Regional Modernities: The Cultural Politics of Development in India

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Stanford University Press, 2003 - Social Science - 452 pages
This collection of essays by leading social scientists focuses on development in India to explore the emergence of regional modernities in ways that are distinct from a so-called global modernity and its myriad local variations. Regional, for the authors, incorporates the state and other subnational and supranational social and political formations that are more or less salient depending on the social networks and development projects under consideration. In particular, the concept of region allows the assessment of large-scale ethnic, religious, social, and geo-political formations as they mediate oversimplified binary oppositions of colonial or postcolonial power and local incorporation or resistance.

Individual essays present case studies of development across India, considering the role of class, caste, gender, and ethnic and political identities in their interactions with government forces. They investigate the binding of diverse groups through large projects such as dam building and offer rich ethnographic accounts of tree farmers, entrepreneurs, government officials, women in Gandhian ashrams, slum dwellers, and atomic scientists.

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Contents

The Traffic in Ideas about
75
Becoming Developed
99
Indians
122
Shelter in Modern Delhi
143
Multivalent Modernities
165
Development Nationalism and the Time
215
Educating Entrepreneurs Organizing
237
Rethinking Boundaries
315
On Binaries and Boundaries
329
Knowledge
338
Two Stories
404
Index
427
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About the author (2003)

K. Sivaramakrishnan is Associate Professor of Anthropology and International Studies and Director of the South Asia Center at the University of Washington. Arun Agrawal is Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University.

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