The Psychology of South Asian Shame: Mapping Caste, Colonial & Intergenerational Trauma Transmission in the Western Diaspora: A Contextual, ... (International and Cultural Psychology)

This book reveals shame as a political, biological, and cultural inheritance, an architecture of feeling and power that silently shapes identity, belonging, and survival across South Asian diasporas. At its core, it reframes shame through five interwoven characteristics: polarisation, hierarchy, intersectionality, weaponisation, and neuroticism, revealing how shame functions both as an emotional wound and a system of social control.It divides communities through caste and intragroup conflict; institutionalises inequality by assigning worth at birth; compounds harm through gender, colourism, class, and religion; and is wielded by dominant groups to maintain power.Internalised shame renders superiority and inferiority natural, even moral, turning difference into danger and kin into adversaries. Drawing on historical analysis, psychological theory, and cultural narrative, the book shows how shame becomes embedded in the nervous system, carried across generations, and sustained by a conspi