Schoolchildren's Notions of Social Caste and Class: Storytelling as a Means of Mapping Experiences

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Abstract

This paper is based on an ethnographic study of a State-run girls only primary school situated in a slum in Delhi, India. Dalits (the oppressed social castes) comprised a substantial percentage of the slum and schoolchildren’s populations. The paper aims to present how the schoolchildren engaged in making-sense of social caste and class in an educational context. The data is drawn using focus-group discussions based on storytelling around autobiographical accounts of Dalit authors on their experiences of social caste in relation to social class in schools. The work is grounded in theories on politics of school knowledge, conceptual works on social caste and exclusion in the Indian context and storytelling as means of engaging with children.

Author

• Gunjan Sharma, Ambedkar University Delhi