The Everyday State and Society in Modern India

The Everyday State and Society in Modern India PDF Author: Christopher John Fuller
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This work focuses on how the large, amorphous and impersonal Indian State affects the everyday lives of its citizens. It argues that state and society merge in the daily lives of most Indians, and the boundary between them is blurred and negotiable according to social context and position. The contibutors adopt the postion, contary to that of many others, that most Indians are able actively to comprehend and use the institutions of the state for their own purposes, rather than being merely its passive victims. Each chapter is based on empirical research and collectively they cover a wide range of anthropological and sociological material on modern India, from Delhi and Uttar Pradesh in the north, Maharashtra in the west, West Bengal in the esat, and Tamil Nadu and Kerala in the south. The book examines issues such as riot control, the Emergency, corruption irrigation, rural activism and education.

The Everyday State and Society in Modern India

The Everyday State and Society in Modern India PDF Author: Christopher John Fuller
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book

Book Description
This work focuses on how the large, amorphous and impersonal Indian State affects the everyday lives of its citizens. It argues that state and society merge in the daily lives of most Indians, and the boundary between them is blurred and negotiable according to social context and position. The contibutors adopt the postion, contary to that of many others, that most Indians are able actively to comprehend and use the institutions of the state for their own purposes, rather than being merely its passive victims. Each chapter is based on empirical research and collectively they cover a wide range of anthropological and sociological material on modern India, from Delhi and Uttar Pradesh in the north, Maharashtra in the west, West Bengal in the esat, and Tamil Nadu and Kerala in the south. The book examines issues such as riot control, the Emergency, corruption irrigation, rural activism and education.

Everyday State and Politics in India

Everyday State and Politics in India PDF Author: Sailen Routray
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351692100
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
The Kalahandi district in the state of Odisha in Eastern India is regarded as an iconic region of underdevelopment, and is often perceived to be the ‘Somalia’ of the country. It is also the site of a large number of governmental interventions. This book focuses on processes of governance in Odisha, and provides an ethnographic account of the changing forms of governmental actions in Kalahandi by analysing the implementation of WORLP (Western Orissa Rural Livelihoods Project), a new generation watershed development project. The book also shows the morphings of the forms of the state on the ground, and the ways in which it is perceived by the agents and objects of statist actions. Arguing that changes in the institutions and practices of the state in India over the last three decades are better understood through the conceptualisation of state-fabrication, rather than of state-formation, the author describes the governmental tactics related to emergent modes of governmental action. The book identifies an increasing convergence in the everyday practices of governmental and non-governmental organisations, and the growth of ‘the social’ as a terrain and object of governmental actions, as two important effects of the process of deployment of these tactics. It argues that the vernacular sphere of toutary is a key domain of sociality that frames the perceptions and actions of people related to the state in Odisha. As a domain, toutary is populated by social agents, called touters; toutary can be understood as the interstitial zone between state and society shaped by the increasing penetration by the state into society through social technologies. By providing an alternative analysis of state and politics in India, this book adds to the literature surrounding the everyday state by illuminating recent changes in state-society relations. It will be of interest to academics in the field of Political Science, Public Policy, Development Studies, Social Anthropology/Sociology, Social Work, and South Asian studies.

Police Matters

Police Matters PDF Author: Radha Kumar
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501760866
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Police Matters moves beyond the city to examine the intertwined nature of police and caste in the Tamil countryside. Radha Kumar argues that the colonial police deployed rigid notions of caste in their everyday tasks, refashioning rural identities in a process that has cast long postcolonial shadows. Kumar draws on previously unexplored police archives to enter the dusty streets and market squares where local constables walked, following their gaze and observing their actions towards potential subversives. Station records present a textured view of ordinary interactions between police and society, showing that state coercion was not only exceptional and spectacular; it was also subtle and continuous, woven into everyday life. The colonial police categorized Indian subjects based on caste to ensure the security of agriculture and trade, and thus the smooth running of the economy. Among policemen and among the objects of their coercive gaze, caste became a particularly salient form of identity in the politics of public spaces. Police Matters demonstrates that, without doubt, modern caste politics have both been shaped by, and shaped, state policing. Thanks to generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, through The Sustainable History Monograph Pilot, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.

Everyday Technology

Everyday Technology PDF Author: David Arnold
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226922030
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
In 1909 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, on his way back to South Africa from London, wrote his now celebrated tract Hind Swaraj, laying out his vision for the future of India and famously rejecting the technological innovations of Western civilization. Despite his protestations, Western technology endured and helped to make India one of the leading economies in our globalized world. Few would question the dominant role that technology plays in modern life, but to fully understand how India first advanced into technological modernity, argues David Arnold, we must consider the technology of the everyday. Everyday Technology is a pioneering account of how small machines and consumer goods that originated in Europe and North America became objects of everyday use in India in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Rather than investigate “big” technologies such as railways and irrigation projects, Arnold examines the assimilation and appropriation of bicycles, rice mills, sewing machines, and typewriters in India, and follows their impact on the ways in which people worked and traveled, the clothes they wore, and the kind of food they ate. But the effects of these machines were not limited to the daily rituals of Indian society, and Arnold demonstrates how such small-scale technologies became integral to new ways of thinking about class, race, and gender, as well as about the politics of colonial rule and Indian nationhood. Arnold’s fascinating book offers new perspectives on the globalization of modern technologies and shows us that to truly understand what modernity became, we need to look at the everyday experiences of people in all walks of life, taking stock of how they repurposed small technologies to reinvent their world and themselves.

Modern India

Modern India PDF Author: Craig Jeffrey
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198769342
Category : HISTORY
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
India has become one of the world's emerging powers, rivaling China in terms of global influence. Yet many people know relatively little about the economic, social, political, and cultural changes unfolding in India today. To what extent are people benefiting from the economic boom? In what ways is education transforming society? And how is India's culture industry responding to technological change? In this "Very Short Introduction", Craig Jeffrey provides a compelling account of the recent history of India, investigating the contradictions that are plaguing modern India and the manner in which people, especially young people, are actively remaking the country in the twenty first century. -- From publisher's description.

Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age

Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age PDF Author: Susan Bayly
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521798426
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
One of the most powerful statements ever written on the subject of caste in India.

A People's Constitution

A People's Constitution PDF Author: Rohit De
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691210381
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
It has long been contended that the Indian Constitution of 1950, a document in English created by elite consensus, has had little influence on India’s greater population. Drawing upon the previously unexplored records of the Supreme Court of India, A People’s Constitution upends this narrative and shows how the Constitution actually transformed the daily lives of citizens in profound and lasting ways. This remarkable legal process was led by individuals on the margins of society, and Rohit De looks at how drinkers, smugglers, petty vendors, butchers, and prostitutes—all despised minorities—shaped the constitutional culture. The Constitution came alive in the popular imagination so much that ordinary people attributed meaning to its existence, took recourse to it, and argued with it. Focusing on the use of constitutional remedies by citizens against new state regulations seeking to reshape the society and economy, De illustrates how laws and policies were frequently undone or renegotiated from below using the state’s own procedures. De examines four important cases that set legal precedents: a Parsi journalist’s contestation of new alcohol prohibition laws, Marwari petty traders’ challenge to the system of commodity control, Muslim butchers’ petition against cow protection laws, and sex workers’ battle to protect their right to practice prostitution. Exploring how the Indian Constitution of 1950 enfranchised the largest population in the world, A People’s Constitution considers the ways that ordinary citizens produced, through litigation, alternative ethical models of citizenship.

From Subjects to Citizens

From Subjects to Citizens PDF Author: Taylor C. Sherman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107064279
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
The book offers a fresh and timely perspective on the broader field of early postcolonial South Asian history.

India Becoming

India Becoming PDF Author: Akash Kapur
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1594486530
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
A New Republic Editors' and Writers' Pick 2012 A New Yorker Contributors' Pick 2012 A Newsweek "Must Read on Modern India" “For people who savored Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers.”—Evan Osnos, newyorker.com From the author of Better To Have Gone, a portrait of the incredible change and economic development of modern India, and of social and national transformation there told through individual lives Raised in India, and educated in the U.S., Akash Kapur returned to India in 2003 to raise a family. What he found was an ancient country in transition. In search of the life that he and his wife want to lead, he meets an array of Indians who teach him much about the realities of this changed country: an old landowner sees his rural village destroyed by real estate developments, and crime and corruption breaking down the feudal authority; a 21-year-old single woman and a 35-year-old divorcee exploring the new cultural allowances for women; and a young gay man coming to terms with his sexual identity – something never allowed him a generation ago. As Akash and his wife struggle to find the right balance between growth and modernity and the simplicity and purity they had known from the Indian countryside a decade ago, they ultimately find a country that “has begun to dream.” But also one that may be moving away too quickly from the valuable ways in which it is different.

Social Change in Modern India

Social Change in Modern India PDF Author: Mysore Narasimhachar Srinivas
Publisher: Orient Blackswan
ISBN: 9788125004226
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
This Volume Is A Compilation Of A Series Of Lectures Delivered By The Eminent Social Anthropologist M. N. Srinivas. These Lectures Have Been Widely Acclaimed And Have Since Been Recommended Or Prescribed As A Text For Students Of Sociology, Anthropology And Indian Studies. The Book Remains The Classic Of Social Anthropology As It Was Hailed, When First Published.