Social Science Press – förlag

This is a book on the life and times of Robert Chambers, founder of W. & R. Chambers publishers. Although there are now books based on some of his letters and on the impact of one of his books, The Vestiges of Natural Creation, there are no books on the whole man and his life. Written by Iris Macfarlane with Alan Macfarlane, the book weaves together three strands. At one level, it is a biography of Chambers and his family; the portrait of a rise from absolute poverty to great wealth and influence. At the second it provides the context of his life by the way of a portrait of nineteenth century Edinburgh as seen through his eyes. At the third it explores the intellectual and organisational revolutions embodied in his life, the explorations in history, folklore, geology, publishing, education and many other fields which made him one of the most exciting thinkers of his age. It is based on extensive archival research among the Chambers’ archives in Edinburgh and conversations with his descendants.Please note: This title is co-published with Social Science Press, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

This is a book on the life and times of Robert Chambers, founder of W. & R. Chambers publishers. Although there are now books based on some of his letters and on the impact of one of his books, The Vestiges of Natural Creation, there are no books on the whole man and his life. Written by Iris Macfarlane with Alan Macfarlane, the book weaves together three strands. At one level, it is a biography of Chambers and his family; the portrait of a rise from absolute poverty to great wealth and influence. At the second it provides the context of his life by the way of a portrait of nineteenth century Edinburgh as seen through his eyes. At the third it explores the intellectual and organisational revolutions embodied in his life, the explorations in history, folklore, geology, publishing, education and many other fields which made him one of the most exciting thinkers of his age. It is based on extensive archival research among the Chambers’ archives in Edinburgh and conversations with his descendants.Please note: This title is co-published with Social Science Press, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

This volume together scholars specializing in different parts of the world to give us a comparative understanding of the persistence of corruption in some societies. The reader is privileged to learn from the many global variations that are skilfully presented for further analyses. Corruption is a salient feature of human condition in any organized society. Further, where risks are low and the returns high, corruption is almost inevitable. Apart from this, traditional public behaviour comes precariously close to what in the West might amount to corrupt practices. Bureaucratic corruption should be understood in the light of a clash of morality on the one hand and legality on the other. There is a contradiction between traditional values, which are held in respect and are a part of everyday life of a people, and norms of the larger society which stand out as compelling forces. The idea of the modern division between the public and private office is alien to a traditional culture and corruption finds space when this division is not strictly observed.

Seven essays in this volume cover a range of countries which include India, South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and Indonesia. As the essays unfold themselves, the problem of corruption takes on an added dimension, that of a legacy left behind by colonialism.

Please note: This title is co-published with Social Science Press, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

This volume together scholars specializing in different parts of the world to give us a comparative understanding of the persistence of corruption in some societies. The reader is privileged to learn from the many global variations that are skilfully presented for further analyses. Corruption is a salient feature of human condition in any organized society. Further, where risks are low and the returns high, corruption is almost inevitable. Apart from this, traditional public behaviour comes precariously close to what in the West might amount to corrupt practices. Bureaucratic corruption should be understood in the light of a clash of morality on the one hand and legality on the other. There is a contradiction between traditional values, which are held in respect and are a part of everyday life of a people, and norms of the larger society which stand out as compelling forces. The idea of the modern division between the public and private office is alien to a traditional culture and corruption finds space when this division is not strictly observed.

Seven essays in this volume cover a range of countries which include India, South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and Indonesia. As the essays unfold themselves, the problem of corruption takes on an added dimension, that of a legacy left behind by colonialism.

Please note: This title is co-published with Social Science Press, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Rabindranath Tagore (1861‒1941) was a prolific playwright with more than thirty plays to his credit. He is also known for his life-long, passionate engagement with theatre, first at Jorasanko and then at Santiniketan, in multiple roles as actor, director, singer, musician. However, during his own life-time and even after his demise, his experimental plays have proved challenging for directors to stage. Time and again they have been written off as unstageable by prominent theatre makers. Further complications have arisen from the presence of a spectre of authority around Tagore and his plays often promoted by Visva-Bharati, the institution he founded and which held the copyright of his works till 2001. This book travels through time and space intending to untangle the enigma presented by Tagore’s plays. The book on one hand immerses itself into the archive of Tagore’s plays and his dramaturgy of them in order to problematize the ways in which they have been interpreted. On the other, it also engages with productions of Tagore’s plays during and after his life-time to understand the challenges directors have faced while staging them and the strategies they have embraced to circumvent them. While performing a subjective critical reading of the Tagore theatre-archive, an underlying objective of the book remains to understand the very concept of the archive, as it manifests itself in contemporary dramatic theatre.

Rabindranath Tagore (1861‒1941) was a prolific playwright with more than thirty plays to his credit. He is also known for his life-long, passionate engagement with theatre, first at Jorasanko and then at Santiniketan, in multiple roles as actor, director, singer, musician. However, during his own life-time and even after his demise, his experimental plays have proved challenging for directors to stage. Time and again they have been written off as unstageable by prominent theatre makers. Further complications have arisen from the presence of a spectre of authority around Tagore and his plays often promoted by Visva-Bharati, the institution he founded and which held the copyright of his works till 2001. This book travels through time and space intending to untangle the enigma presented by Tagore’s plays. The book on one hand immerses itself into the archive of Tagore’s plays and his dramaturgy of them in order to problematize the ways in which they have been interpreted. On the other, it also engages with productions of Tagore’s plays during and after his life-time to understand the challenges directors have faced while staging them and the strategies they have embraced to circumvent them. While performing a subjective critical reading of the Tagore theatre-archive, an underlying objective of the book remains to understand the very concept of the archive, as it manifests itself in contemporary dramatic theatre.

Sir Herbert Hope Risley (1851 - 1911) - ''H. H. Risley'', as he always signed himself - was a member of the Indian Civil Service (ICS) from 1873 to 1910 who served in Bengal and became a senior administrator and policymaker in the colonial government, as well as the pre-eminent anthropologist in British India. He was also an imperialist, who was convinced of the rightness of ''civilising'' British rule and its benefits for both India and Britain, and one of this book''s objectives is to render his simultaneous commitment to anthropology and imperialism intelligible to present-day readers. More specifically, Anthropologist and Imperialist: H. H. Risley and British India, 1873–1911 documents the two sides of Risley’s career, which is used as a case-study to investigate, first, the production and circulation of colonial knowledge, specifically anthropological knowledge, and secondly, its often loose and inconsistent connection with administration and policymaking, and with the government and state overall.

Risley, like other officials engaged in anthropology in India, as well as the government itself, insisted that ethnography and anthropology had both ‘administrative’ and ‘scientific’ value; unlike previous works on Indian colonial anthropology, this book carefully examines its ‘scientific’ contributions in relation to contemporary metropolitan anthropology. It does not attempt to reinvent ‘greatman’ political or intellectual history, but does demonstrate the importance of studying the powerful officials who ruled British India, as well as the minor provincial politicians and subaltern subjects – or the abstract forces, such as colonialism and resistance – that have dominated recent historical scholarship. This book shows, too, that a detailed inquiry into Risley’s career, and his ideas and actions, can open new perspectives on a variety of continuing debates, including those over the colonial construction of caste and race in ‘traditional’ India, orientalism and forms of colonial knowledge, Victorian anthropology’s close relationship with the British empire, and the modern discipline’s uneasy links with its colonial past.

Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

Sir Herbert Hope Risley (1851 - 1911) - ''H. H. Risley'', as he always signed himself - was a member of the Indian Civil Service (ICS) from 1873 to 1910 who served in Bengal and became a senior administrator and policymaker in the colonial government, as well as the pre-eminent anthropologist in British India. He was also an imperialist, who was convinced of the rightness of ''civilising'' British rule and its benefits for both India and Britain, and one of this book''s objectives is to render his simultaneous commitment to anthropology and imperialism intelligible to present-day readers. More specifically, Anthropologist and Imperialist: H. H. Risley and British India, 1873–1911 documents the two sides of Risley’s career, which is used as a case-study to investigate, first, the production and circulation of colonial knowledge, specifically anthropological knowledge, and secondly, its often loose and inconsistent connection with administration and policymaking, and with the government and state overall.

Risley, like other officials engaged in anthropology in India, as well as the government itself, insisted that ethnography and anthropology had both ‘administrative’ and ‘scientific’ value; unlike previous works on Indian colonial anthropology, this book carefully examines its ‘scientific’ contributions in relation to contemporary metropolitan anthropology. It does not attempt to reinvent ‘greatman’ political or intellectual history, but does demonstrate the importance of studying the powerful officials who ruled British India, as well as the minor provincial politicians and subaltern subjects – or the abstract forces, such as colonialism and resistance – that have dominated recent historical scholarship. This book shows, too, that a detailed inquiry into Risley’s career, and his ideas and actions, can open new perspectives on a variety of continuing debates, including those over the colonial construction of caste and race in ‘traditional’ India, orientalism and forms of colonial knowledge, Victorian anthropology’s close relationship with the British empire, and the modern discipline’s uneasy links with its colonial past.

Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

Steel Town Adivasis: Industry and Inequality in Eastern India presents an analysis of class formation in the industrial town, Rourkela in the eastern Indian state Odisha, and the ways this process relates to regional ethnicity and caste.

This study is based on long-term ethnographic research conducted in the 2000s and oral histories covering the period from the inception of the steel plant, and it focusses on the region’s ‘tribes’, indigenous people or Adivasis who lost their land when the Government of India established a large steel plant in Rourkela in the 1950s.

The book will be of interest to anthropologists, sociologists, historians interested in industrial labour and work, in class, caste, Adivasis, ethnicity and their dynamic entanglement, as well as students and activists.

Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

Steel Town Adivasis: Industry and Inequality in Eastern India presents an analysis of class formation in the industrial town, Rourkela in the eastern Indian state Odisha, and the ways this process relates to regional ethnicity and caste.

This study is based on long-term ethnographic research conducted in the 2000s and oral histories covering the period from the inception of the steel plant, and it focusses on the region’s ‘tribes’, indigenous people or Adivasis who lost their land when the Government of India established a large steel plant in Rourkela in the 1950s.

The book will be of interest to anthropologists, sociologists, historians interested in industrial labour and work, in class, caste, Adivasis, ethnicity and their dynamic entanglement, as well as students and activists.

Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

Classes of Labour: Work and Life in a Central Indian Steel Town is a classic in the social sciences. The rigour and richness of the ethnographic data of this book and its analysis is matched only by its literary style. This magnum opus of 732 pages, an outcome of fieldwork covering twenty-one years, complete with diagrams and photographs, reads like an epic novel, difficult to put down. Professor Jonathan Parry looks at a context in which the manual workforce is divided into distinct social classes, which have a clear sense of themselves as separate and interests that are sometimes opposed. The relationship between them may even be one of exploitation; and they are associated with different lifestyles and outlooks, kinship and marriage practices, and suicide patterns. A central concern is with the intersection between class, caste, gender and regional ethnicity, with how class trumps caste in most contexts and with how classes have become increasingly structured as the ‘structuration’ of castes has declined. The wider theoretical ambition is to specify the general conditions under which the so-called ‘working class’ has any realistic prospect of unity.