Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

This is a book that ends without an index. Even with the aid of new technology (software), preparing an index remains the most tedious job, particularly because the job has to be taken up only after the painstaking finalization of the print-ready copy.

The genesis of disciplinarity and the universalistic aspiration of creating knowledge unembedded in specific contexts is primarily the act of service of knowledge to the purpose of administration and power.

As Nobel laureates Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz sounded the alarm at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association that the US economy could slip back to recession in 2010, the (so called) debate on ‘free trade vs. protectionism’ once again has come back to the forefront.

This book of essays addresses an important issue of liberalization of service trade in South Asia. It examines seven individual country cases of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Maldives and Bhutan.

The book under review here is a selection of columns contributed by the author, between December 2006 to December 2008, to the Business Standard and Outlook. As one may expect from such a volume, a large number of questions of contemporary relevance are touched upon in these short essays although the major concerns of the book happens to be the recent global economic crisis and its implication for India, as well as reflections on critical issues facing the Indian economy.

In a refreshing departure from existing studies and understandings of urban informal economy in general, and, scavenging, waste and recycling economy in particular, the above book provides a contextualized picture of a waste and recycling chain, which study necessitated that the author supplement field economics with anthropology and sociology, quantitative with qualitative methodology, and traverse different levels—micro, meso and macro.

This book attempts to look at the difficult problem of analysing dalits in terms of their differences which is a historical problem as old as time. The question is how they are named, by themselves and others.

The book is the outcome of a network called the Dowry Project, established in 1995 at an International Conference on Dowry and Bride Burning at Harvard, with the aim of encouraging , sharing and disseminating research in the areas of dowry, bride burning and son preference in South Asia and its diaspora.

This edited volume attempts to capture the particular and indeed very peculiar characteristics of the public sphere in India.

R.S. Sharma’s work is marked by a particular and long-term commitment to both his politics and history. The essays in this volume address many themes: from colonial historiography to nationalist utopias; from issues of methodology to the mode of production; from marking transitions to a detailed study of social relations. Taken together, they provide both a starting point to discuss his work and an indication of the range of his interests.

Kumkum Chatterje’s The Cultures of History in Early Modern India is an extremely important contribution on a range of themes which include historiography and historical traditions, the relationship between an imperial centre and (its) province, as well as, culture and power.

Andhra Pradesh History Congress has been doing commendable work in furthering the cause of historical research in that part of the country, taking the most recent advances in the discipline to the researchers and teachers there as well as publishing the rather ambitious series on the Comprehensive History and Culture of Andhra Pradesh, of which this is the third volume.