Download or read book Poetics of Village Politics written by Arild Engelsen Ruud and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-05-29 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 2003, this volume studies village politics and the changes brought about in rural society through political developments. It focuses on the social, political and cultural circumstances of communist mobilization in rural West Bengal. It analyses the emergence of rural communism in the local context of changes in the position of women, in caste practices, in economic conditions and in new efforts to create ‘development’. It investigates how this cultural change interacts with the mechanisms and tools of village politics, and using anthropological methods and oral history as tools, allows for a detailed and intimate ethnographic description of village politics and its changes.
Download or read book Under the Shadow of Nationalism written by Mariko Asano Tamanoi and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1998-03-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contribution of rural women to the creation and expansion of the Japanese nation-state is undeniable. As early as the nineteenth century, the women of central Japan's Nagano prefecture in particular provided abundant and cheap labor for a number of industries, most notably the silk spinning industry. Rural women from Nagano could also be found working, from a very young age, as nursemaids, domestic servants, and farm laborers. In whatever capacity they worked, these women became the objects of scrutiny and reform in a variety of nationalist discourses--not only because of the importance of their labor to the nation, but also because of their gender and domicile (the countryside was the centerpiece of state ideology and practice before and during the war, during the Occupation, and beyond). Under the Shadow of Nationalism explores the interconnectedness of nationalism and gender in the context of modern Japan. It combines the author's long-term field research with a painstaking examination of the documents behind these discourses produced at various levels of society, from the national (government records, social reformers' reports, ethnographic data) to the local (teachers' manuals, labor activists' accounts, village newspapers). It provides a wide-ranging yet in-depth look at a key group of Japanese women as national subjects through the critical chapters of Japanese modernity and postmodernity.
Download or read book The Politics and Poetics of Authenticity written by Harshana Rambukwella and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2018-07-02 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the role of cultural authenticity in the making of nations? Much scholarly and popular commentary on nationalism dismisses authenticity as a romantic fantasy or, worse, a deliberately constructed mythology used for political manipulation. The Politics and Poetics of Authenticity places authenticity at the heart of Sinhala nationalism in late nineteenth and twentieth-century Sri Lanka. It argues that the passion for the ‘real’ or the ‘authentic’ has played a significant role in shaping nationalist thinking and argues for an empathetic yet critical engagement with the idea of authenticity. Through a series of fine-grained and historically grounded analyses of the writings of individual figures central to the making of Sinhala nationalist ideology the book demonstrates authenticity’s rich and varied presence in Sri Lankan public life and its key role in understanding postcolonial nationalism in Sri Lanka and elsewhere in South Asia and the world. It also explores how notions of authenticity shape certain strands of postcolonial criticism and offers a way of questioning the taken-for-granted nature of the nation as a unit of analysis but at the same time critically explore the deep imprint of nations and nationalisms on people's lives.
Download or read book The Politics and Poetics of Water written by Lyla Mehta and published by Orient Blackswan. This book was released on 2005 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book studies the relationship between large dams and water scarcity in Kutch. It argues that water scarcity is not merely natural, but is embedded in the social and power relations shaping water access, use and practices. Scarcity is portrayed as natural rather than human induced and this naturalisation of scarcity is beneficial to those who are powerful. This is a significant book in the light of the growing water crisis in India, and the world.
Download or read book Politics in India written by Subrata K. Mitra and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-07-26 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing a comprehensive analysis of the broad spectrum of India’s politics, this undergraduate textbook explains the key features of politics in India in a comparative and accessible narrative, illustrated with relevant maps, life stories, statistics and opinion data. Familiar concepts of comparative politics are used to highlight the policy process, with a focus on anti-poverty measures, liberalisation of the economy, nuclearisation and relations with the United States and Asian neighbours such as Pakistan and China. The author raises several key questions relevant to Indian politics, including: •?Why has India succeeded in making a relatively peaceful transition from colonial rule to a resilient, multi-party democracy in contrast to her neighbours? •?How has the interaction of modern politics and traditional society contributed to the resilience of post-colonial democracy? •?How did India’s economy – moribund for several decades following independence – make a breakthrough into rapid growth, and, can India sustain it? •?And finally, why have collective identity and nationhood emerge as the core issue of India in the 21st century? Introducing the novice to India, this accessible, genuinely comparative account of India’s political evolution also engages the expert in a deep contemplation of the nature of strategic manoeuvring within India’s domestic and international context. In addition to pedagogical features such as text boxes, a set of further readings is provided as a to guide readers who wish to go beyond the remit of this text.
Download or read book Politics in South Asia written by Siegfried O. Wolf and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-11-10 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book introduces central themes that have preoccupied the field of South Asian politics over the last few decades and identifies new, emerging areas of research. Presenting both general political theory and context-specific case studies, the collection draws attention to the methodological challenges of working on an area-specific theme and the importance of generating generalizable insights linked to theory. Hence it will be of interest for political scientists working on South Asian politics as well as on other non-Western societies. The collection represents an unusually broad survey of scholarship emerging from a range of leading academic centres in the field.
Download or read book The Poetics of Manhood written by Michael Herzfeld and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The description for this book, The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan Mountain Village, will be forthcoming.
Download or read book Political Economy of Contemporary India written by R. Nagaraj and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ""Deals with the issues at the intersecting domains of economics and politics"--Provided by publisher"--
Download or read book Poetics of Relation written by Édouard Glissant and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major work by this prominent Caribbean author and philosopher, available for the first time in English
Download or read book Power and Influence in India written by Pamela Price and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-07-26 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking cognisance of the lack of studies on leadership in modern India, this book explores how leadership is practiced in the Indian context, examining this across varied domains — from rural settings and urban neighbourhoods to political parties and state governments. The importance of individual leaders in the projection of politics in South Asia is evident from how political parties, mobilisation of movements and the media all focus on carefully constructed personalities. Besides, the politically ambitious have considerable room for manoeuvre in the institutional setup of the Indian subcontinent. This book focuses on actors making their political career and/or aspiring for leadership roles, even as it also foregrounds the range of choices open to them in particular contexts. The articles in this volume explore the variety of strategies used by politically engaged actors in trying to acquire (or keep) power — symbolic action, rhetorical usage, moral conviction, building of alliances — illustrating, in the process, both the opportunities and constraints experienced by them. In taking a qualitative approach and tracking both political styles and transactions, this book provides insights into the nature of democracy and the functioning of electoral politics in the subcontinent.
Download or read book A Political Ecology of Forest Conservation in India written by Amrita Sen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-25 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book critically explores the political ecology of human marginalization, wildlife conservation and the role of the state in politicizing conservation frameworks, drawing on examples from forests in India. The book specifically demonstrates the nuances within human-environmental linkages, by showing how environmental concerns are not only ecological in content but also political. In India a large part of the forests and their surrounding areas were inhabited far before they were designated as protected areas and inviolate zones, with the local population reliant on forests for their survival and livelihoods. Thus, socioecological conflicts between the forest dependents and official state bodies have been widespread. This book uses a political ecology lens to explore the complex interplay between current norms of forest conservation and environmental subjectivities, illustrating contemporary articulation of forest rights and the complex mediations between forest dependents and different state and non-state bodies in designing and implementing regulatory standards for wildlife and forest protection. It foregrounds the issues of identity, migration and cultural politics while discussing the politics of conservation. Through a political ecology approach, the book not only is human-centric but also makes significant use of the role of non-humans in foregrounding the conservation discourse, with a particular focus on tigers. The book will be of great interest to students and academics studying forest conservation, human–wildlife interactions and political ecology.
Download or read book The SAGE Handbook of Social Anthropology written by Richard Fardon and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2012-07-25 with total page 1186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In two volumes, the SAGE Handbook of Social Anthropology provides the definitive overview of contemporary research in the discipline. It explains the what, where, and how of current and anticipated work in Social Anthropology. With 80 authors, contributing more than 60 chapters, this is the most comprehensive and up-to-date statement of research in Social Anthropology available and the essential point of departure for future projects. The Handbook is divided into four sections: -Part I: Interfaces examines Social Anthropology′s disciplinary connections, from Art and Literature to Politics and Economics, from Linguistics to Biomedicine, from History to Media Studies. -Part II: Places examines place, region, culture, and history, from regional, area studies to a globalized world -Part III: Methods examines issues of method; from archives to war zones, from development projects to art objects, and from ethics to comparison -Part IV: Futures anticipates anthropologies to come: in the Brain Sciences; in post-Development; in the Body and Health; and in new Technologies and Materialities Edited by the leading figures in social anthropology, the Handbook includes a substantive introduction by Richard Fardon, a think piece by Jean and John Comaroff, and a concluding last word on futures by Marilyn Strathern. The authors - each at the leading edge of the discipline - contribute in-depth chapters on both the foundational ideas and the latest research. Comprehensive and detailed, this magisterial Handbook overviews the last 25 years of the social anthropological imagination. It will speak to scholars in Social Anthropology and its many related disciplines.
Download or read book The Democratic Predicament written by Jyotirmaya Tripathy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-03-14 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both India and Europe have been undergoing a difficult process of negotiating cultural, religious and ethnic diversity within their democratic frameworks. In fact, recent incidents of xenophobic backlash against multiculturalism and minority communities in Europe, as well as myriad movements for constitutional recognition of castes, tribes and languages and the emergence of Islamophobic terror in India, question the conventional idea of democracy as the idyllic preserver of diversity. This volume contests the simplistic connection between democracy and diversity by proposing that democracy, in fact, produces, sediments and reinforces cultural heterogeneity. It argues that in democratic polities, disparate cultural practices are often converted into identity categories, with disturbing implications for national identity, constitutionalism, political governance and citizenship. While mobilizations on the plank of cultural differences are typically viewed as being born in undemocratic spaces with little toleration for diversity, they also find fertile soil in democracy insofar as democracy celebrates diversity and allows cultural dissent to thrive. Such dissent, while essential for democracy, has difficult consequences. Examining the fundamental conflict between constructions of particular cultural identities and mandates of a unifying democratic ethos, the book brings forth the complexities underlying the politics of identity recognition and national integration. In making a radical intervention in the discourse, this volume offers a critique of existing paradigms of multiculturalism. It will interest scholars and students of political science, sociology, and postcolonial and comparative studies.
Download or read book Development Dramas written by Dia da Costa and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book uses political theatre to trace the present-day protests in West Bengal against the Left government's acquisition of agricultural land for industrialisation to decades of public protest by the rural Bengali against an accumulated dispossession of meanings.
Download or read book The Modern Anthropology of India written by Peter Berger and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-03 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Modern Anthropology of India is an accessible textbook providing a critical overview of the ethnographic work done in India since 1947. It assesses the history of research in each region and serves as a practical and comprehensive guide to the main themes dealt with by ethnographers. It highlights key analytical concepts and paradigms that came to be of relevance in particular regions in the recent history of research in India, and which possibly gained a pan-Indian or even trans-Indian significance. Structured according to the states of the Indian union, contributors raise several key questions, including: What themes were ethnographers interested in? What are the significant ethnographic contributions? How are peoples, communities and cultural areas represented? How has the ethnographic research in the area developed? Filling a significant gap in the literature, the book is an invaluable resource to students and researchers in the field of Indian anthropology/ethnography, regional anthropology and postcolonial studies. It is also of interest to students of South Asian studies in general as it provides an extensive and critical overview of regionally based ethnographic activity undertaken in India.
Download or read book India After Gandhi written by Ramachandra Guha and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-02-10 with total page 871 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born against a background of privation and civil war, divided along lines of caste, class, language and religion, independent India emerged, somehow, as a united and democratic country. Ramachandra Guha’s hugely acclaimed book tells the full story – the pain and the struggle, the humiliations and the glories – of the world’s largest and least likely democracy. While India is sometimes the most exasperating country in the world, it is also the most interesting. Ramachandra Guha writes compellingly of the myriad protests and conflicts that have peppered the history of free India. Moving between history and biography, the story of modern India is peopled with extraordinary characters. Guha gives fresh insights into the lives and public careers of those long-serving Prime Ministers, Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. But the book also writes with feeling and sensitivity about lesser-known (though not necessarily less important) Indians – peasants, tribals, women, workers and musicians. Massively researched and elegantly written, India After Gandhi is a remarkable account of India’s rebirth, and a work already hailed as a masterpiece of single volume history. This tenth anniversary edition, published to coincide with seventy years of India’s independence, is revised and expanded to bring the narrative up to the present.
Download or read book Mafia Raj written by Lucia Michelutti and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-25 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The authors . . . illustrate the ‘art of bossing’—techniques and methods used by such figures to climb to power and maintain their sovereignty.” —A. Y. Lee, Choice “Mafia” has become an indigenous South Asian term. Like Italian mobsters, the South Asian “gangster politicians” are known for inflicting brutal violence while simultaneously upholding vigilante justice—inspiring fear and fantasy. But the term also refers to the diffuse spheres of crime, business, and politics operating within a shadow world that is popularly referred to as the rule of the mafia, or “Mafia Raj.” Through intimate stories of the lives of powerful and aspiring bosses in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, this book illustrates their personal struggles for sovereignty as they climb the ladder of success. Ethnographically tracing the particularities of the South Asian case, the authors theorize what they call “the art of bossing,” providing nuanced ideas about crime, corruption, and the lure of the strongman across the world. “Through meticulous and uniquely collaborative ethnography, Mafia Raj opens readers’ eyes to the murky world of bosses in South Asia. With unforgettable portraits of the gangsters, politicians, hustlers, and extortionists dotting the region, this is the rare scholarly account that upends our commonly accepted notions of democracy, formality, and legitimacy.” —Milan Vaishnav, author of When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics “Why does the figure of ‘the boss,’ in its various guises, loom so large in South Asia? In answering this question, the authors of this engagingly written book make a path-breaking contribution to the study of South Asian politics.” —John Harriss, author of India: Continuity and Change in the Twenty-First Century
