ABSTRACT Title of Document: PLACE AND CASTE IDENTIFICATION: DISTANCIATION AND SPATIAL IMAGINARIES ON A CASTE-BASED SOCIAL NETWORK. Jillet Sarah Sam, Doctor of Philosophy, 2014 Directed By: Professor George Ritzer, Sociology This thesis studies the potency of place in mobilizing social categories, and its implications for both social categories and places. I use the theory of distanciation to study associations between caste identity and place. I conducted an ethnographic study of a caste-based digital group, the Cyber Thiyyars of Malabar, to understand the connections and disconnections between the Thiyya caste and Malabar from the perspectives of different sets of actors involved in the identification of caste, namely the nation-state and members of this caste-based network. The nation-state knows the Thiyya caste in a manner that is disconnected from Malabar, while the Cyber Thiyyars of Malabar seek to re-emphasize the identification of this caste through the region. Participant observation and in-depth interviews indicate that through references to Malabar, the group seeks to establish a Thiyya caste identity that is distinct from the Ezhavas, a caste group within which the nation-state subsumes them. I demonstrate that references to Malabar serve to counter the stigma that the Cyber Thiyyars of Malabar experience when the spatially abstract categorization of the Thiyyas interacts with notions of caste inferiority/superiority. Further, it serves as a mobilizational tool through which they hope to negotiate with the nation-state for greater access to affirmative action. I also demonstrate that caste identification continues to be relevant to the production of place. Place-based identification of the Thiyyas influences the manner in which the group envisions the physical boundaries of Malabar and how other social groups can belong to this region. Based on this analysis, I argue that framework of distanciation should incorporate not only the experience of place and social relations, but also how they are known and represented. This dissertation establishes that even though social categories such as caste and place are not conventionally understood to be connected to each other, it is important to study the associations between them. Although the new media and globalization may prompt to us to think that place does not matter anymore, I establish that this caste group uses the language of place to organize and mobilize itself on a stronger basis in precisely this context. PLACE AND CASTE IDENTIFICATION: DISTANCIATION AND SPATIAL IMAGINARIES ON A CASTE-BASED SOCIAL NETWORK By Jillet Sarah Sam Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2014 Advisory Committee: Professor George Ritzer, Chair Professor Patricia Hill Collins Professor Patricio Korzeniewicz Associate Professor Ashwini Tambe Assisstant Professor Sahar Khamis © Copyright by Jillet Sarah Sam 2014 Dedication To my family. ii Acknowledgements The Cyber Thiyyars of Malabar have made this project possible by generously sharing their time and experiences with me in true Malabari fashion. I would like to thank my advisor, George Ritzer, for his unending patience over the past six years. George has been an irreplaceable sounding board for this project, encouraging me to engage with theory creatively while simultaneously reviewing my ideas with a much needed critical eye. I would also like to thank Patricia Hill Collins for making me believe again in my ability to do theoretical work, and for providing incisive feedback for this project. To Patricio Korzeniewicz I owe my appreciation for historical sociology, and key advances in the methodology and critical emphasis in this project. Many thanks also to Ashwini Tambe, for nurture that went far beyond her formal role, and for discussions on shifts in Kerala politics and extrapolation in the context of caste groups. I’d also like to thank Sahar Khamis for her extensive feedback on new media and methodology which substantially enriched this project. The contributions of professors who intiated me into sociology at University of Hyderabad are evident in this project: Aparna Rayaprol has been a patient mentor and introduced me to diaspora studies; Vinod K Jairath and Sasheej Hegde intiated me into the critical analysis of Modernity in very different but equally fascinating ways. Thanks are also due to P Thirumal, Usha Raman and E Sathyaprakash for feedback on my early ideas about the distanciation of caste relations. Janaki Abraham’s timely comments on the Thiyyas prompted me to take a step back from the tangles of fieldwork and consider the output in a much more critical manner. iii A big shout out to the unsung readers of my nameless working group - Margaret Austin Smith, Beverly M Pratt and Joseph Waggle - who provided feedback on various portions of this thesis with patience and care. The Prosumption Working Group at UMCP helped to clarify my own approach to the study of the new media. I am also grateful to Aleia Clark and Dr Valerie Chepp for comments, particularly on identity, that helped me move forward at the proposal stage. Special thanks also to the original sex bomb, Manjusha Kuruppath, for prompt assistance on the history of medieval Malabar. Finally, thanks to Jagadish, for tough love and illustrating the Consequences of Modernity. I owe my sanity to friends who made this a hell of a ride through a mixture of inspiration, support and laughter: Tejaswini Madabhushi, Kathryn Yoo- Chon, Sean Fackler, Priya Raghavan, Alex Thomas, Rakesh “Rocky” Sengupta, Anwesha Chakraborty, Mahfuza Sharmin, Lingjing Yang, Kriti Vikram, Sumit Kumar, Prasanth Radhakrishnan, Neeraja Sundaram, Daniel Swann, Lester Andrist, Nitin Dua, Neha Dua, Kathryn Buford and Bill Yagatich. My immeasurable gratitude to my parents, Sam Mathew and Sosamma Sam, whose unshakeable faith in me made it possible to move on when times were tough. I am grateful most of all, for my younger sister, Vishishta Sam: You are The Rock in my life, and a funny one at that (sorry Dwayne Johnson)! iv Table of Contents Dedication ..................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents .......................................................................................................... v List of Tables .............................................................................................................. vii Chapter 1: Empirical Background and Statement of the Problem ................................ 1 Introduction: Knowing Caste through Place ............................................................. 1 Caste as a System .................................................................................................... 10 Identification of Caste and the State in the Colonial and Postcolonial Eras ........... 14 Caste-based use of the New Media ......................................................................... 21 The Cyber Thiyyars of Malabar .............................................................................. 24 Malabar and the Thiyyas ......................................................................................... 30 Chapter 2: Review of Literatures ................................................................................ 50 Social Geography, Place, Study of Place ................................................................ 51 Social Geography: Why study Place in Sociology? ........................................... 51 Connecting Space and Place: From Space to Place and Back? .......................... 54 How to Study Place ............................................................................................. 56 Digital Production of Place ................................................................................. 60 Identity .................................................................................................................... 62 Identity as Cultural Identification ....................................................................... 62 Identity and Identification through the New Media ............................................ 68 Place and Identity: Sense of Place vs Spatial Imaginaries ...................................... 69 Sense of Place ..................................................................................................... 70 Spatial Imaginary ................................................................................................ 74 Distanciation: Locating Place and Caste Identity ................................................... 78 Caste ........................................................................................................................ 91 Studying Caste as Identity and Identification ..................................................... 92 Embeddedness of Caste Identity in Spatial Contexts ......................................... 96 Disembedding of Caste Identity from Spatial Contexts ..................................... 98 Hypothesis and Empirical Questions .................................................................... 105 Hypothesis and sub-hypothesis ......................................................................... 105 Empirical Questions .........................................................................................