UNRULY HILLSNature and Nation in India’s Northeast
Bengt G. Karlsson

‘This wonderful ethnography of Meghalaya’s natural resource politics, of nature and nation, makes engrossing reading. Deforestation, mining, the drying up of rivers, climate change as well as insurgency and sovereignty are words that trip easily off policy makers’ tongues, but too often, they lack engagement with real life. Here is a book that brings flesh and passion to these issues showing what they mean to the people affected. Balancing multiple actors and institutions, from the Supreme Court of India which banned timber felling in the Northeast to the Khasi Student’s Union which is protesting against uranium mining to ordinary men and women who recount myths about their sacred hills, this volume fills a critical gap in the environmental history and ethnography of both Northeast India and the current moment of resource management.’
Nandini Sundar, Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University

‘Unruly Hills is one of the most original and provocative books on environment and politics in India. Communities supposedly control most land, forests and other natural resources in the hills of Northeast India. However capitalist transformations have rendered the hill communities quite powerless: they are hardly able to control the local resource base. Behind the legal fictions of community ownership lie the ugly reality of a ‘resource frontier’ where there is massive privatization and accumulation of land by local elites and serious environmental degradation as the result of the crude exploitation of forests, water, and mineral resources. Karlsson’s book brims with fresh insights on the crisis of legitimacy of India’s democratic institutions in this border region.’
Sanjib Baruah, Bard College, New York and Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi

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350 pp 215x140 mm Hardback 14 illustrations
SSP-OBS joint publication
Published price Rs 695
ISBN 978-81-87358-59-6
Pub date Jan 2011

____________________________________________

Unruly Hills examines the intersection of environmental and ethnic politics in the Indian state of Meghalaya. Based on extensive fieldwork, the author traces the entanglements of forest management, mining and territorial conflicts with local demands for indigenous sovereignty and rebellious aspirations for ethnic homelands. Massive extractions of limestone; controversies over uranium deposits; and the Supreme Court ban on logging apply to the cases specifically explored.
The book will be of interest to students of anthropology, political ecology and environmental history as well as to those concerned with development and the rights of indigenous peoples.
ContentsIntroduction
1. Nature and Nation
2. Elusive Forests
3. Shifting Land Rights
4. Mining Matters
5. Indigenous Governance
6. Political Ecology at the Frontier
Bibliography
Index

Bengt G. Karlsson is Associate Professor in Social Anthropology at Stockholm University. His main research interests concern the politics of nature and identity, especially in relation to indigenous peoples’ movements in India. He is author of Contested Belonging: An Indigenous People’s Struggle for Forest and Identity in Sub-Himalayan Bengal (2000) and co-editor of Indigeneity in India (2006) with T.B. Subba.

MARRIAGE, LOVE, CASTE AND KINSHIP SUPPORT
Lived Experiences of the Urban Poor in India
Shalini Grover

‘This book provides a new and welcome perspective on contemporary marriage and co-habitation patterns among the Indian urban, low-caste poor. This is a subject on which little previous anthropological research has been done; consequently, much that has been written on it is replete with stereotypes. The rich ethnography, with its large number of extended case studies of the marital experiences of individual women and married couples, is one of the work’s strong points. It should be widely read by anyone interested in the Indian family and kinship structure or in issues of poverty, marriage, and urban life more generally.’
- Professor (Emerita) Sylvia Vatuk, University of Illinois

‘This book deserves a large audience. With fascinating case studies and detailed ethnographic material, Shalini Grover enriches our understanding of how poor urban women in Delhi negotiate their married lives, move in and out of relationships, and mobilise support from their kin or from women-led informal courts. Using her data to argue robustly against the many unfounded presumptions about gender politics, love, marriages, intimacy, and married women’s relationships with their families of origin, she makes important interventions into wider debates about gender, marriage and kinship.’
- Professor Patricia Jeffery, University of Edinburgh‘Shalini Grover’s ethnography of marriage, re-marriage and arbitration in an urban squatter colony makes a significant contribution to recent feminist and anthropological research on marriage, kinship and law in India. Grover provides rich vignettes of cultural negotiations around marriage: gender- and caste-inflected ideologies of roles in marriage, the cushion provided by kin support, conjugality in the shadow of the law. We see the ways in which marriage is dynamically shaped through kin and labour demands, and legal pluralities emerging through innovative NGO and caste council actions. My favourite is the chapter on mahila panchayats, “women’s courts” which work to change the adversarial contours of marital disputes but are nonetheless embedded in normative gendered scripts.’
- Professor Srimati Basu, University of Kentucky

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

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256 pp 215x140 mm Hardback 9 illustrations
Published price Rs 595
ISBN 978-81-87358-56-5
Pub date November 2010

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Marriage, Love, Caste and Kinship Support: Lived Experiences of the Urban Poor in India makes use of interesting case studies and photographs to describe the everyday life in a squatter settlement in Delhi.
The book helps to understand the marital experiences of these people most of whom belong to the Scheduled Caste and live in one identified geographical space. The author describes the shifts within their marriages, remarriages and other kinds of unions and their striking diversities, which have been described with care. Shalini Grover also examines the close ties of married women with their mothers and natal families.
An important contribution of the book lies in the unfolding of the role of women-led informal courts, Mahila Panchayats, and their influence in conflict resolution. This takes place in a distinctly different mode of community-based arbitration against the backdrop of mainstream legal structures and male-dominated caste associations.
The book will be of interest to students of sociology and social anthropology, gender studies, development studies, law and psychology. Activists and family counsellors will also find the book useful.

Shalini Grover is author of several papers on marriage and kinship including ‘Lived Experiences: Marriage, Notions of Love and Kinship Support Amongst Poor Women in Delhi’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 43(1), 2009. This book was written during her tenure as a Sir Ratan Tata Fellow in Sociology at the Institute of Economic Growth, University of Delhi.

ContentsForeword by Professor Patricia Uberoi
Acknowledgements
Glossary
1: Mapping the Debate on Marriage
2: Revisiting Arranged Marriages: Marital Roles, Conflict and Kinship Support
3: Courtships and Love Marriages
4: Secondary Unions and Other Conjugal Arrangements
5: Informal Dispute Settlement: The Mahila Panchayats
6: Towards the Democratization of Marriage and Relationships: ConclusionAnnexure
Bibliography
Index

New in Paperback The Enigma of the Kerala Woman

The ENIGMA OF THE KERALA WOMAN
A Failed Promise of Literacy
Edited by Swapna Mukhopadhyay

'I am very interested to learn about your book on Kerala women which you have just published. I look forward to getting hold of a copy and reading it. ...I know Swapna’s work and expect it to be very interesting and good. ...I will, ... personally benefit greatly … [from] the book.'
AMARTYA SEN,
Nobel Laureate and Lamont University Professor, Harvard University

‘The strength of this book is its methodological pluralism and combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. The photographs and narratives support the essays by providing a glimpse into the everyday processes of the social construc­tion of gender. … It is an important resource for the body of research which demonstrates that only policies that are informed by an under­standing of entrenched power structures and explicitly target it can produce trans­formative and empowering outcomes. Its wide-angled overview drawing upon a range of recent academic work on Kerala opens up many possibilities for further detailed research.’
JANAKI SRINIVASAN,
Economic and Political Weekly

203 pages 215x140 mm Paperback 14 b/w photographs (visual anthropology)
First Hardback edition in 2007
Rs 295
ISBN 978-81-87358-44-2
SOCIOLOGY, DEMOGRAPHY, GENDER STUDIES, ECONOMICS
Pub date 2011

The Enigma of the Kerala Woman: A Failed Promise of Literacy consists of multi-disciplinary research carried out on various aspects of gender relations in Kerala by scholars from a range of social science disciplines under The Gender Network, a regional network of researchers investigating the phenomenon of gender under varied social and economic settings. The introductory chapter provides an overarching framework for the individual studies. Breaking new ground in analytical and methodological dimensions of Women’s Studies, the papers collectively seek to provide an answer to the ‘enigma’ of the Kerala woman.

The book comes alive through two separate sections. The first one is devoted to case studies of women from the area of research and the second to photographs of Kerala women in various social settings with detailed anthropological captions. The two sections complement each other in supporting the main theme of the book. The book has a rich body of data which provides comparative figures relating to development indices for Kerala in relation to some other states as well as India as a whole.

Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
Section 1
1. Understanding the Enigma of Women’s Status in Kerala: Does High Literacy Necessarily Translate into High Status? - Swapna Mukhopadhyay
2. Gender Disparity in Kerala: A Critical Reinterpretation - S. Irudaya Rajan and Sreerupa
3. Mental Health, Gender Ideology and Women’s Status in Kerala - Swapna Mukhopadhyay, Jayanti Basu and S. Irudaya Rajan
4. Re-forming Women in Malayalee Modernity: A Historical Overview- J. Devika and Avanti Mukherjee
SECTION 2
5. Living as a Woman: Some Case Studies
SECTION 3
6. Gender Disparity in Kerala: Some Visual Images
Index

Swapna Mukhopadhyay is former Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economic Growth and former Director at the Institute of Social Studies Trust, New Delhi. She is currently involved as an advisor in some international development projects and occasionally teaches courses in Economics at various universities in the city. She also plays the violin and teaches Western classical music at the Delhi School of Music.

TELECOMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY IN INDIA
State, Business and Labour in a Global EconomyDilip Subramanian

‘This is an impressive achievement that fills a major gap in the literature, that is genuinely inter-disciplinary, and that calls on a range of Francophone literature on the sociology of industry and work that is seldom cited in studies of Indian industry.’
Jonathan Parry, FBA
Emeritus Professor of Anthropology,
London School of Economics and Political Science

‘[The work]… has the potential to become a benchmark study in government-business-labour relations during the import-substituting industrialization era in India…. The proposed work evidently has a global readership….’
Tirthankar Roy,
London School of Economics and Political Science


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


690 pages 215x140 mm Hardback
Published price Rs 895
ISBN 978-81-87358-42-8
BUSINESS HISTORY, LABOUR HISTORY, SOCIOLOGY OF WORK, POLITICS
Pub Date July 2010
Telecommunications Industry in India represents the first comprehensive study of a state-run enterprise in the telecommunications industry. The study traces over a period of half a century (1948-2009) the growth and decline of Indian Telephone Industries (ITI). At the heart of the monograph stands one central interrogation: How does the socio-technical system of production in a state-controlled firm shape the relations linking the four main actors: the state, management, union and workers?

The original contribution of this book lies in combining business history and labour history within a single conceptual framework. The author evaluates the broader conclusions about the telecommunications industry and public sector through the lens of an individual firm to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics of change in the globalizing Indian economy.

The work is well in command of the literature on the global business history counterparts of ITI in the telecommunications industry. It is further strengthened by the use of French material on the subject which is now accessible for the first time in English.

Dilip Subramanian is Associate Professor at the Reims Management School and is affiliated to the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris.

ContentsIntroduction1. The Construction of a Monopoly
2. The History and Politics of Technological Change
3. The Burden of Monopoly and State Regulation
4. The Advent of Competition: Fallout of Global Telecommunications Deregulation
5. Market Forces in Full Play: Management Gains or Losses for Labour?
6. Spheres of Practice: An Ethnography of Printed Circuit Board Assembly Work
7. Workers and Independent Unionism
8. Rank-and-File Challenge to Union and Management Authority
9. Passions of Language and Caste
ConclusionEpilogue
Index

NATURE, CULTURE AND RELIGION AT THE CROSSROADS OF ASIA
Edited by Marie Lecomte-Tilouine


‘A rich and wide-ranging collection that should be consulted by anyone who wants to know what meaning “nature” has in Asian world religions and in many contemporary Asian societies.’
David N. Gellner
Professor of Social Anthropology
University of Oxford

‘This interdisciplinary book is a significant, original and valuable contribution to…the Himalayan environment. …The book will appeal to students of the Himalaya and of the environment generally and…to scholars in religious studies. Several of the essays will work well in courses in Himalayan anthropology and religion as well as in environmental studies.’
Arjun Guneratne
Macalester College
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388 pages 215x140 mm 14 illustrations Hardback
Published price Rs 750
ISBN 978-81-87358-46-6
CULTURE STUDIES, HIMALAYAN ANTHROPOLOGY, RELIGION, ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
Pub date June 2010
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Nature, Culture and Religion at the Crossroads of Asia explores how ethnic groups living in the Himalayan regions understand nature and culture. The first part addresses the opposition between nature and culture in Asia’s major religious traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Shamanism. The second part brings together specialists of different representative groups living in the heterogeneous Himalayan region. They examine how these indigenous groups perceive their world. This includes understanding their mythic past, in particular, the place of animals and spirits in the world of humans as they see it and the role of ritual in the everyday lives of these people. The book takes into account how these various perceptions of the Himalayan peoples are shaped by a globalized world. The volume thus provides new ways of viewing the relationship between humans and their environment.
Marie Lecomte-Tilouine is Senior Researcher in Social Anthropology at CNRS, France, and teaches at the Institut National des Langues Orientales, Paris. She has recently published Hindu Kingship, Ethnic Revival and Maoist Rebellion in Nepal (Collected Essays), Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2009.

Contents
Introduction - Marie Lecomte-Tilouine
PART I – Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Shamanism
At the Articulation of Nature and Artifice - Charles Malamoud
Nature and Culture in Tibetan Philosophy - Stéphane Arguillère
Allah, Saints and Men in Islam - Marc Gaborieau
Variations in Shamanist Siberia - Roberte N. Hamayon
PART II – Himalayan Case Studies
To be more Natural than Others - Marie Lecomte-Tilouine
Subjectivity and Governance in the Himalayan Environment - Ben Campbell
Political Aspects of the Territorial Cult among the Mewahang Rai - Martin Gaenszle
‘Wilderness of the Civilization’ - Subhadra Mitra Channa
Love and Vengeance in Indus Kohistan - Claus Peter Zoller
Conceptions on Tibetan Relics - Rachel Guidoni
Plant Growth Processes and Animal Health in Northwest Yunnan - Andreas Wilkes
Terrace Cultivation and Mental Landscapes in Southern Yunnan - Pascal Bouchery
The Sacred Confluence, between Nature and Culture - Chiara Letizia
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LITERATURE AND NATIONALIST IDEOLOGY
Writing Histories of Modern Indian LanguagesEdited by Hans Harder

400 pp 215x140 mm Hardback
Published price Rs 695
ISBN 978-81-87358-33-6
Tentative Pub Date March 2010
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE, LINGUISTICS, HISTORY, SOCIOLOGY

‘This volume takes on…big questions, making a sophisticated and significant contribution to the great tradition of assessing the emergence of literary modernity in South Asia.’- Vasudha Dalmia, Professor of Hindi and Chair of the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California

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

Writing histories of literature means making selections, passing value judgments, and incorporating or rejecting foregoing traditions. The book argues that in many parts of India, literary histories play an important role in creating a cultural ethos. They are closely linked with nationalism in general and various regional ‘sub-nationalisms’ in particular.

Literary historiography helps to establish a national literature in a way that is not always unproblematic: systematic representation of literary works and authors is as much part of this story as conscious omissions or political spins in the making of a literary heritage.The contributors to this volume look at a great variety of aspects of the historiography of modern regional languages of India. The approach excludes classical languages of India from this approach, except Tamil which is considered a modern and a classical language at the same time. It includes the late yet undoubtedly successful arrival of English in the nation’s literary corpus.

Hans Harder teaches Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany.

Contents
Introduction - Hans Harder
1. Shaping a Literary Space: Early Literary Histories in Malayalam and Normative Uses of the Past - Udaya Kumar
2 Drowning in the Ocean of Tamil: Islamic Texts and the Historiography of Tamil Literature - Torsten Tschacher
3. From Scattered Archives to the Centre of Discourse: Histories of Telugu Literature in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Heiko Frese
4. Beyond the Nation: A Comparatist’s Thoughts on some Foundational Categories in the Literary Historiography of ‘Post’-colonial South Asian Literatures- Ipshita Chanda
5. Dinesh Chandra Sen’s ‘The Folk Literature of Bengal’: The Canonization of Folk and the Conception of the Feminine - Sourav Kargupta
6. Ethics or Aesthetics? Obscenity as a Category for Evaluating the Hindi Public Sphere in Colonial North India - Charu Gupta

7. George Abraham Grierson’s Literary Hindustan - Ira Sarma
8. The Impact of Sectarian Lobbyism on Hindi Literary Historiography: The Fascinating Story of Bhagvadacharya Ramanandi - Purushottam Agrawal
9. The Politics of Exclusion?: The Place of Muslims, Urdu and its Literature in Ramchandra Shukla’s ‘Hindi Sahitya ka Itihas’ - Navina Gupta
10. A Discourse of Difference: ‘Syncretism’ as a Category in Indian Literary History - Thomas de Bruijn11. Unscripted: The People of Arunachal Pradesh in Literary and other National Histories - Stuart Blackburn
12. Indian Literature in English and the Problem of Naturalisation - Hans Harder
13. The Mahatma as Proof: The Nationalist Origins of the Historiography of Indian Writing in English - Snehal Shingavi

THE MANY WORLDS OF SARALA DEVI: A DiaryTranslated from Jeevaner Jharapata
Sukhendu Raywith an Introduction by Bharati Ray&

THE TAGORES AND SARTORIAL STYLES: A Photo EssayMalavika Karlekar

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

228 pp 215x140 mm Hardback 15 illustrations
Published price Rs 550
ISBN 978-81-87358-31-2
Pub date January 2010

This charming book The Many Worlds of Sarala Devi and The Tagores and Sartorial Styles, as the titles suggest, contain two separate but related writings on the Tagores. The Tagores were a pre-eminent family which became synonymous with the cultural regeneration of India, specifically of Bengal, in the nineteenth century.
The first writing is a sensitive translation of Sarala Devi’s memoirs from the Bengali, Jeevaner Jharapata, by Sukhendu Ray. It is the first autobiography written by a nationalist woman leader of India. Sarala Devi was Rabindranath Tagore’s niece and had an unusual life. The translation unfolds, among other things, what it was like to grow up in a big affluent house Jorasanko, that had more than 116 inmates and a dozen cooks! The second writing by Malavika Karlekar is a photo essay, creatively conceived, visually reflecting the social and cultural trends of the times, through styles of dress, jewellery and accoutrements. The modern style of wearing a sari was introduced by Jnanadanandini Devi, a member of the Tagore family.
The introduction by the well-known historian, Bharati Ray, very perceptively captures the larger context of family, marriage, women’s education and politics of the time which touched Sarala Devi’s life. She points out that if memoirs are a kind of social history then women’s diaries record social influences not found in official accounts and are therefore, a rich source of documentation.

Sukhendu Ray has published several translations from Bengali literature of which the more recent ones are, The Winged Horse from Thakurmar Jhuli (OUP, 1997); Rabindranath Tagore’s Chokher Bali (Rupa, 2006) and Sukanta Chaudhuri ed. Selected Writings for Children: Rabindranath Tagore (OUP, 2006).
Bharati Ray is Honorary Professor, Department of History, Calcutta University. She is the author of Early Feminists in Colonial Bengal: Sarala Devi Chaudhurani and Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (OUP, 2002); From Independence Towards Freedom: Indian Women since 1947 (OUP, 1999) and From the Seams of History: Essays on Indian Women (OUP, 1995).
Malavika Karlekar is Editor, Indian Journal of Gender Studies and the Curator of Re-presenting Indian Women 1875-1947: A Visual Documentary. Her recent publications include Remembered Childhood: Essays in Honour of André Béteille co-edited with Rudrangshu Mukherjee (OUP, 2010); In So Many Words: Women’s Life Experiences from Western and Eastern India co-edited with Aparna Basu (Routledge, 2008) and Re-visioning the Past: Early Photography in Bengal 1875-1915 (OUP, 2005).

INDIA’S ECONOMIC FUTURE
Education, Technology, Energy and EnvironmentEdited by Manmohan Agarwal


294 pages 215x140 mm Hardback
Rs 595
ISBN 978-81-87358-17-6
EDUCATION, ECONOMICS, POLITICS, BUSINESS STUDIES
Pub Date September 2009

Also see:http://www.cigionline.org/publications/2009/8/indias-economic-future-education-energy-and-environment

Available as ebook at http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/indias_economic_future/

The Indian economy continues to grow rapidly, taking in its stride poor harvests and rising oil prices. Industrial output, which had tended to be relatively low, has increased to double-digit levels, accompanied by rising levels of savings and investment. India’s healthy export performance has resulted in increased amounts of foreign exchange reserves, insuring against a large balance of payments (BOP) deficit in the future. An important factor in this process has been India’s relative political stability. Democracy is well entrenched and changes of government occur reasonably peacefully.

Is there a fly in the ointment? Could the growth process slacken or can it be accelerated further? What are the constraints to maintaining a high rate of growth over the next decade or two? These questions acquire special significance as we try to understand long-term growth in the current context of global economic slowdown. The papers in this volume seek to answer these questions.

Manmohan Agarwal former Professor, Centre for International Trade and Development, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), is Senior Visiting Fellow at The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), Canada. He has a long and distinguished record of expertise in international trade, development and economics as it relates to Asia, and especially to India.
Contents:
Introduction by Manmohan AgarwalSECTION I: MACRO POLICY, TECHNOLOGY AND GROWTHMaintenance of a High Rate of Growth: A Macroeconomic Perspective by Manmohan Agarwal
Emerging through Technological Capability? Analysing India’s Technological Trajectory by Amit Shovon Ray
Determinants, Constraints and Impact of Foreign Direct Investment: India–China Comparison by N. S. Siddharthan
Agricultural Development Policies and Growth of Indian Agriculture by Ramesh Chand
SECTION II: EDUCATION
School Education: A Constraint to the Sustainability of High Growth Rate in India by Muchkund Dubey
Dream India: Is Its Education Competitive Enough? By P.V. Indiresan
Reservations and the Idea of Fairness: Quotas for OBCs in Higher Education by Gurpreet Mahajan
SECTION III: SUSTAINABILITY, ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTEnergy and High Growth in India: Sustainability Issues by Yoginder K. Alagh
Sustainability of India’s Economic Growth by Aparna Sawhney

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).

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