Review: The Darjeeling Distinction
By Peter Luetchford ** Reprinted from Review of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Studies Sarah Besky’s informative monograph on tea plantations in the northern Indian district of Darjeeling fills…
Tag: India
Indian Cinema
Reminder to self. Go back and watch more of the wonderful archive that is https://indiancine.ma Such a bunch of tollylicious fun.Filed under: elephant, film, India
Surplus value and care
D.D.Kosambi’s summary of Buddhist political economy circa 500bc. From ‘The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India in Historical Outline’ 1964. (P113 1996 reprint by Vikas Publishi…
Statues – 1970 Kolkata.
Mrinal Sen’s great film Interview begins with a few shots of the removal of colonial statues from the Maidan in Calcutta, shipped off to a closed space in…
Bollywood and women
For the reminder files, an email response to a student met doing Capital in India proposing a PhD on women in Bollywood. I'm not sure I'm the one…
Interview: Rethinking Classical Indo-Roman Trade by Rajan Gurukkal
Rajan Gurukkal‘s Rethinking Classical Indo-Roman Trade: Political Economy of Eastern Mediterranean Exchange Relations (Oxford University Press, 2016) casts a critical eye over the exchanges, usu…
Review: Metabolic Living
Metabolic Living: Food, Fat, and The Absorption of Illness in India. Harris Solomon. Duke University Press, 2016. Gauri Anilkumar Pitale Southern Illinois University …
Dancing to the State: Ethnic Compulsions of the Tangsa in Assam
By Meenaxi Barkataki-Ruscheweyh Let me begin by telling you a little bit about myself, the region and the people — the Tangsa — with whom I worked and…
Luhrmann and Marrow’s Our Most Troubling Madness by Murphy Halliburton
Our Most Troubling Madness: Case Studies in Schizophrenia Across Cultures T.M. Luhrmann and Jocelyn Marrow, editors University of California Press, 2016, 304 pages A key premise of…
What a ballot-rigging conspiracy theory says about India’s toxic political climate
by Nayanika Mathur **Reprinted from The Conversation.** The headline story from India’s recent provincial elections was the staggering victory of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party …
Begum Jaan – trailer (remake of Rajkahini, রাজকাহিনী)
For those in need of an alternative to Gurinder Chadha’s Viceroy’s House, in April 2017 we will get the Hindi film Begum Jaan, I hope soon also for a UK…
Review: Ayya’s Accounts
**Review first published in Pacific Affairs 1926, Vol 89 (3): 696-698.** by Geert De Neve Ayya’s Accounts is a most wonderful product of listening, narrating and co-writing between…
The Anthropoliteia #BlackLivesMatter Syllabus, Week 22: Beatrice Jauregui on Humanity, Intersectionality, Inclusion
The editors of Anthropoliteia are happy to continue an ongoing series The Anthropoliteia #BlackLivesMatterSyllabus Project, which will mobilize anthropological work as a pedagogical exercise addressin…
Collection of interviews with Indian documentary makers.
With a funky graphic interface (this screenshot does not do it justice – click through to the site) – Anand Patwardhan, Shyam Benegal, Paromita Vohra and more: Filed…
Saibaba ‘given’ life = court takes life from a nice guy in awful #repressive state anti #maoist trumped up show trial.
One of Indian Judicial Systems Most Shameful Decisions since 1947 : DU professor GN Saibaba and four others get life sentence for ‘Maoist links’ Democracy and Class Struggle…
Film India archive
Pretty excited to find parts of the FilmIndia archive online, especially 1948 with a (idiosyncratic) review of Sunny’s Mela (stars Nargis and Dilip Kumar). Also I am quite taken…
Interview: Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets by Roman Sieler
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,…
Marx in Algiers again
Of haircuts and Rhino coats… This is the worked up text of a talk I gave in Chandernagore in February 2016. The photo is one I’ve failed to trace…
Interview: The Pariah Problem by Rupa Viswanath
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…
New documentary on faith, resilience and change in the Himalayas
Greetings from the Pennines! I am delighted to say that my long-awaited Himalayan ethnographic documentary, co-directed by the brilliant Ross Harrison, is now available for free viewing on facingthemo…
A Tale of Two Rooms: Debt, Success, and Freedom in Indian Microfinance
“See, I don’t have a TV or an almirah [wardrobe],” said Ilina, pointing to her sparse one-room flat, while in one corner—the makeshift kitchen—her husband squatted over a…
Why Vote?
Elections in India are a loud, rambunctious, great equalizer in public life. Elections in India are the world’s biggest festival and Indians clearly like to vote. Evidence shows…
Book Forum––Harris Solomon’s Metabolic Living: Food, Fat and The Absorption of Illness in India by Todd Meyers
Harris Solomon’s Metabolic Living traces patterns of consumption, calories, and chronic disease to tell a story about the enfolding––the absorption and regulation––of food in and about the bod…
Decolonizing archaeological practice in Northeast India: Towards a community-based archaeology at Chungliyimti, Nagaland
This entry is part 17 of 17 in the Decolonizing Anthropology series. By Tiatoshi Jamir I was born on a land declared an ‘Excluded Area’: a previously colonized region.…