South Asian universities – as is the case with universities all around Asia and beyond – are characterized by an increasing heterogeneity of students on the one hand, and by disparities in resources shaping the pathways to and pathways through academia, on the other. Students’ experiences in India and Nepal are significantly molded by caste, class, gender, race, ethnicity, and other differentiating markers that are decisive for their sense of (non-)/belonging and the modalities of inclusion and exclusion. Caste, class, gender, and other disparities affect significantly how constellations within university social spaces contribute to, or counter-balance, students’ disparities in life-chances. How such complexities are experienced and how they shape the socio-spatial constellations inside and outside of university ‘classrooms’ can only be captured by grasping how embodied, emotional, and sensorial knowledge shapes students’ experiences of (non-)belonging.
AlatasF (2006) Alternative Discourses in Asian Social Science: Responses to Eurocentrism. New Delhi, India: Sage.
2.
AlatasFSinhaV (2017) Sociological Theory beyond the Canon. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
3.
AnandNGuptaAAppelH (2018) The Promise of Infrastructure. Durham, NC; London: Duke University Press.
4.
BhambraGK (2014) A sociological dilemma: Race, segregation and US sociology. Current Sociology62(4): 472–492.
5.
BourdieuP (1974) Zur Soziologie der symbolischen Formen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
6.
BourdieuP (1987) Sozialer Sinn: Kritik der theoretischen Vernunft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
7.
BourdieuP (1988) Homo Academicus. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.
8.
CameronL (2022) Indigenous e cological k nowledge s ystems: Exploring s ensory narratives. Ecological Management and Restoration23(1): 27–32.
9.
DerridaJ (1998) Monolingualism of the Other; or the Prosthesis of Origin. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.
10.
DeshpandeS (2006) Exclusive inequalities: Merit, caste and discrimination in Indian higher education today. Economic and Political Weekly41(24): 2438–2444.
11.
DeshpandeS (2009) Inclusion versus excellence: Caste and the framing of fair access in Indian higher education. South African Review of Sociology40(1): 127–147.
12.
DeshpandeS (2023) Higher education and the future of social inequality in India. In: AwayaTTomozawaK (eds) Inclusive Development in South Asia. Routledge New Horizons in South Asian Studies. London; New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, pp.185–214.
13.
DeshpandeSZachariasU (eds) (2013) Beyond Inclusion: The Practice of Equal Access in Indian Higher Education. New Delhi, India; Abingdon: Routledge.
14.
DhawanNBBelluigiDZIdahosaGE, et al. (2023) ‘There is a hell and heaven difference among faculties who are from quota and those who are non-quota’: Under the veneer of the ‘New Middle Class’ production of Indian public universities. Higher Education86: 271–296.
15.
GaralytėK (2023) Imagining an anti-caste utopia through food. CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion4(2): 230–252.
16.
GeethaVUma Chakravarti (2024) Dalit studies as pedagogical practice: Claiming more than just a ‘Little Place’ in the academia. In: GeethaVUma Chakravarti (eds) Dalit Counter-Publics and the Classroom. New Delhi, India: Routledge, pp.67–99.
17.
GuruG (2002) How egalitarian are the social sciences in India?Economic and Political Weekly37(50): 5003–5009.
18.
GuruGSarukkaiS (2019) Sensing the social. In: GuruGSarukkaiS (eds) Experience, Caste and the Everyday Social, 1st edn. New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, pp.46–85.
19.
HasanSBagdeS (2013) The mechanics of social capital and academic performance in an Indian college. American Sociological Review78(6): 1009–1032.
20.
IversonSV (2012) Constructing outsiders: The discursive framing of access in university diversity policies. The Review of Higher Education35(2): 149–177.
21.
JeffreyC (2008) Kicking away the ladder: Student politics and the making of an Indian middle class. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space26(3): 517–536.
22.
KanagasabaiN (2023) Forever fields: Studying knowledge practices in the global North: A view from the global South. Gender and Development31(2–3): 399–416.
23.
KapoorS (2022) The smells of caste – body, self and politics. In: Di StefanoNRussoMT (eds) Olfaction: An Interdisciplinary Perspective from Philosophy to Life Sciences, vol. 4. Cham: Springer, pp.21–34.
24.
KölbelAPfaff-CzarneckaJThiemeS (eds) (2022) Universities as transformative social spaces. In: Mobilities and Mobilizations from South Asian Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
25.
KuhnTS (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
26.
KumarB (2023) Discrimination in Indian higher education: Everyday exclusion of the Dalit–Adivasi student. Contemporary Voice of Dalit15(1): 94–108.
27.
KumarV (2016) Discrimination on campuses of higher learning: A perspective from below. Economic and Political Weekly51(6): 12–15.
28.
LamontMMolnárV (2002) ‘The Study of boundaries in the Social Sciences’. Annual Review of Sociology28: 167–195.
29.
LatourB (2004) ‘How to talk about the body? The normative dimension of science studies’. Body and Society10(2/3): 205–229.
30.
LeeJ (2017) Odor and order. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East37(3): 470–490.
31.
LowK (2023) Sensory Anthropology: Culture and Experience in Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
32.
MasscheleinJBerghmansMSimonsM (2022) Atmospheres of university education: Courses and forces. In: TimI (ed) Knowing from the Inside: Cross-Disciplinary Experiments with Matters of Pedagogy. London: Bloomsbury, pp.241–262.
33.
MosseD (2010) A relational approach to durable poverty, inequality and power. The Journal of Development Studies46(7): 1156–1178.
34.
PathaniaGJJadhavSThoratA, et al. (2023) Caste identities and structures of threats. stigma, prejudice, and social representation in Indian universities. CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion4(1): 3–23.
35.
PathaniaGJ (2016) Food politics and counter-hegemonic assertion in Indian university campuses. South Asia Research36(2): 261–277.
36.
Pfaff-CzarneckaJ (2018) Education sentimentale in migrant students’ university trajectories: Family, and other significant relations. In: Röttger-RösslerBSlabyJ (eds) Affect in Relation. London: Routledge, pp.50–71.
37.
Pfaff-CzarneckaJ (2019) Burdened futures: Educated Dalits’ quandaries in contemporary Nepal. Contributions to Nepalese Studies46(2): 195–227.
38.
Pfaff-CzarneckaJ (2023) Contesting class at the university sires: Dalits at Nepal’s universities-inequality, belonging, transformations. In: ValentinKPradhanU (eds) Anthropological Perspectives on Education in Nepal. Educational Transformations and Avenues of Learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.223–249.
39.
PradhanU (2023) (Re)constructing a ‘Good’ School: Materials, affects, and meanings of education in post-earthquake Nepal. In: ValentinKPradhanU (eds) Anthropological Perspectives on Education in Nepal. Educational Transformations and Avenues of Learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.251–276.
40.
PyakurelU (2011) A debate on dalits and affirmative action in Nepal. Economic and Political Weekly46(40): 71–78.
41.
RancièreJ (2004) The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. London: Mansell Publishing.
42.
RaoS (2012) Structural exclusion in everyday institutional life: Labelling of stigmatized groups in an IIT. In: NambissanGBRaoS (eds) Sociology of Education in India: Changing Contours and Emerging Concerns. New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, pp.199–223.
43.
RathodB (2023) Dalit Academic Journeys Stories of Caste, Exclusion and Assertion in Indian Higher Education. Abingdon; Oxon; New York: Routledge.
44.
RegeS (2010) Education as Trutiya Ratna: Towards Phule-Ambedkarite feminist pedagogical practice. In. Economic and Political Weekly45(44–45): 88–98.
45.
SaidEW (1993) Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage Books.
46.
SarukkaiS (2009) Phenomenology of untouchability. Economic and Political Weekly44(37): 39–48.
47.
SolgaH (2015) The social investment state and the myth of meritocracy. In: GallasAHerrHHofferFScherrerC (eds) Combatting I nequality: The G lobal North and South. London and New York: Routledge, pp.199–211.
48.
SubramanianA (2019) The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
49.
SukumarN (2008) Living a concept: Semiotics of everyday exclusion. Economic and Political Weekly43(46): 14–17.
50.
SukumarN (2023) Caste Discrimination and Exclusion in Indian Universities. A Critical Reflection, 1st edn. London; New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
51.
ThomasR (2020) Brahmins as scientists and science as brahman’s calling: Caste in an Indian scientific research institute’. Public Understanding of Science29(3): 306–318.
52.
VaghelaPJacksonSJSengersP (2022) Interrupting merit, subverting legibility: Navigating caste in ‘casteless’ worlds of computing. In: Conference on human factors in computing systems, New Orleans, LA, 29 April–5 May, 2022.
53.
VesterM (2009) Sortierung nach Herkunft: Harte und weiche Mechanismen sozialer Selektion im deutschen Bildungssystem. ZÖSS discussion paper, 16, Hamburg: Universität Hamburg, Fak. Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, FB Sozialökonomie, Zentrum für Ökonomische und Soziologische Studien (ZÖSS).
