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We cannot write the history of colonial India without centrally engaging with the history of the middle class. However, as the essays in this volume reveal, there is at once a plenitude of historiography on their activities in modern India and a paradoxical paucity in studies on becoming and being middle class. Bringing together, these dual aspects, the collection explores the emergence and dynamics of the development of this class.
Organized in four sections, The Middle Class in Colonial India presents a comprehensive view of the subject. It delineates the indicators and distinctive characteristics of the middle class. The attempts at self-representation, historiographical shifts, and questions of authenticity of the class form a part of the discussions of the theme in the second section of ‘Framing the Middle Class’.
This collection brings together the debates on the subject including critiques of the representations and features of the middle class as well as recent postcolonial approaches—their expositions and limitations—to studies in this field. Surveying gender, caste, and religion in the making of the middle class modernity, the collection breaks many stereotypes about the ideals, policies, and discursive constructs pertaining to the middle class. In this instance, some other chapters in the volume, discovering new terrains such as cricket and cinema, point to the areas where middle class studies are headed in the future.
Investigating the many views of the constituent characteristics of the making of and being middle class, the introduction highlights all the nuances attached with providing a definition. Joshi stitches together the evolving self-perceptions and critiques of the colonial middle class to make the subject comprehensible to all.
ISBN - 9780198063827
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