TY - BOOK
T1 - Nobody's people
T2 - Hierarchy as hope in a society of thieves
AU - Piliavsky, Anastasia
PY - 2020/11/24
Y1 - 2020/11/24
N2 - What if we could imagine hierarchy not as a social ill, but as a source of social creativity and hope? In Nobody's People, Anastasia Piliavsky takes us into the world of thieves, the Kanjars, in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Introducing us to wily policemen, quirky aristocrats, and resourceful goddesses, she shows that, locally, hierarchy is a potent normative idiom through which Kanjars imagine better lives and pursue social ambitions. A community once patronized secretly by aristocrats and now precariously in the service of farmers and the police, Kanjars try and fail repeatedly to find a way into hierarchic relations rather than out of them. In a world where to be is to belong, they are nobody's people, those who can be murdered with no moral restraint or remorse. Following Kanjars on their journey between death and hope, Piliavsky invites readers to see in hierarchy-not inequality-a viable ethical frame instead of an archaic system of subjugation. Doing so, she suggests, will help us understand not only rural Rajasthan, but also much of the world, including settings stridently committed to equality. Challenging egalo-normative commitments, Piliavsky asks scholars across the disciplines to consider hierarchy as a major intellectual resource.
AB - What if we could imagine hierarchy not as a social ill, but as a source of social creativity and hope? In Nobody's People, Anastasia Piliavsky takes us into the world of thieves, the Kanjars, in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Introducing us to wily policemen, quirky aristocrats, and resourceful goddesses, she shows that, locally, hierarchy is a potent normative idiom through which Kanjars imagine better lives and pursue social ambitions. A community once patronized secretly by aristocrats and now precariously in the service of farmers and the police, Kanjars try and fail repeatedly to find a way into hierarchic relations rather than out of them. In a world where to be is to belong, they are nobody's people, those who can be murdered with no moral restraint or remorse. Following Kanjars on their journey between death and hope, Piliavsky invites readers to see in hierarchy-not inequality-a viable ethical frame instead of an archaic system of subjugation. Doing so, she suggests, will help us understand not only rural Rajasthan, but also much of the world, including settings stridently committed to equality. Challenging egalo-normative commitments, Piliavsky asks scholars across the disciplines to consider hierarchy as a major intellectual resource.
KW - Hierarchy, Social
KW - Kanjars
KW - Rajasthan
KW - Patronage
KW - Egalitarianism
KW - inequality
KW - Anthropology
KW - India
KW - social theory
UR - https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=29338
M3 - Book
SN - 9781503604643
SN - 9781503614208
T3 - South Asia in Motion
BT - Nobody's people
PB - Stanford University Press
CY - Stanford
ER -
