South Asian Anthropologist

This book presents a conceptual and methodological framework to understand South Asia by engaging with the practices of sociology and social anthropology in India and Nepal. It provides a new imagination of South Asia by connecting historical, political, religious and cultural divides of the region. Drawing from the experiences of Indian and Nepali social anthropology, the book discusses the presence of Nepal studies in Indian social anthropology and vice versa. It highlights Nepal or South Asia as a subject for social anthropological research and stresses on pluriversal knowledge production through regional scholarship, dialogic social anthropology, South Asian episteme, post-Western social anthropology and the decolonisation of disciplines. In exploring the themes and problems of doing social anthropology in Nepal by Indian scholars, the book assesses the scope of developing the South Asian social anthropological worldview. It explains why social anthropological and sociological inquiry in India has failed to surpass its focus beyond the territorial limits of the nation state. The book examines the issues of methodological nationalism and social anthropological research tradition in South Asia. By using the Saidian framework of travelling theory and Bhambra’s idea of connected sociologies, it shows how social anthropology can develop disciplinary crossroads within South Asia. This book will be of interest to students, teachers and researchers of South Asian studies, anthropology, sociology, social anthropology, South Asian sociology, cultural anthropology, social psychology, area studies, cultural studies, Nepal studies and Global South studies.

Asian Anthropology raises important questions regarding the nature of anthropology and particularly the production and consumption of anthropological knowledge in Asia. Instead of assuming a universal standard or trajectory for the development of anthropology in Asia, the contributors to this volume begin with the appropriate premise that anthropologies in different Asian countries have developed and continue to develop according to their own internal dynamics. With chapters written by an international group of experts in the field, Asian Anthropology will be a useful teaching tool and a valuable resource for scholars working in Asian anthropology.

South Asia in Transition is an introductory book on the anthropology of South Asia, including India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, suitable for students at all levels and others interested in this topic. It assumes no prior knowledge of either the region or the discipline of anthropology. The book makes extensive use of existing publications to describe how anthropologists have approached the region and what they have said about it. The first group of chapters deals mostly with India and caste, class, tribes, religion, kinship and marriage, gender, the body and personhood, politics and political economy. A second group of chapters deals successively with Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal.

In the past ten years there has been a shift in the field of anthropology towards working with and studying organisations. This book addresses this need by bringing together seven diverse case studies based in/on South Asian countries.

This volume focuses on the household as a primary context for the reproduction, and not merely reflection, of society. Domestic groups of north and south India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Indians in Malaysia are studied. Each paper is a critical exploration of the way the household is embedded in society and mediates individual consciousness and societal principles. The contributors demonstrate that the understanding of small scale institutions is integral to a more adequate theory of society.

In a path-breaking series of essays the contributors to this collection explore the development of anthropological research in Asia. The volume includes writings on Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines.