Sujata Patel, ed. 2020. Exploring Sociabilities of Contemporary India: New Perspectives. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan. 328 pp. Notes, index. Rs 945 (hardback)

Sudha Sitharaman and Anindita Chakrabarti, eds. 2020. Religion and Secularities: Reconfiguring Islam in Contemporary India. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan. 240 pp. Rs. 795 (hardback).

Sasanka Perera. 2020. The Fear of the Visual? Photography, Anthropology, and Anxieties of Seeing. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan. 260 pp. Photographs, references, index. Rs 850 (hardback).

Swargajyoti Gohain. 2020. Imagined Geographies in the Indo-Tibetan Borderlands: Culture, Politics, Place. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 246 pp. Figures, bibliography, index. €98.99 (eBook).

Brahma Prakash. 2019. Cultural Labour: Conceptualizing the ‘Folk Performance’ in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. xvi + 332 pp. Bibliography, index. Rs 1195 (hardback).

Dwaipayan Banerjee. 2020. Enduring Cancer: Life, Death, and Diagnosis in Delhi. Durham and London: Duke University Press. x + 224 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. $25.95 (eBook).

Amita Baviskar. 2020. Uncivil City: Ecology, Equity and the Commons in Delhi. New Delhi: SAGE Publications Pvt. Ltd. (with YODA Press, New Delhi). 300 p. Bibliography, figures, glossary, illustrations, index. ₹1,195 (hardback).

The article explores how retail workers envision and pursue aspirations for social mobility through employment in Delhi malls. Based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork and participant observation, this study examines how retail store employees cultivate professional occupational identities as a way of distancing themselves from informal and manual workers and claim a new class identity. The article

The COVID-19 lockdown was a frenetic period for inmates of the night shelters in Delhi. The difficulty in maintaining employment, social distancing, sanitation, safety measures and sanity that were regarded as critical factors could not be ensured. Yet, it was apparent that the residents’ experiences during this time varied, and their lives were differentially affected by the pandemic. The following

This article adds to the emergent picture of caste practices among Indian Muslim communities through a focus on caste-based discourses and practices in the contemporary OBC Muslim Chhipa community (OBC, short for ‘Other Backward Class’, is an Indian-government designation). The article examines Muslim Chhipa origin stories, marriage practices and language strategies and shows the ways in which these

In India, gold’s uniqueness lies in its dual demand for ‘sacred’ ritual purposes as well as ‘profane’ economic security. As a scarce commodity, gold is continuously monitored and regulated by the state. This study investigates how communities associated with the craft and trade of gold jewellery cope with state regulations, an aspect that has largely gone undocumented in sociological literature. The

Health behaviour of the people is said to be shaped by market forces, scientific or religious institutions or the state. It is pertinent to examine the dominant institutions that shape health cultures in any society, at any given point in time. While public health has not been a priority for the Indian state, the COVID-19 pandemic created an unmistakable opportunity for state regulation. It is the

The use of labels such as ‘isolation’ or ‘assimilation’ to characterise tribal communities dwelling in the plains region of British Assam had a discursive history that took no notice of the region’s prolonged tradition of vibrant interfaith transmissions and cultural exchanges. This essay flags a disjuncture between early ethnographic literature on the ‘tribes’ of the plains region of Assam, and their

This article draws on a turn of events in the speaker’s long association with Papua New Guinea in the Pacific. Pacific Island academics have made it clear that anthropologists should be explicit about ‘knowledge exchange’. Knowledge transfers take innumerable forms; in the case of the anthropologist, however, it often seems that expert knowledge is more taken than given. Thinking comparatively about

Laura Dudley Jenkins. 2019. Religious Freedom and Mass Conversion in India. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. vi + 312 pp. Figures, notes, bibliography, index. $89.95 (hardback).

Sameena Dalwai. 2019. Bans & Bar Girls: Performing Caste in Mumbai’s Dance Bars. New Delhi: Women Unlimited. x + 242 pp. Bibliography. ₹595 (hardback).

Jules Naudet (translated from French by Renuka George). 2018. Stepping into the Elite: Trajectories of Social Achievement in India, France, and the United States. New Delhi: Oxford University Press (with Institut français). xxii + 354 pp. Tables, appendix, references, index. Rs 995 (hardback).

Ajantha Subramanian. 2019. The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. x + 374 pp. Notes, references, index. $49.95 (eBook).

Panchali Ray. 2019. Politics of Precarity: Gendered Subjects and the Health Care Industry in Contemporary Kolkata. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. xii + 266 pp. Tables, appendix, bibliography, index. ₹1250 (hardback).

Yogesh Snehi. 2019. Spatializing Popular Sufi Shrines in Punjab: Dreams, Memories, Territoriality. London and New York: Routledge. xx + 256 pp. Maps, tables, figures, notes, bibliography, index. £115.00 (hardback).

Jinee Lokaneeta. 2020. The Truth Machines: Policing, Violence, and Scientific Interrogations in India. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. xiii + 250 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. $34.95 (eBook).

Axel Michaels’s essay on Louis Dumont’s call for a new relationship between Indology and anthropology is detailed and thorough, though not shocking to many of us who have tilled these fields for some time. Dumont was a curiously influential figure, who stood at the crossroads of many important streams of thought, including French structuralism, British social anthropology, a certain sort of Indology

I am very grateful for the inspiring comments from these esteemed scholars and colleagues whose publications I owe so much to anyway. I especially appreciate the important additional information related to the history of the two disciplines, Anthropology and Indology (Appadurai, Mehta, Parry and Trautmann), to recent developments in the ‘Sociology of India’ (Parry, Vajpeyi), and to their refreshing

Malvika Maheshwari. 2019. Art Attacks: Violence and Offence-Taking in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. xii + 373 pp. Notes, Bibliography, References, Index. ₹1195 (hardback).

Haley Duschinski, Mona Bhan, Ather Zia, and Cynthia Mahmood, eds. 2018. Resisting Occupation in Kashmir. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, vi + 302 pp. Maps, Figures, Notes, References, Index. $79.95(hardback).

Rahela Khorakiwala. 2020. From the Colonial to the Contemporary: Images, Iconography, Memories, and Performances of Law in India’s High Courts. New Delhi: Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt. Ltd (Hart Imprint). xvi + 277 pp. Figures, Appendix, Bibliography, Index. ₹889 (hardback).

Parul Bhandari. 2020. Matchmaking in Middle Class India: Beyond Arranged and Love Marriage. Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. xii + 188 pp. References, Index. €67.40 (eBook).

During the 1920s and 1930s, Ram Charana, of the Mallah caste and a resident of Lucknow, led the campaign for his caste to secure a place in the plans for constitutional and electoral reform being drawn up by the colonial authorities. His objective was to ensure the inclusion of the caste within the administrative category of the Depressed Classes and subsequently as a Scheduled Caste even though it

In this article, I aim to show how Louis Dumont’s famous claim that ‘the condition for a sound development of Sociology of India is found in the establishment of the proper relation between it and classical Indology’ has become obsolete and was from the beginning a problematic postulate. I first develop the historical background of the denigration of anthropological approaches in India against the

This article examines the nuanced and open-ended representations of women in the fictional works of Premchand, one of the most versatile and popular Urdu-Hindi writers of the 1920s and 1930s. By looking into a wide range of his writings, it argues that Premchand’s literary engagement with the women’s question cannot be summarily understood through such binaries as ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal/radical’

This article expands Akhil Gupta’s (1995, American Ethnologist, 22(2), 375–402) thesis of ‘blurred boundaries’ between ‘the state’ and ‘society’ in South Asia to incorporate the impact of historic labour migrations, which complicate established conceptions of the state in Bangladesh. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in an area of high migration to the UK, the article draws attention to a class of transnational

This article explores the complex role of political ideologies in everyday politics and for urban middle-class Bangladeshis’ evaluation of political parties. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research and, more specifically, conversations and contentions around the removal of ‘Lady Justice’ from the front of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh in 2017, I show that although the Awami League continues to

Dolly Kikon. 2019. Living with Coal and Oil: Resource Politics and Militarization in Northeast India. Seattle: University of Washington Press. xiv + 189 pp. Maps, figures, notes, bibliography, Index. US$30 (paperback).

It is a common view that power in Bangladesh is exercised through patron–client forms of exchange. These patron–client relationships are held together by moral proximity and intimacy and are diffused and multidimensional. Most recently, Basu et al. (2018, Politics and Governance in Bangladesh: Uncertain Landscapes, 1–16. London: Routledge) argue for the persuasive presence of patron–client relationships

Based on ethnographic fieldwork around commemorative events in London and analysis of textual materials used during commemorations, this article explores how long-distance nationalists are involved in Bangladeshi state building practices. I demonstrate how long-distance nationalists, people who identify with Bangladesh and its government as their ancestral homeland, and who seek to influence the state

Salah Punathil. 2019. Interrogating Communalism: Violence, Citizenship and Minorities in South India. London and New York: Routledge. xiv + 161 pp. Figures, notes, bibliography, index. ₹995 (hardback).

Surinder S. Jodhka and Jules Naudet, eds. 2019. Mapping the Elite: Power, Privilege, and Inequality. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. xvi + 304 pp. ₹1495 (hardback).

This article investigates the ways in which state and non-state laws become intricately intertwined in practices of conflict resolution in rural Bangladesh. Instead of inhabiting separate legal universes, I show how state and non-state laws become entangled in what I call the logic of non-enforcement. People in rural Bangladesh frequently appeal to state courts—yet they frequently do so not in order

Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this article focuses on how public order and authority is produced in ‘middle Bangladesh’ by investigating the political emergence and political persona of a bus labour federation (BLF) leader in Rajshahi city. The BLF is an important source for ‘muscle’ and ‘money’ power and is commonly denoted as ‘labour mafia’. Its leaders, often referred to as mastan (gangster

The study of the Bangladesh state continues to be a path less travelled for scholars of South Asia. The articles in this special issue aim to offer fresh perspectives based on recent ethnographic work on a variety of aspects of the state by new young national and international scholars. Overall, there is a pressing need to pay closer attention to the state and to think about it in new ways, and in

Nosheen Ali. 2019. Delusional States: Feeling Rule and Development in Pakistan’s Northern Frontier. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press. xiv + 304 pp. Maps, figures, notes, bibliography, index. ₹795 (hardback).

Sidharthan Maunaguru. 2019. Marrying for a Future: Transnational Sri Lankan Tamil Marriages in the Shadow of War. Global South Asia. Seattle: University of Washington Press. xii + 188 pp. Figures, notes, bibliography, index. US$30 (paperback).

Ester Gallo. 2017. The Fall of Gods: Memory, Kinship, and Middle Classes in South India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. xiii + 338 pp. Tables, figures, notes, bibliography, glossary, index. ₹1195 (hardback).

Sadan Jha. 2016. Reverence, Resistance and Politics of Seeing the Indian National Flag. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press. xxviii + 268 pp. Plates, figures, bibliography index. £64.99 (hardback).

Gita Chadha and M. T. Joseph, eds. 2018. Re-Imagining Sociology in India: Feminist Perspectives. Oxon and New York: Routledge. xii + 348 pp. References, index. ₹1095 (hardback).

This article examines the historical, social and political legacies of the Information and Communication Technology Act (ICT Act) (2006–2018, amended in 2013) and the Digital Security Act (DSA) (2018–) in the Bangladeshi state’s attempt to control the ‘virtual streets’ of Bangladesh. The application of ICT and DSA has become an increasingly visible and controversial means to provide the spectacle of

While the #MeToo movement inspired many women to share their stories of sexual harassment on social media, the impact of the movement in India remains limited as it did not reflect the voices of subjects who have been historically marginalised. This note discusses the ways in which the erasure of dalit women’s testimonies of sexual violence happens by reflecting on a few central aspects of Satyabhama’s

This article focuses on legal learning and a specific type of protest that emerged in the aftermath of the police shoot-out at Batla House, New Delhi in 2008. Following the shooting, there was an atmosphere of fear in the locality, as doubts began to emerge about the police’s version of the story. What exacerbated the situation was a series of arrests from the locality, often without proper documents

The recent explosion and changes in camera technologies has had a bearing on state surveillance, amateur photographic practices, and people’s involvement with camera cultures. Much of urban life is now mediated by photography in different forms—from being caught, often unaware, on CCTVs, to a far more self-conscious engagement with some of the more readily available camera forms. This article is an

While much has been said about the historicity of the Kashmir conflict or about how individuals and communities have resisted occupation and demanded the right to self-determination, much less has been said about nature of everyday life under these conditions. This article offers a glimpse of life in the working-class neighbourhood of Maisuma, located in the central area of the city of Srinagar, and

While there is a long tradition of interpellating poor rural women to carry out the state’s development and modernising goals in local communities, neoliberal development has greatly expanded the remit of this subjective call but without accompanying material changes. In this article, I consider the precarious category of female workers produced by an NGO in West Bengal, out of a surplus population

This article considers the gift as a medium of politics in two parallel domains, namely the electoral and the ritual. Juxtaposing the material transactions during a rural election campaign and the distribution of meat after a sacrifice in a vernacular polity, it traces the continuing interpenetrations between philanthropy and politics in lubricating political associations. The properties of the political

At this historical juncture, when digital governance is fundamentally re-forming social relations, we need critical knowledge about the emerging texture of society. This text responds to Reetika Khera’s important intervention about the need for more timely studies of Aadhaar. Building on Angelia Chamuah’s and Lawrence Cohen’s comments, I argue for the need to ask broader questions about the changing

This article revolves around the fuzzy nature of land titles within and around the ‘Lal Dora’ (literally, ‘red thread’) ringing the urban villages of Delhi to understand how property ownership gets mediated through documents. Through a close look at three kinds of documents—land records, a particular notification over construction in the Lal Dora region and the General Power of Attorney, it pries open

Surrogacy has always been contested and much debated in India since its legalisation in 2002, and the recent Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016, has led to a renewed engagement with it. The advent of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) provided an opportunity for the medical establishment, market and infertile couples to come together in a mutually beneficial arrangement, which is made possible

If sociology is ‘missing’ from the Aadhaar debate, to take Reetika Khera’s provocation seriously, the absence may reflect a disciplinary reluctance to accede to normative terms of contest in which the biometric identity platform must be rendered as boon or blight. Though a refusal of such normative formulations may be necessary, it carries its own ethical limit. Beyond the question of normative assessment

This article examines the circumstances in which the tasks performed by professional labour contractors may be passed on to worker-agents. It does so by critically engaging with the experience of migrant workers from the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand as they travel to work in the Peermade tea belt in the South Indian state of Kerala. Specifically, we identify shifts in economic and political contexts

Focusing on the Delhi gang rape of 16 December 2012, the article describes the force of two aggregations by which the violence is carried out and represented—the raping mob and the mourning and protesting crowd. Even though all six members of the mob are arrested within three days of the rape, we find disparate and spontaneous crowd formations across the city, expressing their anger at police apathy

In this article, I provide a detailed analysis of a case in which an eight-year-old girl was abducted, tortured and raped. She was recovered under somewhat mysterious circumstances. In my analysis, I knit together events inside the court as reflected the judgment and related events outside the court. I try to show, first, how legal technology produced ‘facts’ in court. I then take up what seemed like

This article is an ethnographic exploration of a promiscuously present and instantly recognisable legal and cultural artefact in India, the stamp paper document under the Indian Stamp Act, 1899. The ‘stamp paper’ is a documentary form that is constantly escaping from its legal moorings in revenue and evidentiary law, and is being replicated, mimed and recommissioned, both in form and in substance,