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This book is a historical study of modern Gujarat, India, addressing crucial questions of language, identity, and power. It examines the debates over language among the elite of this region during a period of significant social and political change in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Language debates closely reflect power relations among different sections of society, such as those delineated by nation, ethnicity, region, religion, caste, class, and gender. They are intimately linked with the process in which individuals and groups of people try to define and project themselves in response to changing political, economic, and social environments. Based on rich historical so...
This book presents an alternative view of caste in Indian society by analysing caste structure and change in local communities in Orissa from historical and anthropological perspectives. Focusing on the agricultural society in the Khurda district of Orissa between the eighteenth century and 2019, the book links discussions on the current transformation of society and politics in India with analyses of long-term historical transformations. The author suggests that, beyond status and power, there is another value which is important in Indian society, namely ontological equality, which functions as the politico-ethical ground for asserting respect and concern for the life of others. The book ar...
This book investigates the entangled relations between people’s daily worship practices and their umwelt in South India. Focusing on the practices of spirit (būta) worship in the coastal area of Karnataka, it examines the relationship between people and deities. Based on extensive fieldwork, this book links important anthropological theories on personhood, perspectives, transactions, and gift-exchanges together with the Gestaltkreis theory of Viktor von Weizsäcker. First, it examines the relations between būta worship and land tenure, matriliny, and hierarchy in the society. It then explores the reflexive relationship between modern law and current practices based on conventional law, b...
This book explores and interrogates the food–water–energy nexus, arguably the most crucial factor in sustaining India’s economic development. The book sheds light on different experiences faced in states across India, including the consequences of electricity tariff reforms and related policies on irrigated agriculture. Part 1 focuses on the historical development of agriculture and social change in India, with special reference to the mode of responses and adaptations in social systems against the inherent low and erratic rainfall and resulting water stress in India during the pre-colonial period. Additionally, it investigates how colonial development destroyed social systems and disc...
This book analyses the transition of South Asian nations from agrarian to industrialized economies, which is accompanied by a widening gap between agricultural and non-agricultural growth rates and a greater income disparity between farmers and urban residents. The chapters, contributed by experts in the field, analyze various issues in the transitional process of economic development in South Asia by focusing mainly on India’s “agricultural adjustment problem” and the issues concerning industrial sectors. The book deals first with challenges related to the farmers’ struggles, including traders and processors, and how they can adapt to the more sophisticated market demand for their products emerging mainly in urban areas or even abroad. It then focuses on the developments in the non-agricultural sector, introducing a global value chain (GVC) perspective. It finally analyses trends in labor migration and labor markets closely linked to the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors. This book is a valuable addition to the field of Development Economics and South Asian Economics.
This book describes and analyzes the transformation of Indian economy taking into account historical changes and present dynamics of the rural-urban nexus. India has recently experienced a period as a high-performing economy, with the great improvement of indices of human development, including literacy rates, life expectancy, child mortality rates and others. In contrast to this bright outlook, features such as the retarded growth of women’s average height, the noticeable gap between male and female population, the overwhelming proportion of informal employment in the manufacturing sector, or increasing pollution overshadow India’s future, in some cases pose a threat to lifestyle and en...
Streets are places that stimulate activities, interactions, behaviours and, by extension, controls. Yet, within the built environment discourse, the street is first and foremost conceptualised as a mute backdrop to movement-vehicular or pedestrian. The Covid-19 pandemic brought renewed focus on the street as the space of networks, flows and mobilities as the 'lockdown' was the preferred mode of controlling the spread of the disease. The Social Life of Streets in India: Histories, Contestations and Subjectivities endeavours to understand the complexities of social dynamics of streets in relation to spatiality and materiality in the Indian milieu. It draws from a diverse body of scholarship an...
This book offers an on-the-ground view of colonial Calcutta's neighbourhoods, where kinship-like ties shaped urban space and resisted city-making efforts of the state.