Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Brahmin, Muslim, Militant, Migrant, Dalit, & Dance

This book unmasks the cultural and gender stereotypes that inform the legal regulation of the migrant. It critiques the postcolonial perspective on how belonging and non-belonging are determined by the sexual, cultural, and familial norms on which law is based as well as the historical backdrop of the colonial encounter, which differentiated overtly between the legitimate and illegitimate subject.
The complexities and layering of the migrant’s existence are seen, in the book, to be obscured by the apparatus of the law. The author elaborates on how law can both advance and impede the rights of the migrant subject and how legal interventions are constructed around frameworks rooted in the boundaries of difference, protection of the sovereignty of the nation-state, and the myth of the all-embracing liberal subject. This produces the ‘Other’ and reinforces essentialised assumptions about gender and cultural difference.
The author foregrounds the perspective of the subaltern migrant subject, exposing the deeper issues implicated in the debates over migration and the rights claims of migrants, primarily in the context of women and religious minorities in India. About the Author
Ratna Kapur is Director, Centre for Feminist Legal Research, New Delhi and Faculty, Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Geneva. Erotic Justice: Law and the New Politics of Postcolonialism by Ratna Kapur (Feb 3, 2005), Secularism's Last Sigh?: Hindutva and the (Mis) Rule of Law by Brenda Cossman and Ratna Kapur (May 16, 2002)
Indian Political Thought: A Reader by Aakash Singh and Silika Mohapatra (Aug 17, 2010)
The Gender Imperative: Human Security Vs State Security by Asha Hans and Betty A. Reardon (Jul 26, 2010)
Democracy, Development and Decentralisation in India: Continuing Debates by Chandan Sengupta and Stuart Corbridge (Jul 21, 2010)
Grounding Morality: Freedom, Knowledge and the Plurality of Cultures by Jyotirmaya Sharma and A. Raghuramaraju (Jul 21, 2010)
Subaltern Citizens and their Histories by Gyanendra Pandey (Jun 7, 2010)
Multi-stories: Cross-cultural Encounters by Kalpana Sahni (May 26, 2010)
A History of India by Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund (May 24, 2010)
India's Partition by D. N. Panigrahi (Apr 19, 2010)
Ritual Matters: Dynamic Dimensions in Practice by Ute Husken and Christiane Brosius(Apr 14, 2010)
India's Princely States by Waltraud Ernst (Apr 6, 2010)
Dance Matters: Performing India on Local and Global Stages by Pallabi Chakravorty and Nilanjana Gupta (Feb 3, 2010)