India is the second largest country in the world with regard to population, the worlds largest democracy and by far the largest country in South Asia, and one of the most diverse and pluralistic nations in the world in terms of official languages, cultures, religions and social identities. Indians have for centuries exchanged ideas with other cultures globally and some traditions have been transformed in those transnational and transcultural encounters and become successful innovations with an extraordinary global popularity. India is an emerging global power in terms of economy, but in spite of Indias impressive economic growth over the last decades, some of the most serious problems of Indian society such as poverty, repression of women, inequality both in terms of living conditions and of opportunities such as access to education, employment, and the economic resources of the state persist and do not seem to go away.
Now available in paperback, this Handbook contains chapters by the fields foremost scholars dealing with fundamental issues in Indias current cultural and social transformation and concentrates on India as it emerged after the economic reforms and the new economic policy of the 1980s and 1990s and as it develops in the twenty-first century.
Following an introduction by the editor, the book is divided into five parts:
- Part I: Foundation
- Part II: India and the world
- Part III: Society, class, caste and gender
- Part IV: Religion and diversity
- Part V: Cultural change and innovations.
Exploring the cultural changes and innovations relating a number of contexts in contemporary India, this Handbook is essential reading for students and scholars interested in Indian and South Asian culture, politics and society.
Recenzijos
Included in Editors Top 75 Community College Resources for June 2016 from CHOICE
"Routledge continues to make a remarkable contribution to South Asian studies through its journals, monographs, and edited books. This is another volume that South Asianists will embrace. Jacobsen and his international, five-member editorial board have divided the 32 chapters into five sections: "Foundation", six chapters on various topics from partition to the economy and the constitution; "India and the World" (six chapters); "Society, Class, Caste and Gender", eight chapters on topics large and small; "Religion and Diversity", eight chapters, including coverage of Hindu pilgrimage sites, Ambedkar, Muslims, and Christians; and "Cultural Change and Innovations", whose four chapters deal with femininity, the "new Indian male", food, and Siddha medical knowledge. In short, topics that appeal strongly to postmodernists and postcolonialists, written in language using terminology that appeals to them. The editor's introduction summarizes the volume's contents and writes about population and economic growth. [ ...] this is a major contribution. Highly recommended. All levels/libraries." R. D. Long, Eastern Michigan University, CHOICE
Introduction Contemporary India: Foundation, Relations, Diversity and
Innovations Part I Foundation
1. Dreams, Memories and Legacies: Partitioning
India
2. Symbiosis and Resilience: The Dynamics of Social Change and
Transition to Democracy in India
3. Foundations for a Sustainable Growth:
Indias Constitution and its Supreme Court
4. Economic Foundation of India
5.
Equity, Quantity and Quality: The Precarious Balancing act in Indias School
Education
6. Agriculture and the Development Burden Part II India and the
World
7. Politics, Security and Foreign Policy
8. Is India a South Asian or
an Asian Power?
9. India's Role as an International Development Actor
10.
Dispersals, Migrations, Diversity of Communities and the Notion of an Indian
Diaspora
11. Yoga and Physical Culture: Transnational History and Blurred
Discursive Contexts
12. Modernised Ayurveda in India and the West Part III
Society, Class, Caste and Gender
13. Politics of Economic Reforms in India
14. Divided We Stand: The Indian City after Economic Liberalisation
15.
Indias Middle Classes in Contemporary India
16. Caste: Why Does It Still
Matter?
17. Corruption and Anti-Corruption in Modern India: History.
Patronage, and the Moral Politics of Anti-colonialism
18. Regional
Perspective: Gujarat and the Contradictory Co-existence of Economic
Enterprise and Political Illiberalism
19. Intimate Spaces of Struggle:
Rethinking Family and Marriage in Contemporary India
20. Adivasis in
Contemporary India: Engagements with State, Non-State Actors and the
Capitalist Economy Part IV Religion and Diversity
21. Myth as History and
History as Myth: The Instructive Case of India
22. Matters That Matter:
Material Religion in Contemporary India
23. Hindu Pilgrimage Sites and
Travel: Infrastructure, Economy, Identity and Conflicts
24. Ambedkar's Life
and His Navayana Buddhism
25. Religion, Identity and Empowerment: The Making
of Ravidassia Dharm (Dalit Religion) in Contemporary Punjab
26. Muslims in
Contemporary India: Socio-religious Diversity and the Questions of
Citizenship R. Santhosh
27. Religious Violence, Crime Statistics and Indias
Muslim Minority
28. Christians in India: Living on the Margins with a Diverse
and Controversial Past Part V Cultural Change and Innovations
29. Combative
Constructions of Femininity in the Late Twentieth Century Narratives of India
30. The New Indian Male: Muscles, Masculinities and Middle-Classness
31.
Changing Food Habits in Contemporary India: Discourses and Practices From the
Middle Classes in Chennai (Tamil Nadu)
32. Coping with the Diseases of
Modernity: The Use of Siddha Medical Knowledge and Practices to Treat
Diabetics
Knut A. Jacobsen is Professor of Religion at the University of Bergen, Norway. His previous publications include Yoga in Modern Hinduism: Hariharnanda raya and Skhyayoga, and Pilgrimage in the Hindu Tradition: Salvific Space. He is the editor in chief of the six volumes Brills Encyclopedia of Hinduism.
