Synopses & Reviews
This vivid anthology of ethnographic writing on South Asia focuses on the daily lives of people in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Firsthand accounts portray the ways ordinary people live and make their worlds through growing up and aging, arranging marriages, exploring sexuality, negotiating caste hierarchies, practicing religion, participating in politics and popular culture, enduring violence as nations are built, and moving abroad to make new lives. An international group of scholars present a diverse range of contemporary life situations and perspectives, including peasant girls in rural Rajasthan and advertising executives in Mumbai; ""untouchable"" sharecroppers and high-caste landlords; intimate, multi-generational households and street youth involved in ""modern"" gangs; South Asian--American children of high-powered professionals and refugees displaced by national conflict, among many others. The lively text provides lucid introductions to the questions involved in understanding gender, caste, religion, globalization, nationalism, and other key issues as they affect this important region.
Contributors: Joseph S. Alter, J. Bernard Bate, E. Valentine Daniel, Robert Desjarlais, Sara Dickey, Gautam Ghosh, Ann Grodzins Gold, Benedicte Grima, Kim Gutschow, Kathleen Hall, Patricia Jeffery, Roger Jeffery, Pradeep Jeganathan, Nita Kumar, Sarah Lamb, Mark Liechty, McKim Marriott, William Mazzarella, Diane P. Mines, Mattison Mines, Serena Nanda, Kirin Narayan, Steven M. Parish, Gloria Goodwin Raheja, Paula Richman, Susan Seizer, Susan Seymour, Margaret Trawick, Ruth Vanita, Viramma (with Josiane Racine and Jean Luc Racine), Susan S. Wadley, and Jim Wilce.