Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the South Indian city of Hyderabad, I look for evidence of middle-class embarrassment and notions of lower-class authenticity/cool and consider the implications of this material for Dumontian ideas of hierarchy in India.

Paper long abstract:

Much has been written about the centrality of moral discourses of 'respectability' to middle-classness, both in Euro-American contexts and India, where I conduct fieldwork. In Euro-American contexts there is also a growing interest in alternative class moralities - the embarrassment in the pronouncement of something as 'so middle-class', the critique of pretentiousness, and the championing of the authenticities of down-to-earth workers and (racialized) inner-city cool. Such alternative moralities are absent from the literature on class in India, however. It is often implied that India's middle classes are relatively unquestioning of their superiority and relatively unashamed of their privilege, in a manner redolent of Dumont's Homo Hierarchicus. In this paper, I look for evidence of middle-class embarrassment and notions of lower-class authenticity/cool in my ethnographic fieldwork with families in suburban Hyderabad, India, and consider the implication of this material for Dumontian ideas of hierarchy in India.