Journal Of South Asian Studies Winter 2019

A forum for scholars engaged in the study of modern Islamic and non-Islamic societies in South Asia.

This book addresses the reasons why the contemporary far-right has gained political resonance in a variety of states across both the Global North and South. The rise of far-right forms of politics in recent years throughout a range of geopolitical locales suggests the emergence of a distinct conjuncture in world politics, indicating a common set of enabling conditions and characteristics. It is this unprecedented context in the history of the post-war liberal international order that this edited volume aims to address. In doing so, it brings together a diverse range of scholars, many of whom have developed an internationally recognized expertise in the study of the far-right and International Relations (IR). Reflecting a plurality of methodological and theoretical perspectives, the chapters cover a variety of theoretical and conceptual issues, including analyses of different geopolitical and national expressions of the contemporary far-right. Notwithstanding such diversity, the primary analytical focus of the book is to situate and explain the far-right as a distinct part of the history of modern international relations especially with respect to the development of and crises within the contemporary international order. From this perspective, the contributions combine to demonstrate the deeply embedded symptoms of far-right politics centred on racialized imaginaries across the globe and re-produced within the sinews of an evolving liberal international order even as the far-right also represents an antagonism to some elements of said order. Providing a much-needed global perspective, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of populism, far-right politics, conservatism and international relations. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Globalizations and are accompanied by a new epilogue.

This volume explores existing and emerging sexual cultures of contemporary India and the predicaments faced by abjected and sexual marginalities. It traces the sexual politics within popular culture, literary genres, advertisement, consumerism, globalizing cities, social movements, law, scientific research, the Hijra community life, (alternative) families and kinship and sites that define the cultural other whose sexual practices or identities fall beyond normative moral conventions. The chapters examine a range of connected sociological and political issues including questions of agency, judgments around intimate sexual relationships, the role of the state, popular understandings of adolescent romance, notion of legitimacy and stigma, moral policing and resistance, body politics and marginality, representations in popular and folk culture, sexual violence and freedom, problems with historiography, structural inequalities, queer erotica, gay consumerism, Hijra suicides and marriage and divorce. The volume also proposes certain transformative possibilities towards envisioning and (re)scripting sexual equalities. This interdisciplinary book will be important for those interested in sexuality studies, queer studies, gender studies, cultural studies, sociology, law, history, literature and Global South studies as well as policymakers, civil society activists and nongovernmental organizations working in the area.

Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century takes a close look at the ways that Muslims from West Africa to Southeast Asia engage with and navigate Islamic law and other relevant norms during times of marital breakdown in light of twenty-first century challenges and development.