Everyday Life in South Asia [Paperback]

Diane P. Mines (Editor), Sarah E. Lamb (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 16, 2002

This vivid anthology of ethnographic writing on South Asia focuses on the daily lives of people in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Firsthand accounts portray the ways ordinary people live and make their worlds through growing up and aging, arranging marriages, exploring sexuality, negotiating caste hierarchies, practicing religion, participating in politics and popular culture, enduring violence as nations are built, and moving abroad to make new lives. An international group of scholars present a diverse range of contemporary life situations and perspectives, including peasant girls in rural Rajasthan and advertising executives in Mumbai; "untouchable" sharecroppers and high-caste landlords; intimate, multi-generational households and street youth involved in "modern" gangs; South Asian--American children of high-powered professionals and refugees displaced by national conflict, among many others. The lively text provides lucid introductions to the questions involved in understanding gender, caste, religion, globalization, nationalism, and other key issues as they affect this important region.

Contributors: Joseph S. Alter, J. Bernard Bate, E. Valentine Daniel, Robert Desjarlais, Sara Dickey, Gautam Ghosh, Ann Grodzins Gold, Benedicte Grima, Kim Gutschow, Kathleen Hall, Patricia Jeffery, Roger Jeffery, Pradeep Jeganathan, Nita Kumar, Sarah Lamb, Mark Liechty, McKim Marriott, William Mazzarella, Diane P. Mines, Mattison Mines, Serena Nanda, Kirin Narayan, Steven M. Parish, Gloria Goodwin Raheja, Paula Richman, Susan Seizer, Susan Seymour, Margaret Trawick, Ruth Vanita, Viramma (with Josiane Racine and Jean Luc Racine), Susan S. Wadley, and Jim Wilce.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Everyday Life presents layered images of how the aspirations of the peoples of the region have been shaped and then crushed, only to take on new meaning. It is a readable book that forces the reader to pause and reflect on the strange and yet predictable ways in which history in South Asia has evolved." - Asian Affairs, March 2004

About the Author

Diane P. Mines received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago and her B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Washington. She has conducted fieldwork in Tamilnadu, India. She was Mellon Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis from 1995-1998, and is now Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Appalachian State University.

Sarah Lamb received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago and her B.A. in Religious Studies from Brown University. She has conducted research in West Bengal, India and among immigrants from India in the U.S. She is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University and author of White Saris and Sweet Mangoes: Aging, Gender and Body in North India (California, 2000).

Diane P. Mines was a Mellon Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis and is now Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Appalachian State University.

Sarah Lamb is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University and author of White Saris and Sweet Mangoes: Aging, Gender and Body in North India.

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Indiana University Press (August 16, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0253215218
• ISBN-13: 978-0253215215
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #268,917 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sarah Lamb is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Brandeis University. She received her BA from Brown University in Religious Studies and a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago. She is the author of "White Saris and Sweet Mangoes: Aging, Gender and Body in India" (2000) and "Aging and the Indian Diaspora: Cosmopolitan Families in India and Abroad" (2009), and co-editor of "Everyday Life in South Asia" (2002). She has been conducting research in India, especially in the northeastern state of West Bengal, for more than twenty years. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Needham, Massachusetts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars disappointingly okay, May 20, 2008

By 

Victor C. Demunck "Lithuanian clown" (Kingston, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Everyday Life in South Asia (Paperback)

I had high hopes for this book given the two editors' own substantial and respective writings on India. However, this edited volume falls short as a satisfying volume for an undergraduate course on south Asia on many counts:
1) while the book was published in 2002, many of the articles refer to a decade or more in the past and thus do not express or animate contemporary Indian "everyday life." the book feels dated.

2) papers in the volume vary tremendously in quality and degree of difficulty and style.

3) Too little on non Hindus; particularly very few papers on Muslims--one by the Jeffries which seems quite dated and lacks any verve (as do many articles including Wadley's openning paper on the joint family); another paper on "tuneful prayers" provides an image of Muslims that fits into contemporary ethnocentric biases of Muslims as fundamentalists and is unpleasant.

4) The two papers on Sri Lanka focus on Eelam and the effects of chronic warfare in the East. While this is an important issue there are many other papers that could have provided a fuller account of "everyday life" in Sri Lanka, a predominantly Buddhist country.

5) Students in my class (including myself) wondered why the author of the article on Hijras did not just give her primary informant, who had been excommunicated from the Hijra community, the money she needed to rejoin it. After all the author had worked with this woman who was the main subject of the paper for over a decade and watched her fall deeper into poverty, despair, and sickness. Unintentionally, this paper gives a bad impression of what "anthropologists in the field" do. The editors should be more careful about how these articles are read by their intended audience--i.e., undergraduate students.

6) many of the articles are drab in style and boring. the article on illiteracy in a rajasthan village relies on 1992 census data, and should have been updated and re-edited.

on the positive side, there are many good articles. Kirin Narayan's article was a class favorite as was McKim Marriott's (though again dated). The articles are short and most are easy reads. The volume could benefit from a second edition where some articles are updated, others deleted, new ones included.

5.0 out of 5 stars Great!, January 14, 2012

By 

blondie100 - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Everyday Life in South Asia, Second Edition (Paperback)

The book arrived in a very timely manner. It's also a great book and I've learned a lot from it.

5.0 out of 5 stars Good collection of essays, November 27, 2011

By 

SEA-Addict "SEA-addict" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everyday Life in South Asia, Second Edition (Paperback)

I've read the second edition of this book, and the collection of essays offers a good introduction to a complex region. The range of essays is solid and the writing by the co-editors is clear and crisp. A useful volume.