relations of gender, generation, class, and caste by which they are cleaved.

Migration, Neoliberal Capitalism, and Islamic Reform in Kozhikode (Calicut), South India

This article explores relationships between religious and economic practices in Kozhikode, a medium-sized city in Kerala. We examine debates concerning the apparent decline of the “bazaar economy” in the face of the onslaught of globalization and the consequent emergence of a “new economy.” The latter is felt locally to be overdetermined by capital and entrepreneurial practices connected, either directly or indirectly, to the combined effects of migration to the Gulf countries of West Asia and to the post-1991 liberalization of the Indian economy. We argue that these public debates are not simply reflections on the harsh reality of economic rationalization, but underscore the production and articulation of specific economies of morality and affect. We also perceive a drawing together of seemingly divergent orientations, sensibilities, and practices—namely, those commonly associated with reformist Islam and what in recent literature has been described as “neoliberal global capitalism.”