The goddess for development. Indigenous economic concepts among South Indian artisans* (original) (raw)
Book chapters, 2021
These are my two book chapters on Bhupendranath Datta and Tarak Chandra Das in a book edited by Sarthak Sengupta published in 2021. Both Datta and Das still remains neglected personalities in the curriculum of Indian anthropology. I wrote and spoke extensively on T.C.Das and his contributions in Indian anthropology and also on Bhupendranath Datta. Both these anthropologists were nationalists in the true sense of the term who looked at the problems of nation building in India from an Indian perspective.Datta studied caste system from the class angle while Das constructed ethnographies of individual tribes and the Bengal famine from applied anthropological perspective.
Historical Anthropology of Modern India
History Compass, Vol. 5, No. 3, 2007
The last three decades have seen acute interchanges between history and anthropology in theoretical and empirical studies. Scholarship on South Asia has reflected these patterns, but it has also reworked such tendencies. Here, significant writings of the 1960s and 1970s brought together processes of history and patterns of culture as part of mutual fields of analysis and description. These emphases have been critically developed more recently. Anthropologists and historians have rethought theory and method, in order not only to crucially conjoin but to explore anew the 'archive' and the 'field'. The blending has produced 'historical anthropology': writings that approach and explain in new ways elaborations of caste and community, colonialism and empire, nation and nationalism, domination and resistance, law and politics, myth and kingship, environment and ethnicity, and state and modernity -in the past and the present. Work in historical anthropology focuses on practice, process, and power, and often combines perspectives from gender, postcolonial, and subaltern studies.
Saurabh Dube (ed.), Historical Anthropology (Oxford in India Readings in Sociology and Social Anthropology). New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007. xiv + 427 pp. Notes, index. `595 (hardback). DOI: 10.1177/006996671004400314 At the very first glance, Saurabh Dube’s volume tells us that on offer here is a very unusual mix of essays under the rubric of ‘historical Downloaded from cis.sagepub.com at COLEGIO DE MEXICO BIBL on January 30, 2015 432 / Contributions to Indian Sociology 44, 3 (2010): 425–466 anthropology’. Clearly, much thought has gone into the choice of what is ‘representative’ of the field and why. Indeed, by his very choice of essays, Dube has effectively told the complex story of how, through time, an interdisciplinary domain is produced by a variety of academic practitioners, sometimes consciously, sometimes in spite of themselves.
Indian Anthropology: A Plea for Pragmatic Appraisal
Bangladesh e-Journal of Sociology.Volume 15, No. 1. , 2018
Anthropology in India is divided into various phases and located at various levels. Despite a long ethnographic tradition, there is hardly any notion reflecting 'Indianness'. This is not to undermine however, numerous laudable works of Indian scholars. Sadly, some works, despite their contemporary theoretical relevance, remained unnoticed. Included among these are numerous noteworthy ethnographic monographs produced by Indian universities and anthropological survey of India (ASI), which are not assessed appropriately. This article briefly elucidates some such works, which have both theoretical bearing and applied relevance. It is argued that there is need for a holistic appraisal of anthropological works including works of applied nature. This is specially so because, in the absence of knowledge about numerous admirable works, critiques seem to be too unkind towards entire Indian anthropology. In Indian anthropology the growth of ethnography itself is a fascinating subject. This article discusses relevance of ethnography in India, historically. It also discusses the 'ethnographic' uniqueness of people of India study in postcolonial era which suffers from misinformation campaigns. Lastly it is argued that anthropologists need to ensure best utility of their research. There are limits and they have to decide how far to advocate politically, balancing wisely between ethnographic pragmatism and political activism.
Nidān: International Journal For Indian Studies, Vol. 7. Issue 2 (December 2022)
Nidān: International Journal For Indian Studies, 2022
Table of Contents Editorial vi Research Articles 1. Tribal Textiles of Northeast India: A Survey of Folk and Natural Elements Sanghamitra Rai Verman 1 2. Generational Practices of Diaspora: Shared Memories in Morari Bapu's Ramkatha Mrinal Pande 3. Reimaging Human-Nature Interactions and Reclaiming Marginal Identity through Folk Narratives of the Sundarbans Camellia Biswas 4. Of Hunting and the Hunted: Vayanattukulavan Theyyam and the Enunciation of Being 'Backward' Shyma P. 5. Translating the Religiosity and Gender Politics of Manasa Myth in Contemporary Bengali Theatrical Narrative Praggnaparamita Biswas Book Reviews and Interviews 6. The Philosophy of Sri Chinmoy: Love and Transformation (Kusumita P. Pedersen) Anantanand Rambachan 7. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and the Question of Socialism in India (V. Geetha) Runa Chakraborty Paunksnis 8. The Unknown Christ of Christianity: Scripture and Theology in Panikkar's Early Writings (Beltramini Enrico) Erik Ranstrom 9. Privileged Minorities: Syrian Christianity, Gender, and Minority Rights in Postcolonial India
1994
The works of Malinowski, Mauss, Sahlins and Weiner form the bedrock of the study of economic principles applied within the framework of tribal societies. In attempting to arrive at a synthesis of their anthropological interpretations of tribal economic activities, the old substantivist-formalist debate emerges as a strawman confusing what are basically two perspectives — that of extensive ethnographic studies, such as of the Trobriand Islanders, and general ethnological theories of tribal economics. These two perspectives — ethnography and ethnology — the backbone of cultural anthropology, are traditionally viewed as distinct research paradigms that converge to form a definitive picture of a culture and elicit understanding of basic principles of subsistence and social organization characteristic of certain categories of cultural aggregates, as, for example, tribal societies. This paper is concerned with the rationale of such categorizations and with many of the assumptions inherent in the practice of cultural anthropology and economic anthropology stemming from the perceptions by which we describe and analyze discrete cultures and define specific universal principles that we apply to such categories of cultural entities. In ethnology, we extract activities and institutions from distinctive local cultural contexts and attach a general, nonlocal meaning to them from which we in turn construct parallels and analogies to understand and explain distinct local cultural contexts in a self-reinforcing circular logic. It is important to break this loop, step out of the circle, and reexamine the meanings that we have applied to these activities and institutions. This paper demonstrates how ethnographic studies — particularly in economic anthropology — are filtered through lenses of investigative bias, viewing different cultural patterns in terms of the basis and familiarity of our own cultural contexts, distorting the real meaning of the activities and institutions observed with respect to the only context that is relevant to such studies, the local culture under observation.
Indian Anthropology Today by Vinay Kumar Srivastava
Article, 2012
A survey of the changing aspects of different disciplines-belonging to different faculties-informs us of the impact that anthropological methods, perspectives, theories, and the conclusions of their cross-cultural studies have exercised on them, which indirectly confirms the analytical strength, explanatory power, and methodological sophistication of anthropology. Notwithstanding this, the growth of anthropology in India has been both uneven and slow, a consequence of which has been the 'interiorisation' of anthropologists, or which T.H. Ericksen has termed 'inward-gazing'. Contemporary anthropologists have become aware of what they have been passing through, and are striving their best to recover the past glory of their discipline when they were active participants in public debates. One of the points that this article puts forth is that anthropologists are 'dispassionate observ-ers' as well as 'citizens'. In the first role, they are committed to understanding the social and cultural processes; in the second, like any other conscientious citizen, they expect all societies and states to be just, civil, and inclusive. In the dialectics of these roles, the state of contemporary anthropology can be properly located.