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Cited by 7Anthropological Studies and InsightsTourism, Volunteerism, and DevelopmentDecolonial Thought and Epistemologies

The Making of the “Brown Savior”: Race, Caste, Class, and India’s (Global) Help Economy

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Shankar, Arjun·2022·Current Anthropology
DOI 10.1086/720507
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Abstract

This article offers a theoretical excavation of the brown savior, a figure that has taken on a critical role in the newly reconstructed help industries in India. Brown saviors help us to think more critically about the global help industries, an area in which racializing processes have been relatively understudied despite the fact that, historically, nearly all help interventions have focused on previously colonized peoples. I suggest that the brown savior is a figure that reveals the contradictions in the contemporary help economy, which reproduces forms of racialized difference and hierarchy by conscripting new actors who can ascend to the role of savior and, therefore, continue the project of racial capitalist accumulation. I specifically place the category of “brown” in relation to “savior” in the Indian context to draw attention to how a particular class of savarna (dominant-caste) Hindus was historically constituted and actively reproduces colonial-era racialized values through twenty-first-century help economies tethered to their economic, political, and social capital in both India and the United States.

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Authors
Shankar, A.
Corresponding author
Shankar, Arjun
Venue
Current Anthropology
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Published
2022-08-01
Volume
63
Issue
4
Pages
431-453
ISSN
  • 0011-3204 (ISSN-L)
  • 1537-5382
DOI
10.1086/720507
OpenAlex
W4289688406
Cited by
7
References
92
Citations by year
2025: 3 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 2
FWCI
5.08
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by
Locations
  • Current Anthropology (publishedVersion)
  • GoeScholar The Publication Server of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Anthropology › Anthropological Studies and Insights
  • Social Sciences › Demography › Tourism, Volunteerism, and Development
  • Social Sciences › Anthropology › Decolonial Thought and Epistemologies
Keywords
racialization, racial capitalism, dominant caste, colonial legacy, racial hierarchy, India, United States

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