Ethnographic Accounts

This is a volume of engaging essays intended as a festschrift in honour of the eminent sociologist, Professor A.M. Shah, edited by two of his former students who are today well known academics themselves. Covering a vast array of subjects, the volume is eclectic in character, bringing to the reader the freshness of each contributor’s individual on going academic interest. That there is no overall thematic unity to the essays is part of the charm of this book. It is rather pleasant to be taken by surprise, and the leisurely fashion with which the ethnographic accounts in most of the essays advance the argument contributes to the charm. However, since the book has been in the making for the better part of a decade and a half, many of the papers have a slightly dusty and dog eared feel in the trajectory of argument which their discussions trace. The reader feels somewhat let down when expectations of connections to more contemporary developments in debates and issues raised by the papers fail to be made.