Product Description: Indian society is often described as one with ‘unity in diversity’ and as a composite culture. Since independence, India has also been termed ‘democratic’ and ‘secular’. However, the discernible cracks that have appeared in recent years in these conceptualisations have led to contentious debates about the very nature of Indian society...read more

Product Description: This book is a collection of 12 essays on three interrelated themes of Nation, Civil Society and Social Movements organized in three parts each having four chapters.

With reference to Europe and South Asia.

Product Description: This volume presents the results of the most comprehensive study available on the formation of the Christian Clergy in India, in both the Protestant and Orthodox traditions. It is based on in-depth empirical data from seven constituent categories and includes a content analysis of theological curricula, syllabi and literature...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Most interpretations of ethnicity concentrate either on particular societies or on specific dimensions of "world society". This work takes quite a different approach, arguing for the importance of variations within societies as vital for understanding contemporary dilemmas of ethnicity. The author aims to develop a new analysis of the relation between the nation, on the one hand, and ethnicity and citizenship on the other. Oomen conceives of the nation as a product of the fusion of territory and language. He demonstrates that neither religion nor race alone determine national identities. As territory is seminal for a nation to emerge and exist, the dissociation between people and their "homeland" makes them an ethnie - in effect, a nation within a nation. Citizenship is conceptualized, both as a status to which nationals and ethnies ought to be entitled and as a set of obligations, a role they are expected to play. Analyses of three historical episodes - colonialism and European expansion, proletarian internationalism and the nationality policy of the socialist states, the nation-state and its project of cultural unity - are utilised to provide the empirical content of the argument. This book should be useful for second-year undergraduates and above in the areas of sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.

Product Description: Combining both Western and non-Western perspectives, Citizenship and National Identity deftly explores the major problems and issues involved in understanding the relationship between citizenship and national identity in a contemporary context...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: "The papers are marked by a high degree of intellectual perspicacity and help us to reformulate certain "alien" concepts to our indigenous needs.... Oommen gives us a competent analysis of the extant situation. His "reformulation" could act as the springboard of fresh political thinking to resolve the present crises...read more

Product Description: In this analysis of the problem of nation-building in India, Oommen asserts that most conflicts in India arise out of misplaced conceptual polarization which juxtapose nation and state, political nationalism and cultural nationalism, `Indianism' and `Localism'...read more