The study of South Asian society has been dominated by the concept of communities and households made up of biologically and emotionally connected relatives. This book shows that this apparent bedrock is unstable, and theorizations based upon it are blind to the continual flow of slaves across the supposedly impermeable barriers of descent, caste, and community. With the aid of evidence drawn mainly from the ruling households of eastern India in the late 18th and 19th centuries, this book illustrates how slaves contributed to the constitution of the family and to kinship. In the process, the book argues that colonial legislators left these domestic slaves out of abolitionist agendas, while simultaneously erecting standards of legitimacy, proofs of marriage and purity of descent that eroded the position of slave-born in pre-colonial status systems.
- ISBN10 0195659066
- ISBN13 9780195659061
- Publish Date 10 January 2002 (first published 1 December 1998)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 26 June 2010
- Publish Country IN
- Imprint OUP India
- Edition New edition
- Format Paperback
- Pages 298
- Language English