Author: Bernard S Cohn
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 682
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0195662168
Description
This collection of essays acquires the importance of a retrospective display in which the author's erudition and art can be seen brilliantly at work.
There was a time when it made no difference to historians and anthropologists of South Asia that they operated in isolation from each other within adjacent fields of knowledge. Since the end of the Second World War it is anthropology, rather than history, which has led the revolt against the mutual segregation of the two disciplines within the domain of South Asian studies. This development owes as much to education as to experience.
EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS
Contemporary understanding of South Asian history has been shaped by many scholars, but few may have has so wide an influence as Bernard Cohn, and of those perhaps none has made a mark almost solely through the vehicle of essays.’
-Frank F. Conlon in ‘The Journal of Asian Studies’
In post-colonial India, new studies have appeared which attempt to see Indian culture and society from a new angle. Cohn’s volume represents one of the pioneering perspectives. It is compulsory reading for every scholar of Indian society and culture.’
-Bharati Ray in ‘the statesman’
The book is rich in information and insights, and along the way, Cohn throws suggestion s regarding how to locate and analyze important problems…The papers…collected together in this volume, constitute indispensable reading for all serious students of Indian culture, history and society.
-M.N. Srinivas in ‘Economic and Political Weekly’
This book will be particularly valuable for younger scholars; the articles based on research will help them appreciate tools with which their undergraduate and graduate courses do not familiarize them.
-Narayani Gupta in ‘The Book Review’
Contents
Introduction by Ranajit Guha
I HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY
1.An Anthropologist among the Historians:
A Field Study
2.History and Anthropology: The State of Play
3.Anthropology and History in the 1980s:
Towards a Rapprochement
II INDIA AS A FIELD OF STUDY
4.Networks and Centres in the Integration of
Indian Civilization
5.The Pasts of an Indian Village
6.Regions Subjective and Objective: Their relation
to the Study of Modern Indian History and Society
7.Notes on the History of the Study of Indian
Society and Culture
8.Is there a New Indian History? Society
and Social Change Under the Raj
9.African Models and Indian Histories
10.The Census, Social Structure and Objectification
In South Asia
III UNTOUCHABLES
11.The Changing Status of a Depressed Caste
12.The Changing Traditions of a Low Caste
13.Madhopur Revisited
14.Chamar Family in North Indian Village:
A Structural Contingent
IV THE BRITISH IN BENARES
15.The Initial British Impact on India: A Case
Study of the Benares Region
16.Structural Change in Indian Rural Society
1596-1885
17.The British in Benares: A Nineteenth Century
Colonial Society
18.From Indian Status to British Contract
19.Political Systems in Eighteenth-Century India:
The Benares Region
20.The Recruitment and Training of British Civil
Servants in India
21.Some Notes on Law and Change in North India
22.Anthropological Notes on Law and Disputes in
North India
V REPRESENTATION OF EMPIRE
23. Representing Authority in Victorian India