The idea of an 'eternal India', based on stable and unchanging villages, has been in disarray for at least two decades. However, having demolished this myth, historians have been rather less able to construct an alternative vision. This volume sets out to do just that, using the idea of 'circulation' in relation to South Asia in the colonial period. It comprises a set of complementary essays which deal with merchant circulation, pilgrimages, cartography, policing, labour mobility and the movement of itinerant groups from colonial administrators to wandering bards, demonstrating that the...
The idea of an 'eternal India', based on stable and unchanging villages, has been in disarray for at least two decades. However, having demolished ...
'Men and Masculinities in South India' aims to increase understanding of gender within South Asia and especially South Asian masculinities, a topic whose analysis and ethnographising in the region has had a very sketchy beginning and is ripe for more thorough examination. This is, in short, an almost empty field dominated so far by short articles and collections and the time is right for the first full-length ethnographic study of masculinities. This ground-breaking monograph covers a range of areas including work, cross-sex relationships, sexuality, men's friendships, religious practices...
'Men and Masculinities in South India' aims to increase understanding of gender within South Asia and especially South Asian masculinities, a topic...
This book constructs an anthropological history of a subaltern religious formation, Mahima Dharma of Orissa, a large province in eastern India. Tracking the contingent making of a critical community over a hundred and forty year period, Religion, Law and Power explores the interplay of distinct expressions of time and history, innovative reformulations of caste and Hinduism and distinct engagements with state and nation. This serves to unravel the wider entanglements of religion, history, law, modernity and power. Ishita Banerjee-Dube provides a situated and critical analysis of the...
This book constructs an anthropological history of a subaltern religious formation, Mahima Dharma of Orissa, a large province in eastern India. Tra...
A fascinating read for scholars and general readers alike, Class and Religion highlights the interdependence between the class structure and the Vedic and Brahmanical form of religion in ancient India. It seeks to demolish the myth that religiosity and spirituality were the distinctive characteristics of ancient Indian civilization. The author demonstrates that religion was a superstructure of class relations used primarily by the ruling class and the state to perpetuate a predatory class structure based on exploitation and oppression. Buddhism, foreign immigrant communities,...
A fascinating read for scholars and general readers alike, Class and Religion highlights the interdependence between the class structure and the Vedic...
'Nationalizing the Body' revisits the history of 'western' medicine in colonial South Asia through the lives, writings and practice of the numerous Bengali 'daktars' who adopted and practised it. Refusing to see 'western' medicine as an alienated appendage of the colonial state, this book explores how 'western' medicine was vernacularised. It argues that a burgeoning medical market and a medical publishing industry together gave 'daktari' medicine a social identity which did not solely derive from its association with the state. Accessing many of the best-known ideas and episodes of...
'Nationalizing the Body' revisits the history of 'western' medicine in colonial South Asia through the lives, writings and practice of the numerous...
To some, history and literary culture are strange bedfellows. This book on Bhagat Singh is written from the viewpoint of vernacular Punjabi culture and tries to tread on the marginalized path of vernacular culture as a methodology of a historian's craft. The book seeks to understand the manner in which Punjabis constructed the image of Bhagat Singh in their literature. Bhagat Singh's revolutionary life, culminating in his martyrdom, had an enormous impact on the Punjabis, who in their diverse genres of folklore, catch-songs, marriage songs, couplets and proverbs eulogized him in multiple...
To some, history and literary culture are strange bedfellows. This book on Bhagat Singh is written from the viewpoint of vernacular Punjabi culture an...
Special Economic Zones (SEZs) are turning out to be one of the stiffest challenges for India's economic policy reforms. Since the announcement of SEZ rules on 10 February 2006, these zones have aroused unprecedented controversy. The emotionally charged debate on SEZs has often produced inflexible positions on either side. The unusually strong public reaction has also forced policymakers to revisit several aspects of the policy in recent months. Why are SEZs so controversial? Will they really exacerbate income inequality, endanger food security and worsen regional imbalance? Or will they help...
Special Economic Zones (SEZs) are turning out to be one of the stiffest challenges for India's economic policy reforms. Since the announcement of SEZ ...
Commercial cinema has always been one of the biggest indigenous industries in India, and remains so in the post-globalization era, when Indian economy has entered a new phase of global participation, liberalization and expansion. Issues of community, gender, society, social and economic justice, bourgeois-liberal individualism, secular nationhood and ethnic identity are nowhere more explored in the Indian cultural mainstream than in commercial cinema. As Indian economy and policy have gone through a sea-change after the end of the Cold War and the commencement of the Global Capital, the...
Commercial cinema has always been one of the biggest indigenous industries in India, and remains so in the post-globalization era, when Indian econ...
'South Asian Media Cultures' is a collection of essays that pulls together field-based audience and textual research in areas such as the politics of new media, contemporary television and film in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and their audiences. Through a careful analysis of the various media cultures and practices from across South Asia, this collection addresses pertinent issues such as how discourses on gender, nationalism, ethnicity and class are being expressed by mainstream media texts across South Asia, and how different groups within the public discern meanings...
'South Asian Media Cultures' is a collection of essays that pulls together field-based audience and textual research in areas such as the politics ...
'ICTs and Development in India' provides a critical account of the impact of the use of Information Technology in development projects in India, focusing particularly on E-governance and Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) development programs initiated by Civil Society Organizations (CSOs). Sreekumar challenges the conventional wisdom concerning the potential of ICT to provide unprecedented social and economic opportunities for vulnerable groups such as women and marginalized communities by highlighting its failure to bridge social divides. He argues that in addition to...
'ICTs and Development in India' provides a critical account of the impact of the use of Information Technology in development projects in India, fo...
