CASTE, RACE AND THE POLITICS OF COMPARISON

Abstract

This seminar explores the comparison between caste and race, a topic of increasing scholarly interest. The concept of “caste” is often used to shift focus away from biological ideas of race, emphasizing instead systemic, inherited forms of inequality defined by endogamy, separation, and immobility. Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste popularized this approach, linking India, the U.S., and Nazi Germany as caste-based societies. However, such comparisons raise complex questions: does politicizing race risk oversimplifying caste, and vice versa? Can we ignore their differing historical origins—one predating states and capitalism, the other emerging through them?

The seminar examines key historical moments where caste and race have been compared: from early modern ideas of casta/raza, to connections between abolitionism and critiques of Brahminism, to debates at the UN, and late 20th-century activism. Comparison has been used in different spheres—political activism, policy-making in democracies, and academic research—to explain and challenge social hierarchies. Yet comparisons also carry risks of distortion. The seminar encourages critical reflection on the usefulness and limitations of comparing systems of inequality, focusing on debates in history, anthropology, and the growing field of critical caste studies.