Conclusion

Abstract

The final chapter concludes the monograph with a summary of its key findings followed by a consideration of their limitations as well as directions for future studies. In addition, there is a reflection on the methodology and epistemology of the research, and the author’s position regarding the cultures it attempts to capture. The people studied in this book—rural-to-urban migrants in Bangalore, and Internet users in a virtual forum—were rich sources of information about Badagas living in India today and their encounters with new modes of sociality and quality of life. Although previous studies document a rich culture and history of Badagas, they are established on data, style, and trends of writers in the nineteenth century onwards, and underpin a simplified picture in need of updating. This multi-sited ethnography informs a critical update. It develops a revisionist narrative which, at an empirical level, unpacks ways migrants and netizens negotiate self and life quality while navigating inevitable shifts taking place in society and the circumstances in which they live; and, at a theoretical level, rebalances inequalities in representations of Badagas in the literature through revealing their lives in the twenty-first century as multiply-situated, dynamic, and fully engaged with modernity.