The View from Below


Book Description

How did the British colonial administration view the Tamil natives? How did the natives, in turn, view the colonial power brokers? Underscoring a transactional rather than one-way reality of colonial politics, The View from Below is a balancing act of scholarship. Kanakalatha Mukund considers the 'attitudes' and 'responses' as dialogic, whereby the colonial state and indigenous society are locked in a fierce but subtle combat for attention and dominance in the Madras region. The Tamil institution upon which Mukund focuses her study for the most part is the temple. Moving further on from this politically crucial and socially focal site, the study covers a number of other related phenomena: the staging of sectarian and caste conflicts aimed to seize the control of the temples; the new social leadership and patterns of patronage; the construction of identity by aspiring elite groups of both parties; and the folk representations of Poligar rebellions. This book will be useful to historians, anthropologists and specialists on South India, and those interested in the history of Madras.










WOMEN LEADERSHIP IN TAMILNADU (AD 1917 - AD 1975)


Book Description

Situated at the south-eastern extremity of the Indian Peninsula, Tamil Nadu is bounded on the north by the State of Karnataka and the State of Andhra Pradesh, on the south by the Indian Ocean, on the east by the Bay of Bengal and on the west by the State of Kerala. It has a coast line of 620 miles and a land boundary of 750 miles. With an area of 129, 900.6 square kilometers, it is the eleventh State in area forming 4.08 per cent of the Union areas.[1] At the beginning of the twentieth century, Madras Presidency formed one of the most extensive of British territories in India. It stretched from Cape Comorian, the southern top of the Indian Peninsula, halfway up the east coast of Bengal.[2]Tamil region, the homeland of the Tamils, occupies the southern-most region of the erstwhile Madras Presidency.[3]The Tamil districts of the Presidency were Chingleput, North Arcot, South Arcot, Salem, Coimbatore, Nilgiris, Trichinoply, Tanjore, Madurai, Ramnad and Tinnevelly.[4] When reorganization of the States was made in 1956, regional adjustments were done and the State of Madras was created on November 1, 1956, as a lingual state with Tamil as its language.




FACETS OF CONTEMPORARY HISTORY


Book Description

This book “Facets of Contemporary History”is a selection of research papers, presented in the International Conference on Contemporary History which was held on 30th and 31st January 2015. This conference was organized by the Department of History, Tourism and Travel Management, Ethiraj College for Women, Chennai. It gives us great pleasure to put together a selection of the papers for the public in the form of a book in the interest of research. Contemporary History refers to the history of the immediate past or that which can be expected to remain in living memory. While there are areas of history which have branched off from contemporary history such as social history and economic history this conference took a very broad look at contemporary events from not just a historical but also a social science perspective. This Book contains 6 Sections namely Political History, Socio-Cultural History, Gender, Economic History, Environment and Tourism. We would like to place on record the Management of the college for the moral and financial support extended in the conduct of the Conference and in the production of the book. Thanks are due to our respected Chairman of the Trust Board, Mr. V.M.Muralidharan for all his support and encouragement. Heartfelt thanks are due to Prof.Dr.Karu. Nagarajan Member Secretary, TAMIL NADU STATE COUNCIL FOR HIGHER EDUCATION for their generous financial Assistance towards the conduct of the Conference. We would be failing in our duty if we do not thank the faculty of the Department of History, Tourism and Travel Management for their support and encouragement in the conduct of the Conference.




The Politics of Heritage from Madras to Chennai


Book Description

In this anthropological history, Mary E. Hancock examines the politics of public memory in the southern Indian city of Chennai. Once a colonial port, Chennai is now poised to become a center for India's "new economy" of information technology, export processing, and back-office services. State and local governments promote tourism and a heritage-conscious cityscape to make Chennai a recognizable "brand" among investment and travel destinations. Using a range of textual, visual, architectural, and ethnographic sources, Hancock grapples with the question of how people in Chennai remember and represent their past, considering the political and economic contexts and implications of those memory practices. Working from specific sites, including a historic district created around an ancient Hindu temple, a living history museum, neo-traditional and vernacular architecture, and political memorials, Hancock examines the spatialization of memory under the conditions of neoliberalism.




The Saint in the Banyan Tree


Book Description

“This is a powerful and exciting work. Mosse has produced a work of scholarship that is lively and readable without any loss of subtlety and sophistication. It is a ground-breaking study, of critical importance to the ways we understand religious nationalism and the anthropology of postcolonial experience.”—Susan Bayly, author of Asian Voices in a Postcolonial Age




Politics and Cosmopolitanism in a Global Age


Book Description

This book offers a unique reconceptualization of cosmopolitanism. It examines several themes that inform politics in a globalized era, including global governance, international law, citizenship, constitutionalism, community, domesticity, territory, sovereignty, and nationalism. The volume explores the specific philosophical and institutional challenges in constructing a cosmopolitan political community beyond the nation state. It reorients and decolonizes the boundaries of ‘cosmopolitanism’ and questions the contemporary discourse to posit inclusive alternatives. Presenting rich and diverse perspectives from across the world, the volume will interest scholars and students of politics and international relations, political theory, public policy, ethics, and philosophy.




Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India


Book Description

David Rudner's richly detailed ethnographic and historical analysis of a South Indian merchant-banking caste provides the first comprehensive analysis of the interdependence among Indian business practice, social organization, and religion. Exploring noncapitalist economic formations and the impact of colonial rule on indigenous commercial systems, Rudner argues that caste and commerce are inextricably linked through formal and informal institutions. The practices crucial to the formation and distribution of capital are also a part of this linkage. Rudner challenges the widely held assumptions that all castes are organized either by marriage alliance or status hierarchy and that caste structures are incompatible with the "rational" conduct of business. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.