Search

Schooling is not a benign process, rather the choice of schooling is often an opportunity for marginalised groups to creatively express particular sets of values in an attempt to gain distinction. Educational attainments carry the potential to open up a range of employment opportunities, but even if these options fail due to structural constraints, particular types of schooling are socially valued for the lifestyles, culture and values they inculcate. This paper, based on field research in Jharkhand, India, explores how people of different social categories make educational choices, focusing particularly on the gendered nature of both their aspirations and strategies for gaining distinction. The experience of state-run schooling is compared to private (including mission) education, both in the locality and at a distance, the latter often perceived to provide higher-quality English education by both parents and children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the combination of education and affirmative action in challenging historic inequalities faced by adivasis, or indigenous peo-ples, living in a remote region of Eastern India. We show how the com-bined effects of education and affirmative action can act as a 'contradictory resource'. On the one hand, policies of affirmative action are enabling young educated adivasis - the children of subsistence farm-ers and manual labourers - to benefit from the creation of new, rural state jobs. We show how without affirmative action, such jobs may well have been monopolised by a local elite of higher castes. On the other hand, we argue several conservative processes have accompanied these changes. First, the reserved jobs secured by adivasis are relatively badly paid and insecure. Second, these jobs have not enabled relative progress for adivasis vis-à-vis traditional elites who are moving out of rural areas and diversifying their livelihoods. Third, young educated adivasis have begun to emulate the norms, values and ways of life of the local elite. This 'culture of emulation' is fostering new inequalities between edu-cated adivasis and their poorer kin, who face increasing proletarianisa-tion. The contradictory resource, we argue, concerns not only inequalities in accessing certain jobs, but also the creation of new forms of differentiation among historically marginalised people. We conclude by setting these findings within the wider complex relations emerging between caste, ethnicity and class in contemporary India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]