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"South Asia Intellectual life 20th century."
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The social space of language
This rich cultural history set in Punjab examines a little-studied body of popular literature to illustrate both the durability of a vernacular literary tradition and the limits of colonial dominance in British India. Farina Mir asks how qisse, a vibrant genre of epics and romances, flourished in colonial Punjab despite British efforts to marginalize the Punjabi language. She explores topics including Punjabi linguistic practices, print and performance, and the symbolic content of qisse. She finds that although the British denied Punjabi language and literature almost all forms of state patronage, the resilience of this popular genre came from its old but dynamic corpus of stories, their representations of place, and the moral sensibility that suffused them. Her multidisciplinary study reframes inquiry into cultural formations in late-colonial north India away from a focus on religious communal identities and nationalist politics and toward a widespread, ecumenical, and place-centered poetics of belonging in the region.
eBook
Knowledge Production, Pedagogy, and Institutions in Colonial India
\"This volume seeks to radically revise the Saidian analytical framework which dominated research on the subject of colonial knowledge for almost two decades and which emphasized colonial knowledge as a series of representations of colonial hegemony. It seeks to contribute substantially to research in the field by analyzing knowledge in colonial India as a dynamic process, produced in historically specific, and changing, social and intellectual contexts, and as an essentially unstable, fractured and contingent set of ideas and practices, produced in unpredictable and often self-contradictory ways for different audiences. It also focuses on the very important and neglected questions of indigenous agency in producing knowledge in colonial India and the related problem of knowledge dissemination and transmission\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Age of entanglement : German and Indian intellectuals across empire
Age of Entanglement explores the connections that linked German and Indian intellectuals from the nineteenth century through the Second World War as they shared ideas, formed networks, and studied one another's worlds. But, as Kris Manjapra shows, transnational intellectual entanglements are not inherently liberal or conventionally cosmopolitan.
eBook
City of Knowledge in Twentieth Century Iran
This book presents a cultural history of modern Iran from the point of view of Shiraz, a city famous for its poetry and its traditions of scholarship. Exploring the relationship among history, poetry and politics, the book analyses how Shiraz came to be defined as the country's cultural capital, and explains how Iranians have used the concept of culture as a way of thinking about themselves, their past and their relationship with the rest of the world.
Weaving together a theoretical approach with extensive ethnographic research, the book suggests a model to integrate broad concerns with a nuanced analysis of Iran's cultural traditions and practices. The author's interdisciplinary approach sheds light on how contemporary Iranians relate to classical Persian poetry; on the relationship between expressive forms and the political imagination; and on the different ways teachers, professors, cultural managers, poets and scholars think and work. He describes how history and poetry are the two dominant modes to talk about the past, present and future of the town and demonstrates that the question of knowledge is crucial to an understanding of the political and existential dimensions of life in Iran today.
This book will be a major contribution to the current effort to move away from nationalist views of Iranian history and culture, and as such will be of great interest to scholars of cultural anthropology, history, Middle Eastern studies and Iranian studies.
eBook
Knowledge production, pedagogy, and institutions in colonial India
This volume seeks to revise the Saidian analytical framework which dominated research on the subject of colonial knowledge for almost two decades, which emphasized colonial knowledge as a series of representations of colonial hegemony. It seeks to contribute to research in the field by analyzing knowledge in colonial India as a dynamic process.
eBook
Shāh Walī Allāh Dihlawi (d. 1762): The Hajj Journey and Intellectual Scholarship Between India and Arabia
Rather than simply claiming the “unorthodox” or “pluralistic” mindset of an early modern Muslim thinker, this intellectual micro-history aims to show the complexity of Shāh Walī Allāh’s (d. 1762) thought-world. This article follows him to Mecca and Medina for the Hajj pilgrimage. While pilgrimage is traditionally included in the fundaments of Islamic practice, it is also important to realize that the majority of Muslims have not historically participated in this pilgrimage. Due to the physical limitations of travelling as the Muslim community rapidly expanded in the 7th century onwards, we have nearly a thousand years until the 18th century where only a select few Muslims, usually wealthy enough to make the arduous journey, participated in the yearly practice. This created a complex culture of pilgrims in the Holy Cities with the cities functioning as informal circles of scholarship. Shāh Walī Allāh Dihlawī engages in this knowledge production process while carrying out the mandatory rituals associated with the Hajj pilgrimage. Thus, this article shows that the complex interplay of Walī Allāh with Meccan and Medinan scholars is a highly dynamic process with unexpected outcomes as specific sacred geography interacts with the conceptual (and genealogical) categories that scholarly pilgrims bring with them to this intellectual encounter. In doing so, we catch a glimpse of the 18th century through a very particular set of Indian Sufi eyes.
Journal Article
Virtual orientalism : Asian religions and American popular culture
Saffron-robed monks and long-haired gurus have become familiar characters on the American popular culture scene. This book examines the contemporary fascination with Eastern spirituality and provides a cultural history of the representation of Asian religions in American mass media. Initial engagements with Asian spiritual heritages were mediated by monks, gurus, bhikkhus, sages, sifus, healers, and masters from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds and religious traditions. Virtual Orientalism shows the evolution of these interactions, from direct engagements with specific individuals, to mediated relations with a conventionalized icon. Visually and psychically compelling, the Oriental Monk becomes for Americans a “figure of translation” - a convenient symbol for alternative spiritualities and modes of being. Through the figure of the solitary Monk, who generously and purposefully shares his wisdom with the West, Asian religiosity is made manageable — psychologically, socially, and politically — for popular culture consumption. On an historical level, the books argues that American mass awareness of Asian religions coincides with the advent of visually-oriented media (magazines, television, and film) and examines how technological transformations ushered in a new form of Orientalism — virtual Orientalism — prevalent since the late 1950s. Although popular engagement with Asian religions in the U.S. has increased, the fact that much of this has taken virtual form makes stereotypical constructions of “the spiritual East” obdurate and especially difficult to challenge. Representational moments in Virtual Orientalism’s development that are examined include: D.T. Suzuki and the 1950s Zen Boom; the Maharishi Mahesh and his celebrity followers in the 1960s and; Kwai Chang Caine in the popular 1970 television series, Kung Fu.
eBook
Dutch Scholarship in the Age of Empire and Beyond
How was it possible for the Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (KITLV) to grow from a learned society with fewer than a hundred members and only one partly salaried employee in 1851 into a modern professional institute with 1800 members and a staff of over fifty in 2001? This book provides the answer to this question.
eBook
Fragile Conviction
The Allied occupation of Japan is remembered as the \"good occupation.\" An American-led coalition successfully turned a militaristic enemy into a stable and democratic ally. Of course, the story was more complicated, but the occupation did forge one of the most enduring relationships in the postwar world. Recent events, from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan to protests over American bases in Japan to increasingly aggressive territorial disputes between Asian nations over islands in the Pacific, have brought attention back to the subject of the occupation of Japan.
InArchitects of Occupation , Dayna L. Barnes exposes the wartime origins of occupation policy and broader plans for postwar Japan. She considers the role of presidents, bureaucrats, think tanks, the media, and Congress in policymaking. Members of these elite groups came together in an informal policy network that shaped planning. Rather than relying solely on government reports and records to understand policymaking, Barnes also uses letters, memoirs, diaries, and manuscripts written by policymakers to trace the rise and spread of ideas across the policy network. The book contributes a new facet to the substantial literature on the occupation, serves as a case study in foreign policy analysis, and tells a surprising new story about World War II.
eBook