India & Cambridge - Cambridge University Press India

SOCIOLOGY & ANTHROPOLOGYregion, written on handmade Meetei (Manipuri) paper madefrom bark of trees, in locally made ink, with a quill or abamboo pen. All in all it comprises more than a thousandleaves.The Cheitharon Kumpapa Volume 1 (2005,ISBN 978-04-1534-430-5) covered the period between 33–1763 CE. This volume continues the translation of thechronicle up until 1843 CE. It also includes a facsimile of theoriginal text in Meetei Mayek, the archaic Manipuri script,with a glossary for Manipuri and other loan words.Researchers on East and South Asia in the fields of socialanthropology, history, archaeology, human geography andlinguistics will find this volume interesting.Saroj Nalini Arambam Parratt had written extensively onManipur’s history and culture in articles that have beenpublished in international journals and is the author ofseveral books.9788175966383 297pp HB ` 795.00Asian Voices in aPostcolonial Age:Vietnam, India andBeyondSusan BaylyThis study of intellectuals and theircosmopolitan life trajectories isbased on anthropological andhistorical research in Vietnam andIndia, two great Asian societieswith contrasting experiences ofempire, decolonisation and the riseand fall of the twentieth-centurysocialist world system. Building on the author’s longstandingresearch experience in India and on remarkablefamily narratives collected during fieldwork in northernVietnam, the book deals with epic events and complexsocial transformations from a perspective that emphasizesthe personal and the familial. Its central theme is theextraordinary mobility of intelligentsia lives. The authorexplores the role of the intellectual in the economic, socialand cultural transformation of the post-colonial worldthrough in-depth ethnographic fieldwork methods. Inidentifying parallels and contrasts between Hanoi’s ‘socialistmoderns’ and the family and career experiences of theirIndian counterparts, the book makes a distinctivecontribution to the study of colonial, socialist and postsocialistAsia.Susan Bayly is Reader in Historical Anthropology in theDepartment of Social Anthropology, Cambridge University,and a Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge.9780521516808 294pp HB ` 795.00Women in Prison: AnInsight into Captivity andCrimeSuvarna CherukuriWomen in Prison takes a look at themultiple specificities that bringwomen into the prison system.Drawing on empirical sources andoriginal research, and relyingprimarily on interviews of womeninmates, this book explores thecontexts of female crime andpunishment in India and looks atgendered disciplinary mechanisms that are used to controlwomen inmates. The work invokes not only a sense ofhistory in understanding women’s crimes andimprisonment, but also engages in a critical dialogue interms of gender, caste, culture and sexuality. Unique in itsanalysis of the lives of women prisoners within social andlegal contexts, the book is a major contribution tointernational literature on women’s offences and theirexperience of imprisonment.Suvarna Cherukuri is Assistant Professor of Sociology atSiena College, New York.9788175965478 157pp HB ` 595.00Anthropology, Politics andthe State: Democracy andViolence in South AsiaJonathan SpencerIn recent years anthropology hasrediscovered its interest in politics.Building on the findings of thisresearch, this book offers a newway of analysing the relationshipbetween culture and politics, withspecial attention to democracy,nationalism, the state and politicalviolence. Beginning with scenesfrom an unruly early 1980s election campaign in Sri Lanka, itcovers issues from rural policing in north India to slumhousing in Delhi, presenting arguments about secularismand pluralism, and the ambiguous energies released byelectoral democracy across the subcontinent. It ends bydiscussing feminist peace activists in Sri Lanka, struggling tosustain a window of shared humanity after two decades ofwar. Bringing together and linking the themes ofdemocracy, identity and conflict, this important new studyshows how anthropology can take a central role inunderstanding other people’s politics, especially the issuesthat seem to have divided the world since 9/11.Jonathan Spencer is Professor of Anthropology of SouthAsia at the University of Edinburgh.9780521722124 218pp PB ` 395.0038 order online at www.cambridgeindia.org