Author: Smita Tewari Jassal
Translator(s)/ Edito: Smita Tewari Jassal/Eyal Ben-Ari
Publisher: Sage Publications
Year: 2007
Language: English
Pages: 381
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0761935479
Description
This important book is a conversation across cultures on the theme of partition and its far-reaching sociological implications for communal patterns, generational dynamics and individual lives. While the governing imagery of partition is drawn from the context of India and Pakistan, the analysis compares similar processes in the context of Israel and Palestine and East and West Germany. Developing the concept of partition-societies, the volume succinctly explains the social, economic and political implications of such divisions.
The lens of partition is used to focus on how societies that have experienced breaks and traumas are organized and constituted and the ways in which they deploy their understanding of the past to reconstruct themselves. The book enquires into ways in which local communities as well as wider national entities use their knowledge of the past. The international contributors to this volume show how this separation was of significance not only in the strict political sense but formed the basis for long-term processes of identity, of memory and inspiration, and the very basis on which different societies were organized.
This book will be of interest to anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, students and scholars of culture studies, as also the general reader.
Contents
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
Udavastu Jibaner Kabya-The Rhyme of Refugee Life
NAMITA CHOWDHURY
The Partition Motif: Concepts, Comparisons, Considerations
SMITA TEWARI JASSAL AND EYAL BEN-ARI
BORDERS, SPACES AND MAPS
1. Partition as a Challenge to the Homogeneous German Nation
INA DIETZCH
2. De-partitioning Society: Contesting Borders of the Mind in Bangladesh and India KATHINKA SINHA-KERKHOFF and ELLEN BAL
3. The Cartographic Imagination: British Mandate Palestine
EFRAT BEN ZEEV
4. Constructing Palestine through Surveillance Practices
ELIA ZUREIK
NARRATIVE EXPERIENCE AND DISPLACEMENT
5. Partition Violence in Memory and Performance: The Punjabi Dhadi Tradition
MICHAEL NIJHAWAN
6. Memories of a Lost Home: Partition in the Fiction of the Subcontinent
ALOK BHALLA
7. A Homeland Torn Apart: Partition in a Palestinian Refugee Camp
NINA GREN
SOCIAL STRUCTURES, CONSTRUCTIONS AND IMAGES
8. PARTITION AND PARTINGS
The Paradox of German Kinship Ties
TATJANA THELEN
9. Partition of Bengal or Creation of a Nation? Memories of Difference
HABIBUL HAQUE KHONDKER
10. The Surang (Tunnel) of Madanpura: Partition Motif in Benaras
VASANTHI RAMAN
11. Living in the Shadow of Emergency in Palestine
HUNAIDA GHANIM
12. Partition in Contemporary Struggles Over Religious Spaces in Bhopal
URSULA RAO
HEALING, RECONCILIATION AND COMPARATIVE DIMENSIONS:
13. Collective Memory and Obstacles to Reconciliation Efforts in Israel
ZVI BEKERMAN
14. North Korea South Korea: One Korea and the Relevance of German Reunification
JOHN BORNEMAN
ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX