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…
Tag: India
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.…
Winston
War criminal notes. Someone scratched out his eyes. Apparently when the note is wet and rubbed with a coin, the ink comes off. Still legal tender – money…
Orientalism for kids – again
Am gearing up for another round of kiddy tv and hoping there are new programmes since the mind worms of Iggle Piggle and Peppa Pig did their damage. This…
5 Homophobic Myths Destroyed by Anthropology
After the horrific mass murder in June focusing on the LGBTQ community at an Orlando club, the only thing worse than the massacre has been the thread of…
Awakenings by Bharat Jayram Venkat
Tuberculosis is curable. Figure 1: Propaganda materials rehearsing the curability of tuberculosis are produced by a variety of institutional actors across India. From left to right: poster from…
Apple and the Smartphone market in India
Photo Courtesy: CC: Wikimedia Commons: Kārlis Dambrāns from Latvia Less than a fifth of the Indian population might own a smart phone, but India is now the second…
Michele Friedner’s “Valuing Deaf Worlds in Urban India” by Cassandra Hartblay
Valuing Deaf Worlds in Urban India by Michele Friedner Rutgers University Press, 2015, 216 pages An Indian coffee shop franchise advertises their practice of hiring deaf baristas –…
Some Organs of My Primate Body
By Daniel Allen Solomon, De Anza College and Cabrillo College § The “monkey temple” on Jakhoo Hill in Shimla hosts a rowdy but well integrated bunch of rhesus…
On the margins of politics
I am going slightly out of depths with this post, traversing into the territory of yet-to-be-formed thoughts, which could either be speculations or reflections; responses, or idiosyncratic musings.…
Silo as System: Infrastructural Interventions into the Political Economy of Wheat
Ateya Khorakiwala, Harvard University § This post underscores how the seemingly straightforward and yet iconic American silo evolved into a different kind of storage infrastructure when it encountered…
Nuclear Hallucinations with Raminder Kaur, Joram ten Brink, Rosie Thomas and others
FD-zone London Fifth Edition a collaboration between the Faculty of Media, Arts and Design, University of Westminster, and the Films Division, Government of India Imagining Facts: Documentary Narrativ…
Between Obsolescence and Necessity: The Abiding Nature of Dhalao Infrastructures in Urban India
By Aman Luthra, Johns Hopkins University § If you happen to frequent the broad tree-lined avenues of Chanakyapuri—an upscale neighborhood in New Delhi, India dominated by diplomatic missions and…
Revisiting the Human in These Multispecies Landscapes
By Jared Margulies, University of Maryland Baltimore County, photographs by Indra Kumar, reproduced with permission § Indra shows me some photographs he’s taken recently of a variety of animals. I’m…
The future of work is consumption
One hears a lot of exuberant talk these days about the futures of work. Offices will go away, we’re told, or be significantly scaled back as employees work…