Customer Reviews

Everyday Life in South Asia

5 star:		(3)
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2 star:		(1)
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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.

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

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.

I recently used this text for my South Asia Studies class and found it to be extremely useful. The section intros by the editors provided excellent background, and the pieces are varied and for the most part very engaging, illuminating and accessible. Students reported really appreciating the text. I have heard that a new edition is in the works -- look forward to it!