{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,4]],"date-time":"2026-09-04T05:15:20Z","timestamp":1788498920005,"version":"build-2803163510"},"reference-count":34,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,4]],"date-time":"2026-09-04T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1788480000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Sociol."],"abstract":"<jats:p>\n                    Colonial power in South Asia operated not only through territorial administration but also through the systematic codification of indigenous societies into Western epistemic categories. This article investigates the historiographical construction of the Nair community in Kerala, South India, specifically focusing on the matrilineal institutions of\n                    <jats:italic>marumakkathayam<\/jats:italic>\n                    and\n                    <jats:italic>sambandham<\/jats:italic>\n                    . Situating the study within debates on colonial epistemology and postcolonial theory, the article analyses how ethnographic and historical narratives emplot Nair social institutions within Eurocentric interpretive frameworks. Drawing on Boaventura de Sousa Santos\u2019s concept of epistemicide, Bernard Cohn\u2019s theorisation of colonial forms of knowledge and Edward Said\u2019s method of contrapuntal reading, the article traces how imperial discourse framed indigenous social practices into reductive binaries of \u201coppressor\u201d and \u201coppressed\u201d. The study advances debates in decolonial historiography by exposing the narrative structures through which colonial knowledge systems produced and perpetuated epistemicide. This contributes to the ongoing efforts to decolonize the study of South Asian communities.\n                  <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3389\/fsoc.2026.1907593","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,4]],"date-time":"2026-09-04T04:24:35Z","timestamp":1788495875000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Epistemicide and colonial knowledge: a contrapuntal reading of Nair historiography in South India"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"11","author":[{"given":"S.","family":"Anandhu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of English and Cultural Studies, CHRIST (Deemed to be University)","place":["Bangalore, India"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"C. V.","family":"Anupama Nayar","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of English and Cultural Studies, CHRIST (Deemed to be University)","place":["Bangalore, India"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"A. S.","family":"Aneesh","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Commerce, Kerala University","place":["Trivandrum, India"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,4]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref1","first-page":"911","article-title":"Hegel\u2019s master-slave dialectic in the Antilles: the case of Jean-Jacques Dessalines","volume":"105","author":"Aching","year":"2006","journal-title":"South Atl. 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