Ronojoy Sen, “Nation at Play: A History of Spor...
Covering sporting activities from ancient times right up to the modern day, Ronojoy Sen’s Nation at Play: A History of Sport in India (Columbia University Press, 2016) is at once broad in its scope, yet detailed in its analysis of key events.
27 min
1152
Benjamin Schonthal, “Buddhism, Politics and the...
In his recent monograph, Buddhism, Politics and the Limits of Law: The Pyrrhic Constitutionalism of Sri Lanka (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Benjamin Schonthal examines the relationship between constitutional law and religious conflict in Sri Lank...
70 min
1153
Anastasia Piliavsky, ed., “Patronage as Politic...
Does patronage always imply a corruption of democratic political processes? Across sixteen essays by historians, political scientists and anthropologists Patronage as Politics in South Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2014),
Projit Bihari Mukharji’s new book explores the power of small, non-spectacular, and everyday technologies as motors or catalysts of change in the history of science and medicine. Focusing on practices of Ayurveda in British Bengal between about 1870-19...
64 min
1155
“Best New Books in Political Science 2016: Inte...
Last week featured a year-end-round up of books in American politics. This week I looked back to the past year on the podcast in other subfields. I start with an interview I enjoyed with Prerna Singh. Her book examines sub-nationalism in India.
11 min
1156
Carol Upadhya, “Reengineering India: Work, Capi...
How is India’s burgeoning IT industry reshaping the country? What types of capital is IT attracting and what formations does it take? How are software engineers managed? What are their goals and aspirations?
39 min
1157
Rupa Viswanath, “The Pariah Problem: Caste, Rel...
The so called “Pariah Problem” emerged in public consciousness in the 1890s in India as state officials, missionaries and “upper”caste landlords, among others, struggled to understood the situation of Dalits (those subordinated populations once called ...
33 min
1158
Roman Sieler, “Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets: Med...
Roman Sieler’s Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets: Medicine and Martial Arts in South India (Oxford University Press, 2015) is a fine-grained ethnographic study of varmakkalai–the art of vital spots, a South Indian practice that encompasses both martial and...
75 min
1159
Arie L. Molendijk, “Friedrich Max Muller and th...
Arie L. Molendijk is Professor of the History of Christianity and Philosophy in the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He has written Friedrich Max Muller and the Sacred Books of the East (Oxford ...
50 min
1160
Harini Nagendra, “Nature in the City: Bengaluru...
In Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present, and Future (Oxford University Press, 2016), Harini Nagendra traces centuries of interaction between ecology and urban change, revealing not only the destructive tendencies of urbanization,
40 min
1161
Liam Brockey, “The Visitor: Andre Palmeiro and ...
The transmission of a religion closely connected to a particular culture into a very different religious and cultural environment is a difficult act of translation in which a balance must be struck between remaining true to doctrine while understanding...
75 min
1162
Prerna Singh, “How Solidarity Works for Welfare...
Prerna Singh has written How Solidarity Works for Welfare: Subnationalism and Social Development in India (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Singh is the Mahatma Gandhi Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Brown Univer...
27 min
1163
Simanti Dasgupta, “BITS of Belonging: Informati...
What links a water privatization scheme and a prominent software company in India’s silicon city, Bangalore? Simanti Dasgupta’s new book, BITS of Belonging: Information Technology, Water, and Neoliberal Governance in India (Temple University Press,
44 min
1164
D. Asher Ghertner, “Rule by Aesthetics: World-C...
D. Asher Ghertner explores why the ways things look are fundamental for Delhi’s transformation into a “world class”city. Based on deep ethnographic engagement in one of the city’s slums that is destined to be demolished,
54 min
1165
Lisa Bjorkman, “Pipe Politics, Contested Waters...
Mumbai is in many ways the paradigmatic city of India’s celebrated economic upturn, but the city’s transformation went hand-in-hand with increasing water woes. In Pipe Politics, Contested Waters: Embedded Infrastructures of Millennial Mumbai (Duke Univ...
60 min
1166
Anand Pandian, “Reel World: An Anthropology of ...
Do we live in a real world or a ‘reel world,’ in which life begins to feel like a film? In this wonderful ethnography of the Tamil film industry, Anand Pandian explores topics as grand, rich and timeless as those explored in film itself love, desire,
46 min
1167
Srimati Basu, “The Trouble with Marriage: Femin...
Are solutions to marital problems always best solved through legal means? Should alternative dispute resolutions be celebrated? In her latest book The Trouble with Marriage: Feminists Confront Law and Violence in India (University of California Press,
8 min
1168
Sahana Udupa, “Making News in Global India: Med...
What role does Bangalore’s private news culture play in shaping the southern Indian metropolis’ ongoing urban transformation? Sahana Udupa‘s new book Making News in Global India: Media, Publics, Politics (Cambridge University Press,
58 min
1169
Sangay Mishra, “Desis Divided: The Political Li...
Sangay Mishra is the author of Desis Divided: The Political Lives of South Asian Americans (University of Minnesota Press, 2016). Mishra is an assistant professor of political science at Drew University. While the number of South Asian Americans living...
A village terrorized by a man eating tiger and a state struggling to implement possibly the largest social security program in the world coalesce in this wonderful ethnography of bureaucracy by Nayanika Mathur. Paper Tiger: Law,
43 min
1171
Jeff Koehler, “Darjeeling” (Bloomsbury, 2015)
Darjeeling tea, like other members of its artisanal tribe serrano peppers, Champagne, and grana padano,exists through a combination of intimate understanding of natural forces, intensive labor, and lifelong dedication.
81 min
1172
Mitra Sharafi, “Law and Identity in Colonial So...
Parsis, also known as Zoroastrians, were deeply entwined with the colonial legal system of British India and Burma, far beyond what one might expect from their relativity small numbers. Mitra Sharafi, in her wonderful new book Law and Identity in Colon...
43 min
1173
Tasneem Khalil, “Jallad: Death Squads and State...
State executioners in their various guises are explored in all their horrific detail by Tasneem Khalil, in his new book Jallad: Death Squads and State Terror in South Asia (Pluto, 2016). From the Rapid Action Battalion of Bangladesh to the men in white...
38 min
1174
Sara Shneiderman, “Rituals of Ethnicity: Thangm...
Rituals of Ethnicity: Thangmi Identities Between Nepal and India (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) by Sara Shneiderman is the first comprehensive ethnography of the Thangmi, a Himalayan community who move between Nepal,
Pakistan is often caricatured and stereotyped as a volatile nuclear country on the precipice of disaster. Such depictions are often especially acerbic when comes to the issue of Women’s rights in the country. In her important new book,