Rethinking Markets in Modern India

Ajay Gandhi is an Assistant Professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Barbara Harriss-White is Emeritus Professor and Fellow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. Douglas E. Haynes is Professor of History at Dartmouth College, Hanover. Sebastian Schwecke is an Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

'Working across South Asian history and ethnography, this volume builds creatively on the existing literature on vernacular capitalism and market governance with rich data and diverse approaches to customary and underground transactions. Exploring finance, small-scale industry and agricultural commodities, as well as advertising, risk and trust, the essays delve deeply into the local contexts of market practice in India, productively reactivating debates on the temporalities, performatives and regulation of 'the bazaar.'' Ritu Birla, University of Toronto

• 1. Markets in Modern India: Embedded, Contested, Pliable Sebastian Schwecke and Ajay Gandhi; 2. Banking in the Bazaar: The Nattukottai Chettiars David Rudner; 3. Space in Motion: An Uneven Narrative of Urban Private Property in Bombay Nikhil Rao; 4. Magic of Business: Occult Forces in the Bazaar Economy Projit Bihari Mukharji; 5. Vernacular Capitalism, Advertising, and the Bazaar in Early Twentieth-century Western India Douglas E. Haynes; 6. The Artifice of Trust: Reputational and Procedural Registers of Trust in North Indian 'Informal' Finance Sebastian Schwecke; 7. Mandi Acts and Market Lore: Regulatory Life in India's Agricultural Markets Mekhala Krishnamurthy; 8. The Market and the Sovereign: Politics, Performance, and Impasses of Cross-LOC trade Aditi Saraf; 9. Brandism vs. Bazaarism: Mediating Divinity in Banaras Andy Rotman; 10. Fighting Specters and Fostering Relations: An Ethnography of Black Money in India Ajay Gandhi; 11. Market Making in Punjab Lotteries: Regulation and Mutual Dependence Matthew Hull; 12. Liquid Assets: Transactional Grammars of Alcohol in Jharkhand Roger Begrich; 13. Building on Sand? Criminal Markets and Politics in Tamil Nadu Barbara Harriss-White and J. Jeyaranjan; Index.