Tracks of change : railways and everyday life in colonial India / Ritika Prasad.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Prasad, Ritika, 1975- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Railroads--Social aspects--India--History.

Railroads.

Railroad travel--Social aspects--India--History.

Railroad travel.

Social change--India--History.

Social change.

India--Social life and customs.

India.

India--Social conditions.

India--History--British occupation, 1765-1947.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 315 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, railways became increasingly important in the lives of a growing number of Indians. While allowing millions to collectively experience the endemic discomforts of third-class travel, the public opportunities for proximity and contact created by railways simultaneously compelled colonial society to confront questions about exclusion, difference, and community. It was not only passengers, however, who were affected by the transformations that railways wrought. Even without boarding a train, one could see railway tracks and embankments reshaping familiar landscapes, realise that train schedules represented new temporal structures, fear that spreading railway links increased the reach of contagion, and participate in new forms of popular politics focused around railway spaces. Tracks of Change explores how railway technology, travel, and infrastructure became increasingly woven into everyday life in colonial India, how people negotiated with the growing presence of railways, and how this process has shaped India's history.

Contents:

The nature of the beast? : an elementary logic for third-class travel

Experiencing the third-class

Demand and supply? : railway space and social taxonomy

Crime and punishment : in the shadow of railway embankments

Railway time : speed, synchronization, and "time-sense"

Contagion and control : managing disease, epidemics, and mobility

Designing rule : power, efficiency, and anxiety

Marking citizen from denizen : dissent, "rogues," and rupture.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-316-02880-1

1-316-57025-8

1-316-03025-3

1-316-02977-8

1-316-03217-5

1-316-05357-1