A Companion to the Anthropology of India

568 Pages·2011·3.027 MB·English

by  Clark-Dec?s, Isabelle

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A Companion to the
Anthropology of India
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The Blackwell Companions to Anthropology offer a series of comprehensive syntheses
of the traditional subdisciplines, primary subjects, and geographic areas of inquiry for
the field. Taken together, the series represents both a contemporary survey of anthro-
pology and a cutting edge guide to the emerging research and intellectual trends in
the field as a whole.
1. A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology edited by Alessandro Duranti
2. A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics edited by David Nugent and Joan
Vincent
3. A Companion to the Anthropology of American Indians edited by Thomas Biolsi
4. A Companion to Psychological Anthropology edited by Conerly Casey and Robert
B. Edgerton
5. A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan edited by Jennifer Robertson
6. A Companion to Latin American Anthropology edited by Deborah Poole
7. A Companion to Biological Anthropology edited by Clark Larsen (hardback only)
8. A Companion to the Anthropology of India edited by Isabelle Clark-Decès
Forthcoming in 2011
A Companion to Medical Anthropology edited by Merrill Singer and Pamela I. Erickson
A Companion to Cognitive Anthropology edited by David B, Kronenfeld, Giovanni
Bennardo, Victor de Munck, and Michael D. Fischer
A Companion to the Anthropology of Education edited by Bradley A. U. Levinson and
Mica Pollack
A Companion to Cultural Resource Management edited by Thomas King
A Companion to Forensic Anthropology edited by Dennis Dirkmaat
A Companion to the Anthropology of Europe edited by Ullrich Kockel, Máiréad Nic
Craith, and Jonas Frykman
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A Companion
to the
Anthropology
of India
Edited by
Isabelle Clark-Decès
A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication
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This edition fi rst published 2011
© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd except for editorial material and organization
© 2011 Isabelle Clark-Decès
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has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientifi c, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A Companion to the Anthropology of India / edited by Isabelle Clark-Decès.
p. cm. – (Blackwell Companions to Anthropology ; 8)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4051-9892-9 (hardback)
1. India–Social conditions. 2. India–Economic conditions. 3. India–Population. 4. Anthropology–
India. I. Clark- Decès, Isabelle, 1956- , editor of compilation. II. Guilmoto, Christophe Demography
for Anthropologists.
HN683.C585 2011
301.0954–dc22
2010044401
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Set in 10/12.5pt Galliard by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India
Printed in Singapore.
1 2011
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Contents
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
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vi CONTENTS
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
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CONTENTS vii
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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1 Notes on
CHAPTER Contributors
Joseph S. Alter has conducted academic research in India since 1981. He teaches
anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh and has published a number of books,
including The Wrestler’s Body, Knowing Dil Das, Gandhi’s Body, and Yoga in Modern
India. Beyond the study of yoga in contemporary practice his interests include the
cultural history of Nature Cure as a system of medicine and the natural history of
animals in the human imagination.
Nikhil Anand is a doctoral candidate in Anthropology at Stanford University. His
research focuses on the political ecology of urban infrastructures, and the social and
material relations that they entail. Nikhil has previously published articles on a range
of urban/environmental issues in journals that include Economic and Political Weekly
and Conservation and Society. Engaged in a variety of pedagogic and activist projects
in Mumbai since 1999, he directed a collaborative documentary film project,
Ek Dozen Paani, in 2008. Nikhil has a Masters degree in Environmental Science
from Yale University, and is a Research Associate at Partners for Urban Knowledge,
Action and Research.
Tarini Bedi is the Associate Director of the South Asia Language and Area Center and
the Committee on Southern Asian Studies at the University of Chicago. She has a PhD
in Cultural Anthropology and an MA in Political Science and is interested in questions
of gender and urban patronage, urban labor, performative politics and popular culture.
She is currently working on two book-length projects, one on Shiv Sena women and
the other on Muslim taxi-drivers and urban change in the city of Mumbai.
Daniela Berti is a social anthropologist, Research Fellow at CNRS (Centre National
de la Recherche Scientifique), Paris. She is a member of the Center for Himalayan
Studies, Paris, and carries out her fieldwork in North India. Her main works focus on
ritual interactions, on politico-ritual roles and practices formerly associated with king-
ship, on Hindutva’s entrenchment in local society, and on ethnography of Indian law
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