Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures

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Household Forms and Composition: South Asia
(1,805 words)

Modern scholars have defined the South Asian household as a co-residential and commensal unit. This scholarship has been fashioned by two different trends. Social historians, frustrated by finding that the records came from ruling households rather than from peasants or commoners, felt free to ignore them as unrepresentative. Only historians interested in state formation studied the ruling households of the region. Thus Blake (1979) studying the Mughal Empire (1526–1858) found it necessary to focus on the imperial h…

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Chatterjee, Indrani, “Household Forms and Composition: South Asia”, in: Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures, General Editor Suad Joseph. Consulted online on 19 March 2024 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1872-5309_ewic_EWICCOM_0090e>
First published online: 2009



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