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Americans have been shocked by media reports of the dismal working conditions in factories that make clothing for U.S. companies. But while well intentioned, many of these reports about child labor and sweatshop practices rely on stereotypes of how Third World factories operate, ignoring the complex economic dynamics driving the global apparel industry. To dispel these misunderstandings, Jane L. Collins visited two very different apparel firms and their factories in the United States and Mexico. Moving from corporate headquarters to factory floors, her study traces the diverse ties that link First and Third World workers and managers, producers and consumers. Collins examines how the transna...
This volume examines nationhood as a concept and how it became the basis of political discourse in South Asia. It studies the emergence of nationalism in modern states as a powerful, omnipotent, and omnipresent form of political identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This book examines the idea of a nation, as it originated in medieval Europe, as an unending process of 'othering' individuals, groups, and communities to establish its hegemony, exclusivity, and absolute power within a political discourse. It sheds light on how these new political frameworks in the name of nationalism resulted in conflicts and bloodshed. It unleashed politics of retribution and facilitated majorita...
The purpose of art, the Paris-trained artist Amrita Sher-Gil wrote in 1936, is to "create the forms of the future” by “draw[ing] its inspiration from the present.” Through art, new worlds can be imagined into existence as artists cultivate forms of belonging and networks of association that oppose colonialist and nationalist norms. Drawing on Edward Said’s notion of “affiliation” as a critical and cultural imperative against empire and nation-state, Worldly Affiliations traces the emergence of a national art world in twentieth-century India and emphasizes its cosmopolitan ambitions and orientations. Sonal Khullar focuses on four major Indian artists—Sher-Gil, Maqbool Fida Husai...
Explores the prominence of painted air-dried clay (polychrome terracruda) in sculptural practices in South Asia, and the dynamic collaboration between materials, clay modelers and clienteles.
Rather than centering on the well-known collections in Western European and North American museums, Collecting Asian Art turns to museum collections of Asian art in Central Europe which emerged from the late 19th century onwards. Highlighting the dimensions of Central European connectedness, this volume explores how these collections evolved and changed under changing cultural and political conditions from the pre-World War I to the post-World War II periods. With a primary focus on collections of East Asian, South Asian, and West Asian art in Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Warsaw, Kraków, Budapest, and Ljubljana, it outlines the transregional connections and networks that gradually developed. Col...
The non-violent protests of civil rights activists and anti-nuclear campaigners during the 1960s helped to redefine Western politics. But where did they come from? Sean Scalmer uncovers their history in an earlier generation's intense struggles to understand and emulate the activities of Mahatma Gandhi. He shows how Gandhi's non-violent protests were the subject of widespread discussion and debate in the USA and UK for several decades. Though at first misrepresented by Western newspapers, they were patiently described and clarified by a devoted group of cosmopolitan advocates. Small groups of Westerners experimented with Gandhian techniques in virtual anonymity and then, on the cusp of the 1960s, brought these methods to a wider audience. The swelling protests of later years increasingly abandoned the spirit of non-violence, and the central significance of Gandhi and his supporters has therefore been forgotten. This book recovers this tradition, charts its transformation, and ponders its abiding significance.
"A revolutionary art movement asserted itself in India between the declaration of independence at midnight on August 15, 1947, and the economic boom of the 1990s. This is the first in-depth study of the three generations of artists responsible for critical shifts in the development of India's modernist art. Their achievements and the country's unprecedented boom ushered India's modern and contemporary art into a new era of globalism, a soaring international market, and an explosion in the media and technologies of art. After independence, India's artists faced a particular artistic challenge: how to express the new nation's distinctive character while entering a global discourse focused on m...