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Autobiography of an archive : a scholar's passage to India / Nicholas B. Dirks.

LIBRA GN345.2 .D57 2015
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Format:
Book
Author/Creator:
Dirks, Nicholas B., 1950- author.
Contributor:
Edwin B. Cole Memorial Fund.
Series:
Cultures of history
Language:
English
Subjects (All):
Anthropology and history--India.
Anthropology and history.
Anthropological archives--India.
Anthropological archives.
Education, Higher--United States--Philosophy.
Education, Higher.
Interdisciplinary research.
Philosophy.
United States.
Interdisciplinary research--Philosophy.
India.
Physical Description:
viii, 390 pages ; 23 cm.
Place of Publication:
New York : Columbia University Press, [2015]
Summary:
A leading figure in higher education reflects on his early encounter with India, its history, and his discipline's turn to the study of ordinary lives and cultural rhythms. Nicholas B. Dirks revisits his early investigations of kingship in India, the rise of the caste system, the emergence of English imperial interest in controlling markets and India's political, regimes, and the development of a crisis in sovereignty that led to an extraordinary nationalist struggle. He shares his personal encounters; with archives on these subjects, ultimately revealing the limits of colonial knowledge and single-disciplinary perspectives. Drawing parallels to the way American universities balance the liberal arts and specialized research today, Dirks encourages scholars to apply multiple approaches to their research and build a more global archive. Book jacket.
Contents:
Introduction : passage to India
Annals of the archive : ethnographic notes on the sources of history
Autobiography of an archive
Preface to the second edition of the Hollow crown
Castes of mind
Ritual and resistance : subversion as a social fact
The policing of tradition : colonialism and anthropology in southern India
Imperial sovereignty
Bringing the company back in : the scandal of early global capitalism
The idea of empire
In near ruins
G.S. Ghurye and the politics of sociological knowledge
South Asian studies : futures past
Franz Boas and the American university : a personal account
Scholars and spies : worldly knowledge and the predicament of the university
The opening of the American mind.
Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Local Notes:
Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Edwin B. Cole Memorial Fund.
ISBN:
9780231169660
0231169663
9780231169677
0231169671
OCLC:
880565965

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