Zoya Hasan & Aziz Z. Huq 
Empire of Disgust [EPUB ebook] 
Prejudice, Discrimination, and Policy in India and the US

All known societies exclude one or more minority groups, frequently employing a rhetoric of disgust to justify stigmatization. For instance, in European anti-Semitism, Jews were considered hyper-physical and crafty; some upper-caste Hindus find the lower castes dirty and untouchable; and people with physical disabilities have been considered subhuman and repulsive. Exclusions vary in their scope and also in the specific disgust-ideologies underlying them. In The Empire of Disgust, scholars present an interdisciplinary and comparative study of varieties of stigma and prejudice in India and USA-along the axes of caste, race, gender identity, age, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, religion, and economic class-pervading contemporary social and political life. In examining these forms of stigma and their intersections, the contributors present theoretically pluralistic and empirically sensitive accounts that explain group-based stigma and suggest forward-looking remedies, including group resistance to subordination as well as institutional and legal change, equipped to eliminate stigma in its multifaceted forms.