Beschreibung:
Sita Venkateswar is a socio-cultural anthropologist in the School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University and Associate Director, Massey chapter, New Zealand India Research Institute, New Zealand. Her research documents the ways academic practices can be responsive to social inequities and she incorporates critical feminist scholar-activist research methodologies, designated as Public Anthropology, informed by feminist and postcolonial theories. She uses a comparative and reflexive anthropological lens to address issues of internal colonialism, gender, poverty, social oppression and structural violence within the postcolonial and neoliberal contexts of South Asia. Her ethnography Development and Ethnocide: Colonial Practices in the Andaman Islands (2004) is based on her PhD fieldwork in the Andaman Islands from 1989 to 1992 funded by the National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant. Her co-edited book, The Politics of Indigeneity: Dialogues and Reflections on Indigenous Activism (2011) published by Zed Books. Her current research explores multi-species approaches to food resilience that focuses on millet cultivation in India.
This volume brings together multidisciplinary, situated and nuanced analyses of contingent issues framing a rapidly changing India in the 21st century. It moves beyond the ready dichotomies that are often extended to understand India as a series of contrasts and offers new insights into the complex realities of India today, thereby enabling us to anticipate the decades to come.
The editors focus on three major themes, each discussed in a section: The first section, Framing the Macro-Economic Environment, defines the framework for interrogatingglobalisation and socio-economic changes in India over the last few decades ofthe 20th century spiraling into India in the 21st century. The next section,Food Security and Natural Resources, highlights critical considerationsinvolved in feeding a burgeoning population. The discussions pose importantquestions in relation to the resilience of both people and planet confrontingincreasingly unpredictable climate-induced scenarios. The final section,Development, Activism and Changing Technologies, discusses some of the socialchallenges of contemporary India through the lens of inequalities and emergentactivisms. The section concludes with an elaboration of the potential and promise of changing technologies and new social media to build an informed and active citizenry across existing social divides.
Provides directions to
Chapter 1. Globalisation and the Challenges of Development: An Introduction- Sekhar Bandyopadhyay and Sita Venkateswar.- Section 1: Framing the Macro environment.- Chapter 2. Compressed Capitalism, Globalization, and the Fate of Indian Development.- Chapter 3. India's Economic Performance in the Post Reforms Period: A Tale of Mixed Messages.- Chapter 4. Post-Industrial Development and the New Leisure Economy.- Section 2: Food Security.- Chapter 5. India's Evolving Food and Nutrition Scenario: An Overview.- Chapter 6. Millet in Our Own Voices: A Culturally-Centered Articulation of Alternative Development by DDS Women Farmers' Sanghams.- Chapter 7. Beyond Basmati: Two Approaches to the Challenge of Agricultural Development in the 'New India'.- Section 3: Activism, Development and Changing Technologies.- Chapter 8. Investment-Induced Displacement and the Ecological Basis of India's Economy.- Chapter 9. Urban Neoliberalism and the Right to Water and Sanitation for Bangalore's Poor.- Chapter 10. Bastis as "Forgotten Places" in Howrah, West Bengal.- Chapter 11. ICT4D and Empowerment: Uneven Development in Rural South India.- Chapter 12 Paradigms of Digital Activism: India and its Mobile Internet Users.- Section 4: Conclusion.- Chapter 13. Approaching Contemporary India: the Politics of Scale, Space and Aspiration in the Time of Modi.
