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.

Contents: Introduction. 1. The Dalit Body: A Reading for the Anthropocene/Dipesh Chakrabarty. 2. Stigma or Red Tape? Roadblocks in the Use of Affirmative Action/Ashwini Deshpande. 3. Of Big Black Bucks and Golden-Haired Little Girls: How Fear of Interracial Sex Informed Brown v. Board of Education and Its Resistance/Justin Driver. 4. Four Types of Racism/Emilio Comay del Junco. 5. A Social Location Theory of Gender: How Gender Borders Create the Category ‘Woman’/Emily Dupree. 6. Gender and Anti-Discrimination Laws in India: Modesty, Honour and Defiled Bodies/Vidhu Verma. . Regulating Retirement and Wrinkles in an Age of Prejudice/Saul Levmore. 8. Ageing, Stigma and Disgust/Martha C. Nussbaum. 9. Disgust or Equality? Sexual Orientation and Indian Law/Martha C. Nussbaum.10. The Rule of Disgust? Contemporary Transgender Rights Discourse in India/Jeffrey A. Redding. 11. Combatting Exclusions through Law: Rights of Transgender People in India/H.R. Vasujith Ram. 12. Disability, Exclusions, and Resistance: An Indian Context/Anita Ghai. 13. Processes of Shaming: The Limits of Disability Policy in India/Nandini Ghosh. 14. What is the Case Against Muslims?/Aziz Z. Huq. 15. Muslims and the Politics of Discrimination in India/Zoya Hasan.16. Class and Classification: The Role of Disgust in Regulating Social Status/Laura Weinrib. 17. The Point of Discrimination Law: Securing the Freedom to Flourish/Tarunabh Khaitan.18. Economic Theories of Discrimination: The Positive and the Normative/Richard H. McAdams. Index.