Anthropology's Look at the Indian Middle Class
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A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details ‘The year that can break or make you’: The politics of secondary schooling, youth and class in urban Kerala, South India David Sancho Submitted for Doctor of Philosophy in Social Anthropology University of Sussex June 2012 iii University of Sussex David Sancho Submitted for Doctor of Philosophy in Social Anthropology ‘The year that can break or make you’: The politics of secondary schooling, youth and class in urban Kerala, South India Summary Education harbours some of the most pervasive contradictions in contemporary India. While it produces world famous human capital enhancing the country’s rising competitiveness as a global ‘knowledge economy’, millions of children still lack access to basic education. In Kerala, a state famous for the success of its educational achievements, the benefits of education that can be gained by those in the lower strata of society continue to be marginal regardless of policies of positive discrimination. Focusing on youth at the higher secondary school level (grades 11-12), ‘the primary bottleneck in the education system today’ (World Bank 2012), this thesis seeks to understand the social processes that go into making education a key resource to the (re)production of inequalities. Based upon a year’s ethnographic fieldwork in and around two schools in Ernakulam, South India, this thesis examines the ways in which two distinct groups of youth – one attending a top end private English medium school at the heart of a city and the other educated in an institution at the bottom of the schooling ladder – inhabit their final year of schooling and generate future projects and aspirations. I located their experiences at the intersection of the two educational sites par excellence: the school and the house. In the city, middle-class schooling and parental regimes attempt to orient youth’s lives towards the acquisition of multiple competences aimed at enhancing their individual prospects towards becoming competitive professionals, depicted as garnering maximum amounts of wealth and prestige in today’s globalised economy of paid employment and migration. At the fringes of middle-class urban life and the quest for professionalism, youth are becoming subject of an increasing ghettoisation: only the educationally, financially and socially poor are left to attend their school. In that stark scenario, education emerged as central to both youth performances of class, status and gender. They constructed and embodied identities based on education and more generally with ideas of competence. This creative work revealed an overtly hierarchical field formed of distinctive peer groups engaged in overt practices of exclusion and inclusion according to imagine futures: mostly elusive fantasies that reveal the youth marked by uncertainties in a time shaped by rising expectations and increasingly intricate and unequal paths leading to them. iv CONTENTS Map 1: India ...................................................................................................................................... vi Map 2: Kerala ................................................................................................................................... vii Map 3: Ernakulam District ........................................................................................................... viii Chapter 1: Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction................................................................................................................................... 2 Theorising Education and Schooled Youth ............................................................................. 6 Theorising Youth ........................................................................................................................ 13 Globalisation and Education .................................................................................................... 18 Becoming and Being Middle-class: A Layered Experience .................................................. 21 Anthropology’s Look at the Indian Middle Class .................................................................. 22 The Question of Commonalities .............................................................................................. 25 The Power of the Middle Class as Social Construct .............................................................. 28 Local Communities .................................................................................................................... 29 The Argument: The Multiple Dimensions of a Contradictory Resource ........................... 31 Research Methods ...................................................................................................................... 37 Summary of Chapters................................................................................................................. 42 Chapter 2: The Port-City, Education, and the Middle Class Idea ............................................ 44 Introduction................................................................................................................................. 45 Ernakulam and its Port .............................................................................................................. 46 Kothad .......................................................................................................................................... 54 Education and the Middle Classes in Kerala .......................................................................... 55 Schooling in Twentieth Century Kerala .................................................................................. 61 Resurgence of Self-financed Schools ....................................................................................... 64 Schooling in the Era of Liberalisation ..................................................................................... 65 Educational Landscape at Present: against break narratives ................................................ 68 Education for the Global Era ................................................................................................... 73 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 75 Chapter 3: ‘Schooling with a Difference’? ................................................................................... 77 Introduction................................................................................................................................. 78 All-rounders and Noble Indian Leaders .................................................................................. 80 Annual Day Celebration ............................................................................................................ 85 Making Noble Global Citizens ................................................................................................. 94 Class, Gender, English and the Quest for Marks .................................................................. 99 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 105 Chapter 4: Aspirational Regimes: Parental Discourses and Practices ................................... 108 Introduction............................................................................................................................... 109 Ethnographic Sketches ............................................................................................................ 110 Ernakulam Middle Classes ...................................................................................................... 115 The Choice of Education ........................................................................................................ 117 Entrance Coaching ................................................................................................................... 121 Student ‘failure’ ......................................................................................................................... 123 Career Choices .......................................................................................................................... 127 v Confidence and Uncertainty ................................................................................................... 130 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 132 Chapter 5: ‘Ego’, Morality and Sophistication: The Making and Remaking of Middle-class Subjectivities among Urban Youth in Kerala ............................................................................ 134 Introduction..............................................................................................................................