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A Companion to the Anthropology of India
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More About This Title A Companion to the Anthropology of India

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A Companion to the Anthropology of India offers a broad overview of the rapidly evolving scholarship on Indian society from the earliest area studies to views of India’s globalization in the twenty-first century.
  • Provides readers with an important new introduction to the anthropology of India
  • Explores the larger global issues that have transformed India since the end of colonization, including demographic, economic, social, cultural, political, and religious issues
  • Contributions by leading experts present up-to-date, comprehensive coverage of key topics such as population and life expectancy, civil society, social-moral relationships, caste and communalism, youth and consumerism, the new urban middle class, environment and health, tourism, public and religious cultures, politics and law
  • Represents an authoritative guide for professional social and cultural anthropologists, and South Asian specialists, and an accessible reference work for students engaged in the analysis of India’s modern transformation
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Isabelle Clark-Decès is Professor of Anthropology and the Director of the Program in South Asian Studies at Princeton University. Her books include The Encounter Never Ends:Return to the Field of Tamil Rituals (2007).
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Notes on Contributors viii

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1
Isabelle Clark-Decès

Part I Caste and Class in Liberal India 23

1 Demography for Anthropologists: Populations, Castes, and Classes 25
Christophe Z. Guilmoto

2 Caste, Class, and Untouchability 45
Robert Deliège

3 Great Expectations: Youth in Contemporary India 62
Craig Jeffrey

4 The Modern Transformation of an Old Elite: The Case of the Tamil Brahmans 80
C. J. Fuller

5 Caste and Collective Memory in South India 98
Zoé E. Headley

Part II Cities, Cosmopolitan Styles, and Urban Critics 115

6 “How to Sit, How to Stand”: Bodily Practice and the New Urban Middle Class 117
Meredith Lindsay McGuire

7 Global Dancing in Kolkata 137
Pallabi Chakravorty

8 Yoga, Modernity, and the Middle Class: Locating the Body in a World of Desire 154
Joseph S. Alter

9 Tourism in India: The Moral Economy of Gender in Banaras 169
Jenny Huberman

10 Crafts, Artisans, and the Nation-State in India 186
Mira Mohsini

11 Crowds, Congestion, Conviviality: The Enduring Life of the Old City 202
Ajay Gandhi

Part III Cultures and Religion in the Making 223

12 Optic-Clash: Modes of Visuality in India 225
Shaila Bhatti and Christopher Pinney

13 Hindu–Muslim Relations and the “War on Terror” 241
Philippa Williams

14 Religious Synthesis at a Muslim Shrine 260
Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi

15 Christianity: Culture, Identity, and Agency 277
Mathew N. Schmalz

Part IV Communalism, Nationalism, and Terrorism 295

16 The Politics of Communalism and Caste 297
Ornit Shani

17 Violence, Aggression, and Militancy: Reexamining Gender, and Nonliberal Politics 313
Tarini Bedi

18 India Burning: The Maoist Revolution 332
Alpa Shah

Part V Law, Governance, and Civil Society 353

19 Courts of Law and Legal Practice 355
Daniela Berti

20 Law and Order: Police Encounter Killings and Routinized Political Violence 371
Beatrice Jauregui

21 Civil Society and Politics: An Anthropological Perspective 389
John Harriss

22 Discourses of Citizenship and Criminality in Clean, Green Delhi 407
Yaffa Truelove and Emma Mawdsley

23 Toward an Anthropology of Water in Mumbai’s Settlements 426
Nikhil Anand

Part VI From Global India to the Ethnography of Change 443

24 Transnational India: Diaspora and Migration in the Anthropology of South Asia 445
Leo Coleman

25 India Responds to the HIV/AIDS Pandemic: Unintended Consequences of Global Health Initiatives 464
Cecilia Van Hollen

26 Cultures of the Psyche, Politics of Illness 482
Sarah Pinto

27 Ways of Aging 500
Sarah Lamb

28 The Decline of Dravidian Kinship in Local Perspectives 517
Isabelle Clark-Decès

Index 536

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"This volume provides a useful framework for and discussion of the complexity and range of recently published research on the anthropologies of the Indian subcontinent in the era of globalization . . . Summing up: Essential. All libraries supporting graduate and undergraduate programs in anthropology, sociology, and history." (Choice, 1July 2011) "This marvelous exploration of the ‘new' India is also a triumphant vindication of the old anthropological virtues of closely attending to the particularity of other people's lives."
Jonathan Spencer, Professor of the Anthropology of South Asia, University of Edinburgh

 

"This collection cuts loose from earlier ethnographic and theoretical interests to focus on India seen through the theoretical lens of globalization."
Mattison Mines, University of California Santa Barbara

 

"This is an excellent, highly readable, sample of current work on the social anthropology of India, a "must" for anyone interested in developments in Indian society today."
Peter van der Veer, Director Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen

 

"This exciting volume showcases the work of an array of established and younger scholars who are thinking about the astonishing changes happening in contemporary India. This book will be an invaluable guide to the sociological and anthropological rethinking of Indian society and culture."
Akhil Gupta, UCLA

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