REBUILDING BUDDHISM
The Theravada Movement in Twentieth-Century NepalSarah LeVine and David N. Gellner

Social Science Press-Orient Blackswan joint publication
390 pages 215x140 mm Hardback
Rs 795
ISBN 978-81-87358-39-8
RELIGION, SOCIOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGY, POLITICS
Pub Date December 2008

'a significant ethnographic contribution... a splendidly rendered ethnography that advances a wealth of informed analysis about Buddhist renewal in Nepal while suggesting many insights into the process of Buddhist revitalization throughout the region.'
Ingrid Jordt, American Anthropologist
Rebuilding Buddhism 'will remain the standard reference on Theravada Buddhism in Nepal for a long time to come... It is a long time since I have been so enchanted by a book (for a scholarly book – it is sad how seldom one can say this – it is written in an engaging and fluent way) and it is a long time since I learnt so much as from reading this monograph.'
Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz, Anthropos

'[T]he book is an excellent investment for anyone who wants to understand what is going on in Nepal today and what the future might hold not only for the Newar community but for all the peoples of Nepal.'
John Locke, S.J., Contributions to Nepalese Studies

Rebuilding Buddhism describes in evocative detail the experiences and achievements of Nepalis who have adopted Theravada Buddhism. This form of Buddhism was introduced into Nepal from Burma and Sri Lanka in the 1930s, and its adherents have struggled for recognition and acceptance ever since. With its focus on the austere figure of the monk and the biography of the historical Buddha, and more recently with its emphasis on individualizing meditation and on gender equality, Theravada Buddhism contrasts sharply with the highly ritualized Tantric Buddhism traditionally practiced in the Kathmandu Valley.
Based on extensive fieldwork, interviews, and historical reconstruction, the book provides a rich portrait of the different ways of being a Nepali Buddhist over the past seventy years. At the same time it explores the impact of the Theravada movement and what its gradual success has meant for Buddhism, for society, and for men and women in Nepal.
Contents
1: The Origins of Modernist Buddhism
2: Theravada Missionaries in an Autocratic State
3: Creating a Tradition
4: Charisma and Education
5: The Changing Buddhist Laity
6: Organizing and Educating the Monastic Community
7: Raising the Status of Nuns
8: Winds of Change
9: Other Buddhist Revival Movements
10: Nepal’s Theravadins in the Twenty-first Century
Appendices
Glossary
Notes and References
Index
Sarah LeVine is Associate in Sanskrit and India Studies, Harvard University. She is also the author of Mothers & Wives: Gusii Women of East Africa (University of Chicago Press, 1979), Dolor Y Alegria: Women and Social Change in Urban Mexico (University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), and The Saint of Kathmandu: Tales of the Sacred in Distant Lands (Beacon Press, 2008).

David N. Gellner is Professor of Social Anthropology and Fellow of All Souls, University of Oxford. Among his other books are Resistance and the State: Nepalese Experiences (Social Science Press, 2003), The Anthropology of Buddhism and Hinduism: Weberian Themes (OUP, 2001), Contested Hierarchies: A Collaborative Ethnography of Caste among the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal (OUP, 1995), and Monk, Householder and Tantric Priest: Newar Buddhism and its Hierarchy of Ritual (Cambridge University Press, 1992).

‘GOOD WOMEN DO NOT INHERIT LAND’
Politics of Land and Gender in IndiaNitya Rao

‘… Rao's book is good development anthropology with deep ethnographic insights about gender empowerment. … the Santals ...[are] a distinct part of the peasantry in a de-peasantizing world!’
- Anjan Ghosh, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta



368 pages 215x140 mm Hardback 10 photographs
Social Science Press-Orient BlackSwan joint publication
Rs 795
ISBN 978-81-87358-24-4
SOCIOLOGY, SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY, HISTORY, GENDER STUDIES
Pub Date November 2008


‘Good women should not claim a share in the inheritance, even if they have no brothers….’ Notions such as this have, in their own way and over time, given the women in the Santal Parganas the resolve to wrest what is rightfully theirs.

This is a powerful book in the way in which it unfolds the lives and anxieties of Santal women in Dumka district, Jharkhand. Several case studies bring these women alive through the pages of the book. Land for the Santal women stands for security, social position and identity, and in this men have a distinct advantage. The use of personal narrative by the author brings out the similarities between the experiences of a woman brought up in a city and those of the tribal women in Jharkhand.
As the account unfolds, the reader is made aware that the use of a ‘community’ identity as adivasis has also been responsible for denying women rights to land in the context of the movement for political autonomy of Jharkhand.

Based on rich ethnographic material, this sensitive book lays bare the reality of being an adivasi and an adivasi woman, in all its nuances, in the modern globalized world.

Nitya Rao is Senior Lecturer, School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

ContentsChapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: A Personal Journey
Chapter 3: Faces of Poverty: The Villages Profiled
Chapter 4: Reinventing Tradition: Agrarian Movements in History
Chapter 5: Land as a Productive Resource
Chapter 6: Locating Identities
Chapter 7: Women’s Claims to Land
Chapter 8: Custom and Courts: Bargaining with Modernity
Chapter 9: Development Interventions: Can One Size fit all?
Chapter 10: Conclusions
Bibliography
Index

RESISTANCE AND THE STATENepalese Experiences
Revised Edition
Edited by David N. Gellner



For South Asia only
392 pages 215x140 mm Paperback Revised edition
Rs 360
ISBN 978-81-87358-41-1
SOCIOLOGY, POLITICS, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS


'…an excellent contribution to our understanding of Nepal's current situation and worth the attention of anyone seriously interested in the subject.'
- JOHN WHELPTON in European Bulletin of Himalayan Research, 27 [2004]

Resistance and the State: Nepalese Experiences uses ethnographic case studies to explore healthcare programmes, forestry, national parks, political parties, and ethnic revivalism. This fascinating and readable book also gives a graphic description of conflicts over the interpretation of history, and various perspectives on the Maoist insurgency that has taken control of large parts of rural Nepal since 1996. This is arguably the longest and most widespread Marxist rebellion that South Asia has known.
The contributors to this volume illuminate the complex relationship — sometimes wary, sometimes accommodative, and sometimes violent — between a modernizing, developmentalist state, and the people it professes to represent and benefit. This book will be of immense value both to experts — political scientists, historians, sociologists, and anthropologists — and to the general reader.
David N. Gellner is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of All Souls.

NEW MANSIONS FOR MUSICPerformance, Pedagogy and Criticism
Lakshmi Subramanian

182 pages 215x140 mm Hardback 8 illustrations
Social Science Press-Orient Longman Joint publication
Rs 425
ISBN 978-81-87358-34-3
MUSIC, HISTORY, CULTURE STUDIES, SOCIOLOGY
Pub Date July 2008


THE ESSAYS in New Mansions for Music: Performance, Pedagogy and Criticism look at one of the most ancient and rigorous classical musical traditions of India, the Karnatik music system, and the kind of changes it underwent once it was relocated from traditional spaces of temples and salons to the public domain. Nineteenth-century Madras led the way in the transformation that Karnatik music underwent as it encountered the forces of modernization and standardization. This study also contributes to our understanding of the experience of modernity in India through the prism of music. The role of Madras city as patron and custodian of the performing arts, especially classical music offers an invaluable perspective on the larger processes of modernization in India.

In an immensely readable book peppered with anecdotes and conversations with leading musicians and critics of the day, as well as humorous visual representations, part caricature, part satirical, the author describes a rapidly changing society and its new look in early-twentieth-century Madras.
Contents:Introduction
Chapter 1: The Katcheri: Living Laboratory or Enchanted Space
Chapter 2: Articulating an Aesthetic: The Emergence of the Music Critic in Modern South India
Chapter 3: From the Gurukula to the University: Initiatives in Music Education
Chapter 4: The Lighter Side of Entertainment

On the History of Music: A Bibliographical Essay
Glossary
Index

Lakshmi Subramanian is Professor, Department of History and Culture, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. Her earlier publications include From the Tanjore Court to the Madras Music Academy: A Social History of Music in South India, O.U.P, Delhi, 2006.

WRITING HISTORY IN THE SOVIET UNION
Making the Past Work
Arup Banerji

342 pages 215x140 mm Hardback
Social Science Press-Orient Longman Joint publication
Rs 695
ISBN 978-81-87358-37-4
HISTORY, POLITICS, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Pub Date June 2008


THE HISTORY of the Soviet Union has been charted in several studies over the decades. These depictions have failed to draw attention to the political and academic environment within which these histories were composed. Writing History in the Soviet Union: Making the Past Work is aimed at understanding this environment.

The book seeks to identify the significant hallmarks of the production of Soviet history by Soviet as well as Western historians. The book surveys the rich abundance of writing the Russian Revolution generated as well as the divergent approaches to the history of the period. The conditions for research in Soviet archives are described as an aspect of official monitoring of history writing. Another instance of this is the manner by which history textbooks have, through the years, been withdrawn from schools and others officially nursed into circulation. This intervention, occasioned in the present circumstance by statements by President Putin himself, in the manner in which history is taught in Russian schools, continues to this day. In other words, over the years, the regime has always worked to make the past work.

Arup Banerji teaches Russian, Soviet and West European History at the Department of History, University of Delhi. He has published a study of private trade and traders during the 1920s, Merchants and Markets in Revolutionary Russia, 1917-30, and has written on politics and economic issues in the Russian Federation as well as on the Silk Routes.

Contents:Preface
Introduction: Inherited Traditions of Historical Scholarship
Chapter 1: The Histories of History in the Soviet Union
Chapter 2: The Impact of Glasnost on the Writing of History
Chapter 3: Histories of the Communist Party as Histories of the Soviet Union
Chapter 4: Depictions and Revisions: The Russian Revolution in History
Chapter 5: The Historical Archive
Chapter 6: History in Russian Schools
Bibliography
Index

PARTNERS IN DEVELOPMENTIndia and Switzerland
Richard Gerster

171 pages 160x250 mm Hardback 75 colour photographs
Rs 450
ISBN 978-81-87358-40-4
DEVELOPMENT STUDIES, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Pub Date April 2008


THIS ABUNDANTLY ILLUSTRATED, accessible and perceptive account of the Indo-Swiss cooperation in India’s development programme is a remarkable book. The cooperation dates back to 1958, and it is not widely known that Switzerland was the first country to enter into a treaty of friendship with the then newly independent India on 14 August 1948.

Partners in Development, as the title suggests, brings out the rare quality of a partnership between a donor and a recipient country. Written with a dispassionate assessment of this dynamic relationship which has undergone changes as India has itself become a donor country, the book throws open many important questions relating to development programmes in India today. The book states candidly that however important in specific instances, development cooperation should not be overestimated and that the Indo-Swiss development cooperation has benefited both sides. Nevertheless it comments that India is indeed a world economic power today, and Switzerland, jointly with other foreign agencies, has contributed to this success.
The book begins with an excellent introduction of the country’s brief history from independence to the present day, and concludes that India’s ‘economic miracle’, however important, is not as impressive as the survival and vitality of the country’s democratic institutions. This idea has been echoed by Gerster and other contributors to this volume.
It then moves on to dwell on areas where the cooperation has been successful as well as where it has not. The important areas of success have been in vocational training, animal husbandry and dairy farming, biotechnology and microfinance and methodology.

Richard Gerster is the winner of several development policy awards and has authored numerous books and articles on development policy He is the Director of Gerster Consulting, Switzerland (see www.gersterconsulting.ch).

POLITICAL THEOLOGIESPublic Religions in a Post-Secular World
Edited by Hent de Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan

RIGHTS NOT AVAILABLE
Social Science Press-Orient Longman joint publication
360 pages 180x240 mm Hardback
Rs 795
ISBN 978-81-87358-36-7
THEOLOGY, POLITICS, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIOLOGY
Pub Date January 2008

“There is no more important topic today than the role of religion in public life. It is vital in both peace and war, debate and consensus, democracy and repression, nationalism and transnational humanitarian action. For anyone wishing to survey the range of theoretical perspectives on this theme, this collection by Hent de Vries and Lawrence Sullivan is indispensable. It offers the single best assemblage of sources for understanding not only political theologies, but issues of pluralism, secularism, and contending ideas of the human that they raise.”

—CRAIG CALHOUN, President, Social Science Research Council

“The wholly unanticipated reemergence of religion into the realm of politics and public policy, which is happening all over the world, is puzzling and worrisome to some people. Many explanations for this surprising development have been advanced, none fully satisfactory. Now this volume brings together some of the keenest and best-informed analysis yet available, from a variety of disciplines and perspectives. It sets a new gold standard for future attempts to understand the growing role of religion in the twenty-first century.”

—HARVEY COX, Hollis Professor of Divinity, Harvard University

IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD, how can one bridge the private lives of individuals and public cultures or ways of life? In what ways does religion, with regard to words, gestures, and things, exert a pressure on structures of governance? Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-secular World opens an inquiry concerning the engagement of religion with politics.

Religion, in its local and global form, is perceived as a ‘problem’ to which intellectuals, policy-makers, cultural critics and economists direct their attention. A society is ‘post-secular’ if it reckons with the diminishing but enduring – and hence, perhaps, ever more resistant – existence of the religious.

The seventeen papers in this volume examine interrelationships between the political, economic and cultural characteristics of the ‘age of globalization’ on the one hand and the vision of society and structures of governance developed over millennia by religious traditions on the other. It explores the possibility that religion might give people a chance to lead better lives in the modern milieu.
The volume will be of great interest to students of religion, politics, sociology and philosophy, as well as the interested general reader.

Hent de Vries is Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at The Johns Hopkins University and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of: Philosophy and the Turn to Religion; Religion and Violence: Philosophical Perspectives from Kant to Derrida; and Minimal Theologies: Critiques of Secular Reason in Adorno and Levinas. He is the editor, with Samuel Weber, of Violence, Identity, and Self-Determination and Religion and Media.

Lawrence E. Sullivan is Professor of World Religions at the University of Notre Dame. The author of Icanchu’s Drum: An Orientation to Meaning in South American Religions, he was for many years director of Harvard University’s Center for the Study of World Religions, and he has served as President of the American Academy of Religion (AAR).

REGULATION, INSTITUTIONS AND THE LAW
Edited by Jaivir Singh

256 pages 215x140 mm Hardback
Rs 595
ISBN 978-81-87358-28-2 
ECONOMICS, POLITICS, INTERNATIONAL LABOUR LAWPub date November 2007


The twelve papers in Regulation, Institutions and the Law try to understand the specific context within which regulation has unfolded in a country like India, which is different in many ways from that of the United States and Western Europe. The volume also dwells on how these regulatory issues flow across national boundaries and affect the international arena in this age of globalization.

While some papers discuss conceptual issues others engage with how the political economy affects regulation both in terms of domestic political economy and in relation to pressures from international organizations. Banning the import of carpets, which use child labour, is a case in point. Yet other papers discuss some specific sectors in the economy, which are regulated, such as, finance, telecommunications and competition policy, in relation to the problem of regulation itself.

Jaivir Singh teaches at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has published articles on the economics of labour law, competition policy, regulation, legal procedure, judicial activism and separation of powers, and is the author of ‘Central Government Policies: Interface with Competition Policy Objectives’ in Pradeep S. Mehta ed., Towards a Functional Competition Policy for India (Jaipur: CUTS International 2005).

GLOBALIZATION AND THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALSNegotiating the ChallengeEdited by Manmohan Agarwal and Amit Shovon Ray

280 pages 215x140 mm Hardback
Rs 675
ISBN 978-81-87358-32-9
ECONOMICS, SOCIOLOGY, POLITICS, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Pub date September 2007


GLOBALIZATION is a controversial subject. While some argue that it promotes economic growth that translates into social progress, others believe that it is detrimental to social advancement.
Globalization and the Millennium Development Goals brings together conceptual and empirical insights into the interaction of globalization and the social sectors, focusing especially on the MDGs. Some of the papers included here explicitly look at the Indian experience with social progress in the context of globalization. The volume with introductory remarks by Meghnad Desai, reflects the multifarious views regarding the interplay between economic development and social progress and attempts to answer the question: Can globalization have a human face?

Manmohan Agarwal is Professor of Economics at the Centre for International Trade and Development at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Amit Shovon Ray, FRSH, is Professor of Economics (and currently the Chairman) at the Centre for International Trade and Development at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health.

READINGS IN HISTORYCULTURAL HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL INDIAEdited by Meenakshi Khanna

282 pages 215x140 mm 10 illustrations
Paperback Rs 230
ISBN 978-81-87358-30-5HISTORY, SOCIOLOGY, CULTURE STUDIES
Pub date July 2007


Cultural History of Medieval India is a part of the series, Readings in History. The books in this series have been edited and put together by eminent historians for their students.
This anthology of readings seeks to explore Indian culture in the medieval period through five themes: kingship traditions, social processes of religious devotion, inter-cultural perception, forms of identities, and aesthetics.

Written by well-known scholars, the eleven essays in this book present sub-cultures in diverse regional settings of the subcontinent. These readings introduce a new way of understanding medieval Indian history by engaging with interdisciplinary methods of research on issues that are significant to everyday existence in a plural society like that of India.
This book will be of great value to students of history, as well as to other readers interested in the culture of the medieval period in India.

Meenakshi Khanna is Reader in History, Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi.

READINGS IN HISTORY
DELHI: ANCIENT HISTORY
Edited by Upinder Singh

250 pages 215x140 mm
Paperback Rs 220
ISBN 978-81-87358-29-9
HISTORY, ARCHAEOLOGY, SOCIOLOGY
Pub date July 2006



NOT MANY people know that the busy and bustling capital city of Delhi and its surroundings have a long past, going back thousands of years. Prehistoric stone tools have surfaced here and many ancient remains have been found, sometimes accidentally by farmers tilling their fields, and at other times by archaeologists carrying out systematic excavations. A mound one passes everyday or a narrow strip of stream tells a story of ancient times. Centuries of history coexist with metro stations and plush cars.

The readings in this book give us glimpses of the lives of people who lived in the Delhi area over the centuries, and how these details have been pieced together by historians. It brings into focus the importance of the historian’s method and the sources of information found in ancient texts, archaeology and even legends and folklore, sometimes hanging on the thread of a slender historical fact.

The editor of the volume, points to the urgency of further exploration and documentation to fill in the still all-too-meagre details of Delhi’s ancient history. However, she ends on a note of caution, bordering on alarm, when she points out that invaluable evidence of the city’s past is being extensively destroyed due to quarrying and the construction of new roads and buildings. Such activities are an integral part of the modernization of a living city but the balance between modernization and the preservation of ancient remains is indeed very fragile and needs to be maintained from an informed and realistic perspective.
This collection of essays has been put together by a teacher for students of history, but will also be of enormous value to a large number of other interested readers.

Upinder Singh teaches ancient Indian history at the University of Delhi.

UNBECOMING MODERN
Colonialism, Modernity, Colonial Modernities
Edited by Saurabh Dube and Ishita Banerjee-Dube

‘…an indispensable read on the inextricable relation of modernity to coloniality.’

Sara Castro-Klaren, 
Johns Hopkins University

266 pages 215x140 mm Hardback
Rs 675
ISBN 978-81-87358-23-7
HISTORY, SOCIOLOGY, POLITICS, CULTURE STUDIES
Pub date January 2006


IN THIS VOLUME well-known scholars from India and Latin America – Enrique Dussel, Madhu Dubey, Walter Mignolo and Sudipta Sen to name a few – discuss the concepts of modernity and colonialism, and describe how the two relate to each other.
Unbecoming Modern: Colonialism, Modernity, Colonial Modernities explores the vital impact of the colonial pasts of India, Mexico, China and the even the Unites States on the processes through which these countries have become modern.

The collection is unique as it brings together a range of disciplines and perspectives. The topics discussed include the Zapatista movement in southern Mexico, the image of the South in recent African-American literature, the theories of Andre Gunder Frank about the early modernization of Asian countries, and the contradictions of the colonial state in India.

Saurabh Dube is Professor of History, Centre for Asian and African Studies, El Colegio de México, Mexico City.
Ishita Banerjee-Dube is Associate Professor, Centre for Asian and African Studies, El Colegio de México, Mexico City.

AFTER THE IRAQ WAR The Future of the UN and International Law
Edited by Bernhard Vogel, Rudolf Dolzer and Matthias Herdegen

228 pages 215x140 mm Hardback
Rs 595
ISBN 978-81-87358-21-3
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, POLITICS, LAW

Pub date July 2005



After the Iraq War: The Future of the UN and International Law opens up a powerful debate on the future of the world order.

The military occupation of Iraq by the United States and their allies in Spring 2003 has confronted the United Nations with new and fundamental questions concerning its authority, prestige, working methods, efficiency, even the justification of its existence in the future. Besides the United Nations, it concerns the general international law as such, especially the rules concerning the maintenance of peace and the prohibition of the use of force, which are also the central provisions of the United Nations Charter and the fundamental norms of customary international law. Contemporary general international law is inextricably linked to the fate of the United Nations. The very foundations of the post-war world order, which were established during the summer months of 1945 after the end of the Second World War, have been shaken. As regards the evaluation of the new situation since 2003, there is no unanimity among the various nations of the world. This divergence of fundamental positions on the future of international order, which runs right through the members of the Security Council, causes structural uncertainties and tensions to an extent that was not anticipated.

The purpose of this volume is to reappraise the findings on the current situation and to give a differentiated picture of the international debate on the future international order.

Professor Dr Bernhard Vogel is Minister President of Thuringia (retd.), Chairman of the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation.

Professor Dr Rudolf Dolzer is Director, Institute of International Law, University of Bonn.

Professor Dr Matthias Herdegen is Director, Institute of International Law, University of Bonn; Visiting Professor at the Global Law School, University of New York and Sorbonne University, Paris; Honorary Professor at University of Santafé de Bogotá.

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC PROFILE OF INDIAPeeyush Bajpai, Laveesh Bhandari and Aali Sinha

185 pages 277x212 mm Hardback Full Colour 84 colour-coded maps
Rs 1495
ISBN 978-81-87358-16-9
ECONOMICS, DEMOGRAPHY, SOCIOLOGY, POLITICS, GENDER STUDIES
Pub date June 2005




Also available as ebook at: http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/social_and_economic_profile_of_india/




Social & Economic Profile of India is the only book of its kind on India in Economic Geography. According to a reviewer, ‘there are some strong GIS systems, and there are strong spatial databases. This book is the first time these have come together in a satisfactory fashion.’

A singular contribution of Social & Economic Profile of India lies in the quality of its presentation. A very complex and a very wide range of data and analysis has been put forward with remarkable clarity and in a very reader friendly way. This state of the art data and analysis (which offers many surprises), gives an almost complete picture of the socio-economic conditions of India in just 173 pages. These 173 pages consist of 84 colour coded maps with a corresponding text in colour. This text is both brief, lucid, and to the point. This book is the work of great scholarship but made accessible to a wide section of readers. It tells the story of what India has achieved since 1991. The information on India’s development is of great relevance in the international scene today.

The subjects covered are of enormous public interest and also extremely useful for the framing of public policies. This book is equally indispensable to all the state departments of the government and to Indian companies wishing to invest in particular areas as well as foreign corporate organisations that wish to invest in India. It goes without saying that the researcher will find this comprehensive body of data and analysis very useful. Anyone wishing to go deeper into a particular problem has been directed to go to the relevant sources.

Peeyush Bajpai is author of many reports and studies on Indian economic geography.

Laveesh Bhandari has taught in the Boston University and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi.

Aali Sinha is a researcher at Indicus Analytics.

‘An attractively packaged new volume of single-page notes on various social and economic indicators brought out by the Social Science Press….’
-Business Standard, 18 August 2005‘Social Science Press has done an equally remarkable job of bringing world-class paper and printing to bear on this problem. As little as five to ten years ago, it was not possible to envision a book like this about India, but this has now become a reality…’
- Economic and Political Weekly, 22 April 2006

LIVED ISLAM IN SOUTH ASIAAdaptation, Accommodation and Conflict
Edited by Imtiaz Ahmad and Helmut Reifeld


334 pages 215x140 mm Hardback

Rs 695
ISBN 978-81-87358-15-2
SOCIOLOGY, POLITICS, RELIGION, CONFLICT, ETHNIC STUDIES
Pub date 2004

Also available as ebook at: http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/lived_islam_in_south_asia/

Lived Islam in South Asia: Adaptation, Accommodation and Conflict is an extremely timely and important publication. Fourteen interesting papers, based on intensive fieldwork in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India, explore a highly controversial subject. They touch on the everyday religious lives of the Muslims in these countries.

The book argues that Islam cannot be understood through the works of theologians alone, for whom it is a formal, uniform and rigid system of beliefs and practices. Popular Islam, or Islam as it is practised by millions of Muslims in South Asia, has an empirical validity and is a dynamic process of adjustment and accommodation as well as conflict with other religions, with which it coexists.

Imtiaz Ahmad is former professor of Political Sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Helmut Reifeld is India representative of Konrad Adenauer Foundation, New Delhi.‘The articles…provide rich documentation of groups many regionally based, that may not be well known. They not only document ‘lived Islam’ but they are a fruit of ‘lived’ experience on the part of the authors themselves… .’

Biblio, Vol X, nos 7 & 8

SIKKIM HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2001

Mahendra P. Lama

127 pages 277x212 mm Paperback Text in two colours
Rs 595
ISBN 978-81-87358-04-6
ECONOMICS, SOCIOLOGY, POLITICS, DEMOGRAPHY, DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

VERY LITTLE is known about Sikkim. This book outlines its development since it became a part of the Indian Union in 1975. It covers subjects such as population, poverty and planning; health, education and the status of women; land and agriculture; forest and environment; infrastructure for development such as industry, power and state finance; and governance for sustainable human development.

Mahendra P. Lama is Professor, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

TAMIL NADU HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT

350 pages 277x212 mm Paperback Text in two colours
Rs 630
ISBN 978-81-87358-14-5
ECONOMICS, SCOIOLOGY, POLITICS, DEMOGRAPHY, DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

THIS IS Tamil Nadu’s first Human Development Report. Tamil Nadu has fared very well in human development among the states in India. It needs to be noted, however, that there are vast variations in the indicators of human development within the state itself.

Factors contributing to human development are disaggregated in this Report, and analysed at the district level. This will enable readers to understand the regional disparities in Tamil Nadu and the reasons behind them. The Report not only puts within one cover, all the various aspects of human development in Tamil Nadu but also seeks to explain why the state has fared well in certain areas and not in others. It also highlights the policy interventions that will be required to correct the imbalances.

Tamil Nadu Human Development Report is a balanced and objective account of the state’s performance and as such, will be of immense value to those planning for growth, social justice and equity in the state, as well as researchers and students of social sciences in university departments and other institutions.

REFORMING INDIA’S SOCIAL SECTORPoverty, Nutrition, Health And Education
Edited by K. Seeta Prabhu and R. Sudarshan

337 pages 215x140 mm Hardback
Rs 690
ISBN 978-81-87358-10-7
ECONOMICS, SOCIOLOGY, HEALTH, EDUCATION, DEMOGRAPHY, GENDER STUDIES

It is widely believed that economic reforms widen inequalities in societies which are already highly unequal and the impact of economic reforms on social sectors, particularly in developing economies like India, has therefore been a subject of great concern These economies, it is argued, face the double problem of poverty, deprivation and inequality on the one hand and cutbacks in fiscal expenditures (to prune budgetary expenditures) on the other. This book addresses this problem, drawing out the debates in each of the themes of poverty alleviation, nutrition, health and education with the use of theoretical and empirical analysis.

K. Seeta Prabhu is Professor of Development Economics, University of Mumbai and Head, Human Development Resource Centre, UNDP, New Delhi.
R. Sudarshan is Adviser, Access to Justice, Oslo Governance Centre, Oslo.

DYNAMICS OF BANK DEPOSITSThe Developing States in India
Debesh Roy

200 pages 215x140 mm Hardback
Rs 595
ISBN 978-81-87358-11-4
ECONOMICS, SOCIOLOGY, POLITICS

Dynamics of Bank Deposits: The Developing States in India points out that there is ample scope for faster mobilisation of deposits in the rural centres – the unbanked and underbanked areas – where bank deposit is the only profitable savings instrument available. The data presented in this book is enriched by a comparative analysis of the growth of bank deposits in ten selected economically developed states, and in ten developing areas for the years 1973 and 1999.

The economically developed states studied were Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Delhi and the developing areas examined were Assam, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Orissa, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

Debesh Roy is a Ph.D in Economics and has a vast experience in the financial sector. He is manager at National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD).

HUMAN SECURITY IN SOUTH ASIAGender, Energy, Migration and GlobalisationEdited by P. R. Chari and Sonika Gupta

200 pages 215x140 mm Hardback
Rs 630
ISBN 978-81-87358-09-1
POLITICS, HUMAN RIGHTS, ENERGY, MIGRATION STUDIES

THE WORD SECURITY has a military connotation and refers to the activities involved in protecting or defending a country, in which the state has a central role. This book argues that the state provides as well as threatens security. Therefore, it needs to be checked and balanced by broadening the concept of security to include both military and non-military threats such as those related to social, economic, ecological and political causes.

P.R. Chari is Director, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi and Visiting Fellow Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.

Sonika Gupta is Research Officer, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies.

WTO AGREEMENT AND INDIAN AGRICULTUREEdited by Anwarul Hoda


235 pages 215x140 mm Hardback

Rs 660
ISBN 978-81-87358-07-7
ECONOMICS, POLITICS, TRADE, LAW, AGRICULTURE

IN INDIA, the WTO Agreement has been dogged by controversy from the very beginning.

This volume attempts to capture this ongoing debate. An interesting feature of this book is that it is interactive. Nine papers on the subject have been interspersed with arguments and counterarguments on them to flesh out the various strands in the controversy making it comprehensible to the interested reader while placing a wealth of data before the expert.

Anwarul Hoda, former Deputy Director-General in the WTO, and Professor, the Indian Council for Research in International Economic Relations (ICRIER), New Delhi.

TRADE, FINANCE AND INVESTMENT IN SOUTH ASIAEdited by T. N. Srinivasan

487 pages 215x140 mm Hardback
Rs 780
ISBN 978-81-87358-05-3
ECONOMICS, FINANCE, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, TRADE, POLITICS

THIS BOOK contains an important set of papers covering subjects such as the impact of changing global trade policies on India; charting a free trade area in South Asia; India’s informal trade with Bangladesh and Nepal; India-Bangladesh bilateral trade; a plan to strengthen regional trade cooperation in South Asia with special reference to India and Pakistan; a comparative analysis of the Chinese and Indian experience of multinational and expatriate foreign direct investment; foreign direct investment and economic integration in the SAARC region and health policy challenges for India.

All these papers are then placed within an overall perspective in an original paper by T. N. Srinivasan ‘Issues in Trade and Finance in South Asia’.

T. N. Srinivasan is Samuel C. Park Jr Professor of Economics at Yale University.

MIDDLE CLASS VALUES IN INDIA AND WESTERN EUROPEEdited by Imtiaz Ahmad and Helmut Reifeld

250 pages 215x140 mm Hardback
Rs 510
ISBN 978-81-87358-13-8 

COMPARATIVE SOCIOLOGY, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

THIRTEEN EXTREMELY interesting essays discuss what constitutes the middle classes, and distinguishes their values and way of life in France, Germany and India.

Imtiaz Ahmad is former professor of Political Sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Helmut Reifeld is India representative of Konrad Adenauer Foundation, New Delhi.

THE EVERYDAY POLITICS OF LABOURWorking Lives In India’s Informal EconomyGeert De Neve

365 pages 225x145 mm Hardback
Rs 795
ISBN 978-81-87358-18-3 

SOCIOLOGY, ECONOMICS, GENDER STUDIES

The Everyday Politics of Labour : Working Lives in India’s Informal Economy presents an analysis of contemporary labour politics in India’s informal economy. Following increased integration in global economic networks, India’s informal sectors, in some parts of the country, have expanded drastically over recent decades and are employing an increasing number of the country’s working population.

The book presents a powerful critique of simplifying representations that portray workers’ politics in this informal sector as marked by low levels of class consciousness, limited abilities for resistance, and ruled by ‘primordial’ relations of caste, kinship and patronage.
Drawing on detailed ethnographic accounts of three textile industries in Tamil Nadu, collected during two and a half years of fieldwork between 1995 and 2000, the author describes everyday labour activism, explores the character of trade unionism and individualized forms of resistance, and depicts the political culture of the shop floor. A recurrent theme of the book is that a preoccupation with relations of production (or class relations) has for too long marginalized the study of relations in production. The latter focuses on the ways in
which relations of hierarchy, authority, class and gender are enacted on a day-to-day basis
within the workplace, and how they intertwine with neighbourhood and community relations.

Interesting case studies illustrate how labour politics have been shaped both by the social mobility of some communities and the increased feminization of some occupations.
While castes in the dyeing industries, which were considered to be polluting, have become owners of dyeing factories, gender patterns in the handloom factories have been reversed as men have moved out to power loom sectors in search of better-paid jobs.

Geert De Neve is Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Sussex.

‘With this book, de Neve has established himself as a skilled analyst, able to relate the fine detail of workers’ daily lives to the big debates about development and progress.’

Barbara Harriss-White in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 2007

CHILDREN’S LIFEWORLDSGender, Welfare and Labour in the Developing World
Olga Nieuwenhuys

‘Children’s Lifeworlds is a landmark. It represents a depth of fieldwork exploration that enables the author… to challenge current definitions of child labour and to offer insights based on the analysis of details of children’s work…’
- Pamela Reynolds

Olga Nieuwenhuys is a staff member of the Amsterdam Research School on Global Issues and Development Research (AGIDS) and teaches at the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands).

RIGHTS NOT AVAILABLE
228 pages 232x155 mm Hardback
Rs 510
ISBN 978-81-87358-01-5
SOCIOLOGY, HUMAN RIGHTS, GENDER STUDIES, LABOUR LAW

VIRAMMALife of a Dalit
Viramma, Josiane Racine, Jean-Luc Racine



RIGHTS NOT AVAILABLE
331 pages 232x155 mm Paperback
Rs 325
ISBN 978-81-87358-19-0 
SOCIOLOGY, GENDER STUDIES, CULTURE STUDIES


THIS IS THE first Indian edition of this remarkable book which created a great impact in France and was subsequently translated into English and Italian. This edition carries a fresh Afterword by Jean-Luc and Josiane Racine.
Viramma, an untouchable woman by birth, and listed as one of the authors, narrated the story of her life over a period of ten years to Josiane Racine, a Tamil-born ethnomusicologist educated in France. This book is the result of that conversation.

Viramma, was an untouchable woman, an agricultural labourer, grandmother, and until recently lived in Karani in Tamil Nadu. She died in November 2000.
Josiane Racine researches popular culture in South India.
Jean-Luc Racine is Senior Fellow, Centre for Indian Studies, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris.

RELIGION AND PERSONAL LAW IN SECULAR INDIAA Call to Judgement
Edited by Gerald James Larson


RIGHTS NOT AVAILABLE
376 pages 215x140 mm Hardback
Rs 630
ISBN 978-81-87358-06-0
SOCIOLOGY, RELIGION, LAW


THIS BOOK provides a comprehensive look into the issues and challenges that India faces as it tries to put a uniform civil code into practice. Scholars representing a wide range of disciplines, from both North America and India, provide perspective on complex issues of multiculturalism that characterizes Indian society and identities. Readers seeking a deeper understanding of Indian history and culture will find a sensitive handling of the tensions between religious law and the claims of a modern, secular state in this timely volume.

Gerald James Larson is Rabindranath Tagore Professor of Indian Culture and Civilization, and Director of India Studies programme at Indiana University, Bloomington.

RESISTANCE AND THE STATENepalese Experiences
Edited by David N. Gellner


RIGHTS NOT AVAILABLE
365 pages 215x140 mm Hardback
Rs 630
ISBN 978-81-87358-08-4
SOCIOLOGY, POLITICS, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

THE CONTRIBUTORS to this volume illuminate the complex relationship – sometimes wary, sometimes accommodative, sometimes violent – between a modernizing, developmentalist state and the people it professes to represent and benefit. This book covers subjects such as state, development and local politics, state and ethic activism, and state and Maoist insurgency. It also contains an important introductory paper on the transformation of the Nepalese state by David N. Gellner.

David N. Gellner is Lecturer, Department of Sociology, University of Oxford.

INCOME-POVERTY AND BEYONDHuman Development in India
Edited by Raja J. Chelliah and R. Sudarshan


RIGHTS NOT AVAILABLE
221 pages 215x140 mm Hardback
Rs 510
ISBN 978-81-87358-00-8
SOCIOLOGY, ECONOMICS, GENDER STUDIES, POLITICS

THE BOOK emphasizes the need to go beyond the conventional definition of poverty and look at the various human aspects of the problem. Eminent social scientists study poverty in its wider sense, in the light of the latest data available for India.

Raja J. Chelliah is Professor Emeritus, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi and Chairperson, Madras School of Economics.
R. Sudarshan is Adviser, Access to Justice, Oslo Governance Centre, Oslo.