Books & ideas

The Urban Condition of Muslims in India

Jules Naudet — 2025-09-12T09:03:01Z

According to Thomas Blom Hansen, Indian cities have become spaces of exclusion, fear, and sharpened enmity. He describes how Muslims are victims of an entanglement of communal violence, state complicity, and systemic discrimination.

Castes and State in India

Jules Naudet — 2024-04-19T07:30:00Z

Quotas in India contribute to the emancipation of lower castes while producing perverse effects that are difficult to control. Rohini Somanathan questions the right balance between targeted positive discrimination policies and public policies with a universal vocation.

The Empowering King of Bollywood

Hugo Ribadeau-Dumas — 2022-02-14T08:30:00Z

Shah Rukh Khan, one of the most celebrated Bollywood actors, has contributed to shape the sense of respect, intimacy, and independence of generations of Indian women across boundaries of caste, class and religion. Adoring a film star could actually prove to be an empowering experience.

Basic Urban Services in India: a Paradoxical Bricolage

Hugo Ribadeau-Dumas — 2021-03-15T08:00:00Z

Why is India still unable to efficiently supply basic services to all urban dwellers? When the public authorities concentrate large projects in megalopolises, small towns improvise heterogeneous solutions, thereby reinforcing segregation.

The Unmaking of Caste

Tabea Schroer — 2020-12-14T08:00:00Z

Meritocracy claims that educational titles are vested on the basis of achievement and not inherited ascription. Examining an Indian elite education institution, Ajantha Subramanian shows how upper castes use this discourse to make their caste privilege invisible. The processes of the social (un) making of caste then serve the reproduction of inequality

Discrimination Against Japan's Burakumin Community

Caroline Taïeb — 2020-01-09T08:00:00Z

Discrimination against the Burakumin people has infiltrated Japanese society for centuries and still exists today, proving particularly difficult to stamp out as the ways in which members of this minority group are marginalised change from one era to the next.

In the Land of Vegetarians

Mathieu Ferry — 2018-07-05T07:00:00Z

In India, the ban on meat-based diets is still linked to an obligation of ritual purity for high castes – but not solely. As the geographer Michaël Bruckert explains, in modern-day India the consumption of meat structures the social, cultural and economic space of the sub-continent.

Why Hasn't Caste Disappeared Yet?

Anuj Bhuwania — 2016-06-02T07:30:15Z

Surinder Jodhka brings new perspectives to the scholarship on caste and helps understand how this social institution has evolved and transformed itself in modernizing India. By empirically looking at the lived reality of caste, he reveals to what extent it is a constitutive element of everyday politics.

Muslim Castes in India

Rémy Delage — 2014-09-29T08:00:00Z

The key notion of caste often goes beyond the strict framework of Hinduism, in which it originated, to influence the social structures of other religious groups. Rémy Delage shows us the extent to which caste categories are important for understanding the social organization of Muslims in the region.

Dharavi

Juliette Galonnier — 2014-01-23T08:00:00Z

Located in the heart of Bombay, the mega-slum of Dharavi is one of the largest in Asia. In a book combining various approaches, Saglio-Yatzimirsky analyzes the way Dharavi functions both spatially and economically, focusing on an unexpected paradox: characterized by an informal economy, this mega-slum is however well-connected to the national and international economic circuits.