Subaltern Lives

This fascinating book uses biographical fragments to shed new light on colonial life and convictism in the nineteenth-century Indian Ocean.

"This book explores fragments from the lives of socially marginal men and women who were associated with Indian Ocean penal settlements and colonies in the nineteenth century. It interrogates colonialism from a subaltern history perspective, and places penal transportation in a broad global context. It takes a life-writing approach, weaving together biographical snapshots of convicts - ordinary Indians and Eurasians; African slaves, apprentices and ex-slaves; indentured labourers; soldiers and rebels - with the lives of sailors, indigenous peoples and the 'poor whites' of Empire. Subaltern Lives brings into focus convict experiences of transportation and penal settlements and colonies, as well as the relationship between convictism, punishment and colonial labour regimes. It also cuts a slice into society and social transformation in the nineteenth century, analysing the making of colonial identities, the nature of social capital in the colonial context, and networks of Empire across the Indian Ocean and beyond"--

This book presents the first large overview of late Soviet religiosity across several confessions and Soviet republics, from the 1960s to the 1980s. Based on a broad range of new sources on the daily life of religious communities, including material from regional archives and oral history, it shows that religion not only survived Soviet anti-religious repression, but also adapted to new conditions. Going beyond traditional views about a mere "returned of the repressed", the book shows how new forms of religiosity and religious socialisation emerged, as new generations born into atheist families turned to religion in search of new meaning, long before perestroika facilitated this process. In addition, the book examines anew religious activism and transnational networks between Soviet believers and Western organisations during the Cold War, explores the religious dimension of Soviet female activism, and shifts the focus away from the non-religious human rights movement and from religious institutions to ordinary believers.

The book is the fruit of Douglas Mark Ponton’s and co-editor Uwe Zagratzki’s enduring interest in the Blues as a musical and cultural phenomenon and source of personal inspiration. Continuing in the tradition of Blues studies established by the likes of Samuel Charters and Paul Oliver, the authors hope to contribute to the revitalisation of the field through a multi-disciplinary approach designed to explore this constantly evolving social phenomenon in all its heterogeneity. Focusing either on particular artists (Lightnin’ Hopkins, Robert Johnson), or specific texts (Langston Hughes’ Weary Blues and Backlash Blues, Jimi Hendrix’s Machine Gun), the book tackles issues ranging from authenticity and musicology in Blues performance to the Blues in diaspora, while also applying techniques of linguistic analysis to the corpora of Blues texts. While some chapters focus on the Blues as a quintessentially American phenomenon, linked to a specific social context, others see it in its current evolutions, as the bearer of vital cultural attitudes into the digital age. This multidisciplinary volume will appeal to a broad range of scholars operating in a number of different academic disciplines, including Musicology, Linguistics, Sociology, History, Ethnomusicology, Literature, Economics and Cultural Studies. It will also interest educators across the Humanities, and could be used to exemplify the application to data of specific analytical methodologies, and as a general introduction to the field of Blues studies.

Often called ‘Mini-India’, the Andaman Islands have been a crucial site of encounter between different regimes, subjects, castes, creeds, languages, and ethnicities. Since 1858, subaltern convicts, refugees, repatriates, and labourers from South and Southeast Asia have moved to the islands, condemned to, or in search of a new life. While some migrants have achieved social mobility, others have remained disenfranchised and marginalized. This ethnographic study of the Andaman settler society analyses various shades of inequality that arise from migrant communities’ material and representational access to the state. The author employs the concept of subalternity to investigate political negotiations of island history, collective identity, ecological sustainability, and resource access. Interpreting characteristic views, practices, and voices of subaltern interlocutors, the author untangles their collective agency and consciousness in migration, settlement, and place-making processes. Further, the book highlights particular subaltern strategies in order to achieve autonomy and peaceful cohabitation through movement, cultural and social appropriation, and multi-layered methods of resistance.

Both India and Europe have been undergoing a difficult process of negotiating cultural, religious and ethnic diversity within their democratic frameworks. In fact, recent incidents of xenophobic backlash against multiculturalism and minority communities in Europe, as well as myriad movements for constitutional recognition of castes, tribes and languages and the emergence of Islamophobic terror in India, question the conventional idea of democracy as the idyllic preserver of diversity. This volume contests the simplistic connection between democracy and diversity by proposing that democracy, in fact, produces, sediments and reinforces cultural heterogeneity. It argues that in democratic polities, disparate cultural practices are often converted into identity categories, with disturbing implications for national identity, constitutionalism, political governance and citizenship. While mobilizations on the plank of cultural differences are typically viewed as being born in undemocratic spaces with little toleration for diversity, they also find fertile soil in democracy insofar as democracy celebrates diversity and allows cultural dissent to thrive. Such dissent, while essential for democracy, has difficult consequences. Examining the fundamental conflict between constructions of particular cultural identities and mandates of a unifying democratic ethos, the book brings forth the complexities underlying the politics of identity recognition and national integration. In making a radical intervention in the discourse, this volume offers a critique of existing paradigms of multiculturalism. It will interest scholars and students of political science, sociology, and postcolonial and comparative studies.

"This is an important and thought-provoking collection of contemporary articles on the current crisis in social theory." - Professor Roger Penn, Lancaster University "With a comprehensive vision, great sociologists from around the world address the challenges of the new century." - Professor Michael Burawoy, University of California, Berkeley Over the past century, the field of sociology has experienced extraordinary expansion and vitality. But is this growth positive or negative - a promise of diversity or a threat of fragmentation? This critical volume explores the meaning of sociology and sociological knowledge in light of the recent growth and institutionalization of the discipline. A stellar group of international authors powerfully identify, question, and transform key assumptions in sociology. Leading us through the challenges faced by sociology, and the possible strategies for addressing them in the future, the book includes key issues such as: globalization development social policy inequality. An important companion for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers engaged with contemporary sociological theory, sociology of knowledge and sociological analysis.