( SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL)

Volume 44 / Number 4 / December 1990 • 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158

Gupta, Gujarat, and Guha Restating the case for South Asia

by Paul Greenough*

For South A iani t , a challenging i ue-part intellectual, part practical-i to bring South A ian topic and re earch material into Fir t World di cour e, a di cour e that eem at time to be taking place over our head . South A ian peciali t wonder why 0 much cholar hip on India, Paid tan, Banglade h, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bhutan continue to be underrepre ented in the thinking of their other­wi e con cientiou Iy alert colleague . Many talented American , who earn their daily bread by reading, writing, and lecturing, till do not react to indexical term like Gupta, Gujarat, and (Ranajit) Guha-an era, a region, a brilliant ocial hi torian-wherea they know and admire the Shang, Szechuan, and (the prodigiou Jonathan) Spence. It i curiou that major work on and from Paki tan and India, which together have more than 50 million Engli h peaker and a profe orate larger than America' own, hould be Ie influential, eemingly have Ie to ay than, for example, a tream of tran lation from Ea tern European and Latin American intellectual .

Why doe voicing the hi tory, need, and value of 1.1 billion South A ian fail for the mo t part to engage the attention of North American and, for that matter, We tern European academic? Surely it i the ab ence of a tran national flow of data and meaning that require crutiny. Or, if South A ia doe engage attention, then it data and cholar hip are often con umed a raw material from which grand theory icon tructed, much a ginned cotton wa once

hipped to Europe for pinning. It i tempting to argue that South A ia' peripheral place in the global array of geopolitical force -along with Africa and Sou thea t A ia-automatically peripheralize it me enger. If thi i true, it cannot be overcome directly. Perhap there i more to be gained by examining main tream cholarly practice to di cover tactical point of entry and by refining the argument that will compel attention. A clear opening lie in a critique of the growing operational blindne of the harder ocial cience .

Getting South Asian materials into the mainstream

A nomothetically-driven di cipline like econom­ic and political cience move further and further away from "case ," the la t ve tige of te tability of the data et central to general theorie mu t wither away. To be concrete, the technique and method in economic and political cience that now occupy the high ground have made Third World behavior peripheral to theory becau e they (the method and

• Paul Greenough i profe r of hi tory and director of the Center for International and Comparative Studie at the University of Iowa.

• CONTENTS OF THIS I SUE • Gupta. Gujarat. and Guha. Paul

Grunough 61 Re urrecting the Common •

Ronald J. Htrring 64 Culture. Con iou ne . and

the Colonial State.

Public Culture In Late 20th­Century India. Arjun Appadurai and Carol Brtcktnrid.~t

Humanill In South A ian tudie . Shtldon PollOCK

Sandria Frtitag 69 Current Activllie at

77

New MedIa and Religiou the Council 83 Change. La"rtnct A. Babb 72 Recent Coun il Publlcallon 6

f1lTI ~ 61

technique ) are readily applicable only to advanced indu trial democracie . The tati tical ba e required by the leading model imply do not exi t in many part of the world, hence the e part of the world are ignored. To give an example from political cience, quantitative voting tudie were invented and continue to be centered in the United State and are extended outward to We tern Europe; they have a teeply declining applicability el ewhere. De facto American concern thu come to dominate political analy i with often ludicrou re ult in South A ia: voter turnout rather than voter intimidation, and party faction rather than family dyna tie , are held to be the cardinal phenomena. The re ult i that U.S.- tyle political cience become data-poor and theoretically narrow at the very moment that it ee it elf ap­proaching nomothetic triumph. Meanwhile, area cholar have had to find other way to be con i tent,

rigorou , and empirical without feti hizing technique. The challenge for South A iani t -and for other non-W e tern area cholar - i to penetrate the e armored practice and open up the di cour e. Thi implie a kind of face-to-face debate between team of open-minded Nomothetic and Areal (Ariel?) on fundamental i ue.

In 1987, the Joint Committee on South A ia (JCSA) I funded ju t uch a conference (called "MacrolMicro" by participant) between South A ian macroeconomi t, tati tician , and anthropologi t ; the re ulting paper are currently in pre .2 The conference took up a problem that any ocial cienti t would recognize: the i ue of the operationalization of variable (or "concept-indicator linkage "). Level of analy i in rural India eemed to correlate with different empirical outcome when the mo t ba ic que tion were a ked: were people now better off materially or were they not? Were a et concentrat­ing or not? Was inequality increa ing or not? Micro- tudie -rich, contextual, clo e to the ground, with an intuitively privileged validity- howed one

I M mbe of the JOint Committee on outhe t A ia: Paul Greenough. University of Iowa. CH JR. ArJun Appadural. University of Penn ylvanla; Clive Bell. V nderbilt University; E. Valentin 0 niel. University of MI hlgan; Patri ia Jeffrey. University of Edinburgh; Atul Kohli . Prin eton

niv rslty; heldon Pollock. Unlve ity of Chi go; Regula Qure hi. nive Ity of Albena; V arayana R • Unlve Ity of Wi on In.

M di n taff A sociat~ Toby A olkman; Program As ociat~· Richard Coh n; Program A i tant Dee W rren

~ Com'~r ation bt'tll'un Antllrop%gl t and Economi t : Is u~ In

f~lUurin~ Economic C1ran,?~ in Rura/lndia. edited by Pranab Bardh n. ew Deihl Ox~ rd UniV rsity Pre ..• fonh ming o

62 ITE 1

thing, but aggregate ampling data- cientific, replicable, intuitively appealing becau e valid and reliable according to tati tical te t - howed another. What wa going on? After inten e di cu ion, a major conclu ion wa that clarification of the meaning of core concepts mu t precede empirical work if it i to be convincing and cumulative; that i , the Nomothet­ic and the Areal in thi ca e had been peaking different language . Here wa a concrete example of ocial cienti ts rai ing each other' con ciou ne methodologically and conceptually through in-terdi ciplinary work. Whether the ultimately de ired re ult -getting South A ian material more prominently into the thinking of economi t and political cienti t -will have been achieved i another matter.

ationaJ per onnel need in South Asian stu die

Future need for South A iani t facuity are difficult to a e . De pite the wide pread recognition that a generation of profe or recruited in the 1950 and 1960 i about to retire, the need for per onnel i not driven by demography. It depend very pecifically upon the perceived importance of South A ia in the mind of academic vice pre ident and provo t in re earch univer itie , and thi in turn depend upon a complex economy of federal and private funding, congre ional and foundation intere t, and new development in both foreign policy and bu ine relation abroad. In other word, it i within the power of South A iani t them elve , and their allie in government, bu ine ,re earch organization , and the foundation, to drive the market in new appoint­ment by con ciou ly dramatizing the importance of the field and pre ing the ca e in variou forum. The South A ia Council of the A ociation for A ian Studie ha embarked on uch an effort. It pub Ii hed a hort brochure in 1989 aimed directly at admini tra­tor , entitled South A ian Studies in North American Higher Education (edited by Jo eph L. Schwartz­berg); it i initiating an annual South A ian book prize to be awarded through the A ociation for A ian Studie ; and it ha recently circulated a di cu ion document that propo e to overcome the fragmenta­tion of the field.

o one, however, ha made an a e ment of the future need of college and univer itie for South A iani t by a king them directly. Hence it i difficult to determine whether there i to be an over- or

VOLU 1E 44. N MBER 4

under- upply of Ph.D. if matter are allowed to follow their pre ent highly decentralized cour e .

Even on the upply ide-Ph.D. production-the data are omewhat confu ing. The mo t acce ible information derive from the erie caJled Doctoral Dissertations on Asia (DDA) publi hed by the A ociation for A ian Studie . A peculiarity of thi annual publication i that it collect data retro pec­tively for period that exceed the calendar year. For example, the DDA volume for 1987 include data on di ertation ubmitted in 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985 and 1986; the DDA for 1988 al 0 include data on the e arne year , and it i evident that the accumula­tion of reference for publication-e pecially foreign univer ity data-i a highly irregular proce . Hence it i difficult and very mi leading to compare two year of the DDA ten year apart and conclude that the number of A ian doctorate worldwide or nationally i increa ing, decrea ing, or table. For thi rea on, it i nece ary to examine and count all DDA data over a con iderable period to develop an idea about trend in production. Nece ary refine­ment hould of cour e include the 'breakdown of data by di cipline, by country under ob ervation (India, Paki tan, etc.), a well a by location of educational in titution (United State, Britain, Banglade h, etc).

Nonethele , orne preliminary tatement can be made. In the DDA Ii t between 1976 and 1986 there were 3721 di ertation worldwide in the ocial cience and the humanitie on South A ia: 2759 on

India; 214 on Afghani tan;3 213 on Banglade h; 204 on Paki tan; 147 on Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan; and 167 general.

The di ciplinary array of the e 3721 Ph.D. wa a follow:

Economic 693 Hi tory 600 Anthropology/Sociology 555 Religion 463 Political Science 346 Education 259 Art 203 Lingui tic 198 Literature 192 Geography 130

J Afghani tan i metime included in South A la . more commonly in We t A ia.

DECEMBER 1990

Philo ophy P ychology

44 38

Again, there i much food for thought here. The cumulative weight of hi torical, anthropological , and ociologicaJ information i taggering. Economic _

harde t of the ociaJ cience and often aid to be indifferent to area concern -top the Ii t; the political cience of South A ia, thought by orne to be a vani hing field, i in the middle, not on the bottom. Only the tudy of philo ophy and p ychology i truly minu cule. There are many intervening con ideration before conclu ion can be drawn about trend and relative trength in the di cipline . It i important to know, for example, where aJl tho e economic di ertation are being written: in South A ia, one u pect . One want to know which in titution are producing Ph.D . . and in which department and what their tandard and quality are. Three conclu ion cannot be defended, however: that there i an ab olute hortage of Ph.D. in South A ian tudie; that the field i overrun with human­it; and that an ab tract "market" determine whether appointment will continue to be made.

Current projects of the JCSA

In keeping with our goal of bringing South A ian cholar hip into the main tream, thi i ue of Items

report on five ongoing project . Of the five, one i nearing completion ("New Media and Religiou Change"), three are well launched ("Culture, Con ciou ne ,and the Colonial State," "Re urrect­ing the Common ," and "Public Culture in L~t~ . 20th-Century India"), while the la t ("Humamtle In

South A ian Studie ") i till in the early tage of development. The project repre ent a ub tantial portion of the JCSA' re earch portfolio and are, to ay the lea t, diver e; taken together they demon tr~te

a robu t conceptual, chronological. and methodologI­cal agenda. They al 0 demon trate that the committee i generating. and ha been pon oring for. orne time, re earch activitie that po e the tran natIonal and comparative characteri tic that are now part of th~ SSRC' mandate to it cholar. namely, to labor In

areal and global vineyard imultaneou Iy. •

IT EMS / 63

Resurrecting the Commons Collective action and ecology

by Ronald J. Herring*

For a number of year , in a ociation with the Smith onian In titution, the Ioint Committee on South A ia ha been working on a project aimed at furthering collaboration between natural and ocial cienti t and humani t concerned with environmen­

tal degradation in South A ia. Several publication are in pre ,focu ed on an exten ive deltaic man­grove wetland fore t y tern bridging India and Banglade h.1 The Sundarban (etymologically either "beautiful wood ," or, more likely, fore t of sundri trees) i familiar to many a the habitat of the endangered Bengal tiger, though Ie attractive pecie uch a the Iavan rhinocero were extin-

gui hed without international fanfare. The fore t ha been progre ively dimini hed by the exten ion of agriculture, but remain one of the la t of it type in the world. The committee' effort are now being extended geographically and theoretically with a three-tier project de igned to place broader paradig­matic and methodological per pective in amicable conte t. A conference in Bangalore at the Centre for Ecological Science of the Indian In titute of Science, in Augu t of 1991, i the fir t tage of thi larger collaboration acro di cipline and type of ecologi­cal y tern .2

The puzzles

The • tragedy of the common " has been a powerful metaphor for organizing much of the thinking about per i tent and evere, perhap inexorable, contradiction between pur uit of individual material intere t and the integrity of

• Ronald J. Herring i. sociate profe r of political ience at Nonhl!.e tern Unive~ity .

I 1lIe author w invited to gue t edit a pecial i ue of Agriculture and Human Values (Vol. 7. o. 2. 1990) on environmental degl'1ldation and developm ntal dilemm . 1lIe i ue contain a ub t of papers from a I!.orkshop on the Sundarban held at the Smith on ian In titution in November 19 7. Re ults of that I!.orl.. hop are being publi bed by the SmIth nian in a volume. currently in pre • edited by John Seiden ticker and Richard Kurin.

2 The planning committee con I t of Mr. Herring. Paul Greenough. Department of Hi t ry. University of Iowa: and Clive Bell. Department of Economic. Vanderbilt University.

64\1TEMS

natural y tern (0 trom 1986, Shiva 1986). That imple metaphor ha yoked environmental degrada­

tion to que tion of common property and collective action. Though natural cienti t may di agree on thre hold or "tipping point" of particular ecological y tern , and thu on the que tion of how clo e

"tragedy" i at any given time, common ituation and common dilemma are perva ive in the interac­tion of ocietie (of whatever cale) and nature.

The cia ic formulation of the tragedy theme wa ba ed on the de truction of grazing re ource on the village common becau e of a local ocietal failure to ration acce (Hardin 1968). Every individual benefit from putting more heep on common pa ture, but the pa ture i then eventually de troyed, to everyone' detriment. A metaphor, the common conceptualize an analytical pace between individuated property and collective u e right . It i important to di tingui h "tragedy" from more frequent common ituation and common dilemma. In Robert Wade' formula­tion (1988:184):

The exploitation of a common-pool re ource i alway a common ituation, in the sense that any re ource characterized by joint use and ubtractive benefit i potentially ubject to crowding, depletion and degradation. But only orne common ituation become common dilemm : those where joint use

and ubtractive benefit are combined with carcity, and where in con equence joint u ers tart to interfere with each other' use .

Propertie of carcity and ubtractive benefits are largely propertie of particular ecologie (local or global), given hifting dynamic of human demand. Preventing e calation from common ituation to dilemma to tragedy i critically mediated by property y tern which differentiate and enforce right .

Hardin' "tragedy" re ulted not from a failure of common property, but rather from a failure to pre erve common-pool re ource , preci ely becau e no common property arrangement to limit u e evolved. Though the Hardin problematic focu e on di a ter, common ituation rai e a clearly the potential of collective action to create new in titu­tion , or revive "traditional" one deteriorating under pre ure of market and tate, in a progre ive rather than defen ive en e. A great curio ity in the literature i why cooperation and ocial learning are o widely di counted, given the rich empirical variety

of local in titutional arrangement for managing common i ue (for a di cu ion, ee Runge 1986).

Hardin' perverse ub-optimal outcome i an

VOLUME 44, Nu 1BER 4

exemplar of what Sartre call the general problem of "counter-finality" -the collective irrationality of uncoordinated pursuit of individual intere ts. The tragedy model wa reinforced by game-theoretic work in non-repeated pri oner' dilemma: de pite the uperior payoff of cooperation, individual would be

unable to find cooperative olution . Thi view of human behavior reinforced theoretical conclu ion which po ited only two alternative to the tragedy of the common: Leviathan (a trong and interventioni t tatep or privatization of the common. Game­

theoretic literature ha advanced with demon tration that in repeated game (m re analogou to the real world than the highly re trictive a umption of the pri oner' dilemma), cooperation i a live po ibility, implying ocial learning (e.g. Axelrod 1985).

There are clearly empirical example of effective mall- cale ocietal re pon e to common dilemma, ometime e tabli hed in the teeth of Leviathan'

attempt at expan ion and control (e.g. Gadgil and Iyer 1988). One out tanding puzzle i then: under what condition doe ocial learning in the en e of evolution or recovery of common -regarding in titu­tion and working rule occur? Social cienti t intere ted in common dilemma then confront central problematic in public economic : how doe a public good get regularly produced? Hi torical work on actual common-property y tern in the ubcontinent ugge t that local in titution became marginalized

or criminalized a the tate centralized control and removed local authority through novel proprietary claim (e.g. Singh 1986). But the appealing, often romanticized, po ition taken by the locali t light what may be called a econd-order common dilemma: all local arrangement for dealing with natural y tern are embedded in a larger common intere t defined by the reach of eco- y tern beyond localitie . The mo t elaborate cherne for con erving and haring water locally may be rendered irrelevant by up tream diversion, defore tation, or pollution. Local common overlap; ecological y tern do not re pect human boundarie .

A econd problematic then concern the role of upra-Iocal authority in providing or denying political pace for I cal olution , mediating between local

in titution on overlapping common dilemma, and re ponding to dilemma which are beyond the reach

J A re ult pre ged in Indic politi al the ry whl h po its the nece ity of the danda. or rod of the Kang. with ut which all would be 10 I.

DECEMBER 1990

of any local re pon e. State in the region mock the theoretical tate of academic di course, di olving into ociety with di tance from the center, much as blood ve el dimini h in ize with di tance from the heart until they di appear into pace around cell . It i at the level of the local tate that policy come to life or peri he . Subcontinental tate have periodi­cally protected natural y tern ,and imultaneou Iy proved to be a central ource of environmental de truction and con equently a target of defen ive reaction by ordinary people who e common local intere ts are threatened by official policy. The mix of intere t and idea driving particular tate initiative remain poorly understood.

Neither privatization nor Leviathan a ure protection of local environment . Leviathan as metaphor conveniently link will and implementation in one (re olute) actor. Real world tate not only have their own intere t , but are embedded in ociety, reflecting it contradiction , re ulting in differential permeability to ocial pre ure elective dimen ional "oftne "and admini trative incapacity (Herring 1990). The colonial tate accelerated the de truction of the Sundarban through provi ion of incentive and property guarantee for "reclamation" of "waste­land," driven by it own revenue imperative and vi ion of a bucolic Bengal of manageable and pacific pea ant producing rice in a civilized manner (in explicit contra t to a refuge of outlaw , tax-evader, and anti- ocial element, human and otherwi e). Land development wa a central element in tate formation in pre-colonial Bengal and a mean of extending colonial authority with an expre ed determination "to bend the idle to labor."

For all the recognized problem of centralized authority in managing nature, local cooperative olution remain problematic, in part for reason

identified in the tragedy-of-the-common literature, in part becau e of the very power of centralized Leviathan intervening in the pace nece ary for face-to-face communitie to work olution . In va t frontier tract uch a the Sundarban ,local olution to the aggregate problem of fore t de truction would have been unimaginable, even if local intere thad coale ced around con ervation. The fore t were eventually "protected," in dimini hed form, by a con ervationi t but porou Leviathan that impo ed limit which, from the per pective of villager eeking expan ion of cultivable land, were incompre­

hen ible-if not imperceptible. Pr tection coexi ted

ITE 1 , 65

with elective illicit acce ne ted in theme of cientific fore try (from the late 19th century) and ub equently biological diver ity. Unlike the militant

re pon e of fore t u er in much of South A ia, eva ion and non-compliance characterized pea ant re pon e to re triction of u e right in the Sundar­ban .

A precondition for local collective action i a widely hared perception that a public good i at take . F r material value pr duced by nature

(commercial timber, edible fi h), u ually de ignated a "common property re ource ," thi perception i typically not problematic . But in econd-order common dilemma ,natural y tern a ume value not from in trumental u e. mea ured in market, but in and of them elve (naildarter ver u almon). The perception of con ervation of a u able re ource a a collective good i not nearly 0 problematic a conceptualizing pre ervation of an eco y tern a a public good, independently of it utility a a bundle of re ource . Thi i the cia ic Pinchot-Muir controver y reincarnated a the truggle between meaning y tern that privilege conservation in oppoition to tho e centered on pre ervation. or the conflict between ocial ecology and "deep" ecology. In the field of ecological threat • i the recognition of meta-c mmon value a matter of long- tanding practice, new information. change in relative preference ,or orne interactive effect of the three? What can be aid about alternative ource of value and norm for collective action on common i ue affecting the environment?

The hi tory of the Sunderban illu trate the fundamental importance of ideational hift in the framing of "nature" and "natural re ource ." The Sundarban could be (and ha been) conceptualized a a dangerou and u ele wamp (" pe tilential muck" of "evil fertility") , a ource of potential revenue and rice via development, a valuable natural re ource (primarily timber) to be con erved for a continuing revenue tream, or a rich and precariou wetland ecological y tern worthy of pre ervation on ground of biological diver ity and other y temic value . The complex relation hip between the meaning y tern and natural environment of South A ia remain poorl} under tood, though innovative work i appearing (e.g. Gold and Gujar 19 9) . Simulta-ne u ly, an influential critical literature in India i que tioning fundamentally the in trumental appropria-

66 ITEM

tion of " cience" by a tate bent on it own logic of developmentali m (e.g. Nandy 1988).

We ee four thematic i ue encap ulating the e puzzle in the forthcoming Bangalore conference: (1) Defensive Reaction : how have common property y tern contributed to collective action in defending

right again t tate and market ? I there anything pecial theoretically about the collective action of

population defending locally-defined right • in contra t to the collective action required for local in titutional olution to common dilemma or collective action on i ue of cia and material inequality? (2) Phenomenology of Nature and In titution : how do real people conceptualize the natural world. it value and limit • and the ocial arrangement for utilizing nature for livelihood ? What are the link or contradiction between empiri­cal perception of intere t. free riding. and contribu­tion to a common good .and received theory? (3) Small-Scale Solutions: how doe the theory of local in 'titutional olution to the problem of a ignment of property right me h with the empirical world? (4) State and Environment: how can we better conceptu­alize the intere t of variou element of the tate (which i far more horizontally and vertically di articulated than the monolith of macro ocial theory ugge t )? How do particular environmental deci ion (or non-deci ion) put tre on or upport local· in titutional olution?

Implications for theory and method

One of the major fault line in contemporary ocial- cience di cour e concern new and potentially

more productive way of framing the venerable level-of-analy i que tion. An invigorated methodo­logical individuali m challenge macro account of the cultural or tructural variety to provide the micro foundation of macro event . In political cience and ociology, thi challenge re t on explicit borrowing

from neocla ical economic in the form of rational­actor and public-choice theory. In the field of common problematic. a Bromley and Chapagian (19 4) have argued. one con equence of trong theoretical commitment to a materiali t methodologi­cal individuali m ha been that anthropological inve tigation which document cooperation and behavior other than maximization of material intere t are di mi ed byeconomi t a "quaint anecdote .. with no implication for theory.

VOLU 1E 44. Nu tBER 4

The re pon e from tructurali t and culturali t has been vigorou but not alway engaged with the literature being criticized. Neverthele ,one healthy con equence of the challenge from methodological individuali m ha been to refocu attention on the concrete mechani m which intervene between initial ( tructural) condition and outcome . Simultaneou Iy, unexamined commitment to primordiali m and organici t conceptualization of ociety come under pre ure. It i not enough to po it cia e or ca te a ocial actor ; rather, the ground for engaging one of

many po ible definition of identity and intere t mu t be pecified for individual . The Ie healthy con equence ha been expan ion of the wedge between traditional area- tudie type and theori t who find cience in generalizability, deductive rigor, and formal modeling. Inevitably, the drive to form ali m further divide the humanitie from the "harder' of the ocial cience.

The e divi ion are unfortunate and unnece ary. Sophi ticated work in the rational-actor mode of nece ity recognize the crucial role of perception and belief in cognition of "intere t" and in connecting intere t to behavior, a well a the methodological ten ion introduced by the di tinction between objective intere t (which i ubject to deductive logic) and ubjective intere t (which can be handled by • revealed preference" only at the co t of tautology, or met frontally with phenomenological work [Herring 1989]). One mall irony i that a tradition committed to a trongly nomothetic world view i by logical nece ity refocu ing attention on type of analy i validated by the hi torici t philo ophy of cience. The ground for choo ing method are

frequently unexamined commitment to and variable weighting of value widely di puted in the philo 0-

phy of cience: par imony, fit, generalizability, deductive power. By bringing together cholar with different commitment to the e criteria for validity, we hope to generate productive ten ion to refine theory.

One of the mo t challenging and potentially important propo ition from the cience of ecology concern the non-obviou Iinkage-dependencie within y tern which cut acr tho e traditionally tudied

by ocial cienti t : unit dictated by ocial arena and admini trative law (the village, tate, province, nation) or conventional ocial morphology (ca te , tribe, cia e, ethnic group ). The inter ection of the e traditional arena and ocial grouping with

DECE fBER 1990

ecological y tern rai e new conceptual problem for area cholars.

To be more concrete, one example may be con idered. Robert Wade, in Village Republics (1988), argues that hi empirical work in South India permit a olution to the puzzle of why orne village (but not other ) are able to provide orne public good (but not other ), in term of a imple material­i t account of individual economic intere t which are generated by variable natural condition (hydrology and oil quality). Though Wade ugge tome revi ion in the received theory of collective action ba ed on hi finding, hi account i imultaneou Iy a challenge to conventional wi dom on the explanation of variation in village efficacy in collective action. Such account would tre difference in factional tructure, ca te di tribution, cia power, cultural

norm about leader hip, olidarity, collective identity, and 0 forth, typically ituated in a hi torical evolutionary context. If an individuali tic materiali t conceptualization of intere t and action carrie u 0

far, there i a terrific challenge to the dominant mode of cholar hip in the field.

Situating the common problematic

Though influential and comm n- en ical, the tragedy model i wanting in everal re pect : (I) it inevitability preclude attention to ocial learning or re urrection of mall- cale in titutional innovation in the face of common dilemmas; (2) the mall- cale focu , whether of tragedy or olution , elide problem of an over-arching authority repre ented by the tate, which may be a much a part of the problem a of the olution; (3) the a umption of narrow economic intere t a driving behavior, while frequently accurate, light a rich phenomenological world of alternative conceptualization of collective intere t and the place (or oiko , home, whence ecology) of human in natural y tern .

When Karl Polanyi conceptualized the commoditi­zation of nature a a central element in the "great tran formation" to market ociety, he indicated a proce much broader than mere enclo ure of common in the cia ic form: "What we call land i an element of nature inextricably interwoven with man' [ic] in titution . To i olate it and form a market out of it wa perhap the weirde t of all undertaking of our ance tor " (Polanyi 19441 1957: 178). In hi formulation, pre-market economic

ITEM 167

relation, norm, and outcome are "embedded" or " ubmerged" in ocial relation generally; the extraction and elevation of market-driven dynamic from their ocial mooring produce ignificant ocial conflict and centrally involve the tate. There i nothing "natural" about the market as arbiter of deci ion on the fate of nature; grounded in pre­market or non-market conceptualization of nature and ociety, militant challenge have evoked u e right e tabli hed by cu tom and common law a ba e for oppo ition (e.g. Guha 1989).

A a con equence of Polanyi' "great tran forma­tion," local common have been the object of real-world pre ure for privatization and centraliza­tion of control. Contrary to the tragedy logic, neither privatization of the common nor centralization of control ha con i tently re olved common dilemma, even of the common ort, and certainly not of the econd-order ort. The inexorable character of

Hardin' logic i belied by the numerou hi torical and contemporary example of in titutional rule for con ervation of local common . Neverthele , uch common olution in the form of rationing rule a do exi t will hold only within boundary condition ; both de titution and greed undermine rule regulating the common . Both de titution and greed are in tum related to natural-re ource policy and development trategy of real tate.

The tate deci ively enters the common problem­atic not only through it underwriting of property y tern and market dynamic , but becau e local ocial delineation of common inevitably involve

rule of inclu ion and exclu ion from opportunitie , pre enting the ba i for conflict within and between ocial grouping . Whether a the re idual from claim

of private property or from common practice, pace have been defined hi torically a legitimate u e object of bounded communitie . A early a the ancient Law of Manu, it wa recognized that local common overlap, nece itating node of upra-local authority. That an anarchic global political y tern i finally recognizing thi nece ity doe not render the in titutional dilemma any more tractable. For econd-order comm n dilemma, the overlap

between local common ituation and meta-common i ue i continuou and ubiquitou , whether or not the e linkage-dependencie are locally perceived.

The "tragedy" paradigm i often interpreted to

68 ITE 1

mean that common property i a recipe for ocially di astrou outcome, encap ulated in the popular caution: "That which i everyone' concern i in fact no one' concern." (Ari totle i ometime accu ed of beginning thi line of rea oning, but only by exci ing hi context of familial relation ). While clearly not inexorable, the tragedy' logic of uncoordinated pur uit of intere t threatening common intere t i compelling, within and out ide environmental i ue Recognition of the potential tragedy inherent in thi logic i the ground for in titutional innovation and new political practice from the local to international level . A neither of the traditional olution -Leviathan and privatization-guarantee con ervation, much Ie pre ervation, the well-worn tragedy metaphor i a vehicle for energizing a broader di cu ion of in titutional and evaluative alternative • References

Altelrod. Roben . Th~ Evolution ofCoopuation . New York: B IC Book. 19 5.

Bromley. Daniel W.. nd Devendra P. Ch pagian . "The ViII ge Again t the Center: Re urce Deplellon In South A I ." Am~rican Journal of Agricultural Economics. (December): 68- 73. 1984.

Gadgil. Madhav. nd Prem Iyer. "On the Diversification of the Common Propeny Re urce Use by the Indi n oclety." Center for Ecological Scien e , Indian Inslllute of Science (Bangalore), 19 .

Gold, Ann Grodzins, and Bhoju Ram Gujar. "or God ,Tree and Boundarie : Divine Con rvation in Raja th n." Asian Folklor~ Studi~s . 49:211-229, 19 9.

Guha, Ram chandra. TIr~ Unqui~t lVoods. Delhi: 0 ford University Pre ,19 9.

Hardin, Garrell . "The Tragedy of the Comm n ." Scitnct. pp. 1243-124 , 1968.

Herring. Ronald J. "Rational A tors, Suu ture and Culture." Paper pre nted to the Amencan Polillcal SCience A soclation Annu I Conference in Atlanta, September 19 9.

Hemng. Ron Id J. "Rethinking the Common ." Agrieulturt and Human Valuts. 7(2). 1990.

andy, A hi . Scitnct. Htgtmonyand Violtnct . Delhi: Oltford Umver­lIy Pre . 19 .

trom. Elinor. "How Inexorable I the 'Tragedy of the Common '?" Di tingui hed Faculty Research Lecture, Indian University, Blooming­ton, April 3, 19 6.

PolanYl , Karl. Tht Grtat Tran rjormafion . ew York: Rinehart , 1944: Bo t n Beacon Pre ,1957.

Runge. C. F. "Common Propeny and Colle live ACII n in Economic Development ." World Dt~'~/opmtnt, Vol. 14, 19 6.

Shlva, Vandana. "Coming Tragedy of the Common ." Economic and PoliticalWttklr, 21(15):613-615, April 12, 19 6.

ingh. Chhatrapatl . Common Proptrt\· and Common Po~·~rt\ .. India 's Fortsts . For~st DI\~I/trs and tlrt Lall'. Deihl ' Oxford Umve lIy Pre 196.

Wade, Roben. Villag~ Rtpublics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pre ,19 .

VOLUME 44, NUMBER 4

Culture, Consciousness, and the Colonial State by Sandria B. Freitag*

The hi toriography of South A ia has increa ingly turned from the tudy of rulers and their collaborator to an analy i of the di cour e of power, the role of culture in haping political con ciou ne ,and the relation hip embedded therein . In thi hift, which occurred in the early 1980 , two quite di tinct approache have evolved. One, the" ubalterni t chool, " ba ed largely in India, England, and

Au tralia, focu e on overtly political behavior of the lower or ubaltern cia e in India; the other, rooted in American anthropology and area tudie , focu e on culture as an explanatory device for hi tori cal change. Working from different analytical frame­work and delineation of topical universe , the two group neverthele hare a fundamental intere t in the hi tory of the powerle .

To explore thi hared intere t and to map a new re earch agenda for South A ian ocial hi tory, a work hop organized by a planning group of the JCSA wa held on July 24-27, 1989 in Su ex, England. Under the rubric of "Culture, Con ciou ne ,and the Colonial State," everal promi ing re earch trajecto­rie were defined. The relation hip of the tate to locally con tructed communitie cry tallized an e ential element in non-elite hi tory: confronting the imperial tate with ubaltern political con ciou ne and u ing community activity and cultural value to propel thi fundamental conte t.

The Work hop: State and Community

At Su ex, eighteen hi tori an and anthropologi t pre ented ca e tudie illuminating the community and popular culture; community and pace; commu­nity and gender in colonial di cour e; and the "project" of the nation- tate. ** Although no ingle

• Sandna B. Freitag i the director of the Office of Intersegmental Relall n • Unave Ity of California. y temwlde admlna tration.

•• Worlc hop participants included: Shahid Amin. University of Delhi. kOn Remembering the 'Mu ulman ' "; David Arnold. University of London . "Some Observ tion on the Theory and Pracllce of the Colonial State" ; Carol Breckenridge. Unaverslty of Penn ylvania. "Worship. Entertaanment and literature: Note on the Origin of the Public Sphere in Colonial India". Dlpesh Chakrabarty. Unaverslty of Melbourne. "Colo­nial Rule and Dome tic Order: 'Home' and 'Woman' in Bangali Nation-

DECEMBER 1990

theme or method united the pre entation ,a trong re earch agenda did emerge. Thi agenda under cored the need to u e a broader range of ource material and provided a conceptual framework for tracing the lineage of the colonial tate back to the 18th century and forward to the po t-colonial era.

Link to pre- and po t-colonial tate configuration are important, given that di cu ion of the e case tudie focu ed on the ten ion between two realm

that had emerged under the imperial tate tructure of Briti h India. On the one hand, tate in titution haped a particular mode of political behavior that

defined upra-communitie (e .g. ca te, ect, "martial race ") to fit the categorie created by the colonial ociology of knowledge. On the other hand, a realm of local community emerged, expre ed through religiou , cultural, and "dome tic" activi­tie -all of which were deemed by the tate to be apolitical.

Thi tension was traced by exploring how the tate' di course influenced-often indirectly-the

way in which a local community wa con tructed and defined. It wa not only that Indian u ed colonial categorie for their own benefit; more to the point, the colonial tate impo ed a tructure from which legitimacy eemed to flow, while Indian at a variety of level altered, re i ted, and refined that tructure. A a central example, the work hop

explored the treatment of woman-a - ign a an expre ion of power relation hip and the feminiza­tion of Indian in colonial di course. Although thi wa a complex proce ,two primary developmen neverthele may be identified.

ali t Thought" ; Partha Chatterjee. Centre for SOCial Science Studle (Calcutta). "A Religion of Urban Dome ticity: Sri Ramakri hna and the Calcutta Middle CI "; S ndna B. Freitag. University of California. Berlceley; "Communaty and pace: The Case of the 'Cnmanal Tribe ' "; David Gilmartin . North Carolina tate University. "Col niali m and Irrigation: Communaty and Scien e an the Indu B an ". Paul Greenough. University of Iowa. "Real Corpse and Bodie P Iiuc' Mutu I Conver-ion between Polill al Communitie and Communalle of Suffenng";

David Hardiman. South Gujarat Unaversity (Surat). "The Fight for the Fore t: The Dangl Bhil " ; David Lelyveld. Columbia Unaversity. "The Fate of Hindustani" ; Lata Mani. Unive ity of California. Davi . "The Female ubject . The Colonaal Gaze: Eyewltne Accoun of Sail". Jim M sel • Unaverslty of Sydney. "Appropnallng Urban Space: Social Con truct of Bombay in the Time of the Raj "; Polly O·Hanlon . Cambridge University. " I ue of Widowhood: Gender. 01 our..e and Re i tan e an Colonial We tern India"; Gyan Pandey. Jawaharlal Nehru Unaversity. "Communaty and Nation an Northern India at the Tum of the Century" ; Anand Yang. Unaversity of Utah. "Beyond Mud Wall Village . Market and Colonaal State an Bihar." Facilltat rs: Arjun Appadu­rai. Unaversity of Penn ylvanaa. and Bamey Cohn. Unaverslty of Chica o.

ITEM / 69

Fir t, Indian women became increa ingly marginal­ized in the phere of public political organizing that opened up. Similarly, the role of women in ocial reform movement wa frequently limited to a pa ive ignifier of a dome tic realm that became increa ingly

regulated . Yet the great ignificance attached to women' role and action , and the concern of Indian male , imbued their choice with implication of power. The hi tory of women thu become central to the hi tory of the colonial political order.

Second, an intere ting conflation occurred in Briti h colonial di course. A women became equated with the dome tic, 0, too, were Indian characterized a preoccupied with religion, culture, and the home-in hort with the "dome tic" and therefore (in Briti h eye) with "apolitical" a pect of ociety. Woman and Indian-both made captive of thi new and eparate realm-were viewed a unfit participant in modern political in titution .

Clearly, the di tinction between the dome tic and the political wa a new con truct in the ubcontinent. Thi con truct nece arily altered in fundamental way the organization and legitimation of civic activitie in colonial ociety. That i , by the very act of drawing a line between development in the home and tho e in the world, the Briti h ought to depoliti­cize the power relation hip embedded in the dome tic and local world. Conversely, the fact that in Briti h eye education (a dome tic concern) was linked to occupation al 0 placed many civic activitie on the political ide of the line-and, in the proce , connected them to the in titution of the tate.

Moreover, the conflation of woman-a - ign and Indian a re ident of an apolitical dome tic realm had an unexpected re ult. The dome tic world became an arena of conte tation open to Indian (e pecially male) to redefine, 0 ten ibly without interference. ew meaning were imputed to dome tic behavior and relation -meaning that connected the rhetoric of family and kin hip to other "imagined" communitie . Such meaning carried political ignificance not only of the ordering of the family it elf, but aloof many other form of a ociati n and community, locally compo ed and organized .

Propo ed work hop

A econd work hop will explore "the dome tic" a ite of re i tance a well a paradigm, inve tigating a

70\lTE 1

range of form of ocial organization in which lineage and kin hip terminology are invoked to convey a legitimacy unrelated to the tate or it in titution . Conte tat ion i implicit in thi alternative realm, beginning with the fact that the e are form of voluntary a ociation that do not fall within the categorie created by colonial ociology (and identified by the tate as fundamental unit of ociety, uch a caste). We will explore other rubric u ed to

organize ocial life, a well a the kind of re i tance to colonial ociology embedded in uch form . Example include the replication of devotional lineage between piritual guide and follower in performance genre (treet theater, mu ic, etc.), and the u e of kin hip-ba ed political "brotherhood " in election.

Thi econd work hop will al 0 con ider the importance of "memory" in the po tcolonial"hi tory , of the dome tic realm. It will explore mode of acce to the remembered past (e.g . , documents, oral tran mi ion including performance and lingui tic coding, and material artifact uch a photograph, architecture, and cartography), and the recon truction of the pa t that emerge from tho e ource .

Key cholar working on relevant i ue in the hi toriography of We tern Europe will be invited to thi work hop a well . The compari on with We tern Europe will be vital for two rea on : first, the very intellectual and analytical con truct impo ed by the Briti h ruler grew out of the world examined by the e cholar. Tracing the development of the e con truct will, therefore, be very helpful in clarify­ing the proce e of their impo ition in colonial India. Second, it i hoped that the contra t will be harp­ened between part of the world ubject to colonial pre ure and part of the world that impo ed uch pre ure, with the aim of defining the extent to which Indian colonial pattern can be linked generi­cally to the development of imperiali m.

Thi comparative a pect of the di cu ion will provide the groundwork for what i hoped will be a third tage of the project on "Culture, Con ciou ne and the Colonial State." We want to broaden the analy i of the impact of imperiali m on the evolution of thi "dome tic" realm to include analy t working on Ea tern Europe and, perhap , Africa or Southea t A ia a well. Thi plan hould enable u to di cu with orne ophi tication the emergence of ethnic and other community-ba ed identitie a competing alternative to the nation- tate in the contemporary

VOLUME 44. N MBER 4

world. Indeed, we hope that the focu on the relation hip of tate to nation, and of con tituent and con tructed communi tie to the tate and it tructure (rather than on ethnic identity a a form of aberrant

I behavior in the modem world) will provide a much more fruitful approach to what ha become a global phenomenon.

The work hop will enable intere ted cholar to collaborate on a new re earch agenda. Equally important, the work hop are leading to two other broader-ba ed project on the "public" realm and change in popular culture. The e project , open to the larger community of cholar working on South A ia, illu trate the way in which the Council' upport may be tran lated, even before publication, to

a wide cholarly audience. Taken together, the clu ter of work hop and related project i beginning to chart new territory in ocial hi tory, recovering a realm of activitie that ha previou ly been labeled "cultural" (and thu di regarded), but that ha clear political ramification for both the colonial and po t-colonial period . Our finding may have ignificance not only for South A ia, but for many

part of the world ubject to imperiali m. •

DECEMBER 1990

The Joint Committee on South A ia of the Social cience Re earch Council/American Council of Learned SocletJe announce a new di . ertation fellow hip program to encourage research on Banglade h. Applicant IIII1S( be Ph.D. candidate. tudying at U.S. and Canadian in tituhon. in ~ocial cientific.

humanistic or interdisciplinary field . There are no citizen hip requirement. Banglade hi Ph.D. candidate are e pecially encouraged to apply. Fellow. will be expected to pend 9-12 month. conducting reo earch in Banglade h. with con ideration given to reque. t for exten ion to 18 month .• e pecially for tho. e fellow requiring dditional lingui~tic experience. Scholar pur;uing pan-Bengal research. especially of a comparative nature. are encouraged to apply. Such fellows would conceivably plit their research time in Banglade. hand India. but would be expected to pend at lea t ix month. reo arching in Banglade. h. A work hop for fellow i planned for the end of the program' econd year. Application deadline i. January I. 1991. Award will be announced in April. 1991.

For further infonnation. please contact:

Social cience Re earch Council South A ia Program 605 Third Avenue ew York. Y 10158

(212) 661-02 0

ITE 1s171

New Media and Religious Change by Lawrence A. Babb*

I South A ian religiou culture changing? Of course it i , which i hardly new ; common tereotype not­with tanding, South A ian religion have alway been changing. What ;s new i that change it elf may be changing. Thi new pha e i the re ult of a complete revolution in the communication media, a revolution that began lowly with the introduction and pread of printing technology in the early 19th century and has now accelerated to a fever pitch with the introduction of newer communication technology.

What do we mean by thi new revolutionary communication media? We mean new technique for the tran mi ion of information-bearing ymbol . The e are technique that in one way or another enhance the capacity of ymbol to be projected from one place to another. Thi i preci ely what the new media have done; in variou way and by different mean they have greatly increa ed what might be called the mobility of religiou ymbol in South A ia.

From a purely engineering tandpoint, technologi­cal advance in communication tend to be een primarily a a mean of overcoming phy ical di tance, and it i indeed true that the new media have thi characteri tic. But phy ical di tance may be magnified by ocial and cultural barrier and dimin-i hed by ocial interaction and cultural imilarity. The new media have not only given religiou ymbol greater patial mobility, but have ignificantly enhanced their social mobility a well, penetrating ocial barriers and bypa ing ocial bottleneck that in

the pa t had inhibited their propagation. What i more, that increa ed mobility ha had a ocially "di embedding" effect on religiou tradition.

Family, lineage, clan, ca te, village, neighborhood, etc., were the primary ocial etting in which religiou ob ervance occurred and the main back­ground of reference again t which religiou con-ciou ne wa formed. To participate in uch

ob ervance wa, to a ignificant degree, to enact an identity a a particular kind of per on belonging to one or more of the many sort of grouping that are

• Lawren e A. Babb I profe r of anthropology at mherst College.

72\ ITEM

the fabric of South A ian ocial life. The movement of ymbol through the wider y tern wa clo ely linked to the role of religiou peciali t, uch a Brahman prie t , mendicant teacher , and other . The e peciali t repre ented a relatively narrow aperture for the downward flow of a va t and rich "great" tradition. The e pattern till obtain, but are eroding becau e of the influence of new communica­tion technologie , fore hadowing truly fundamental change in the tructure of religiou tradition in South A ia. Let u con ider orne of the e media and technologie .

Print

Among the many effect of print on religiou belief and practice i the emergence of a new form of religiou life-largely deritualized, belief-oriented, and detached from the traditional tructure of ymbol-tran mi ion-that eem uniquely re on ant

with the emerging ubculture of the literate middle cla .

The emergence of a literate cla ,combined with the wide availability of tran lated cripture made it po ible for unprecedented number of individual to come into direct contact with acred text , bypas ing traditional mediator uch a Brahman prie t or Mu lim cleric . Thi opened up a new religio-cultural .. pace" into which it was po ible for new religiou movements to move, bringing with them an entirely new tyle of religiou life. Becau e they catered to a reading public, it wa po ible for the e movements to publi h material in which religion wa pre ented as a y tematically organized "creed," and thi tendency wa accentuated a movement engaged in polemical conte t with each other in which doctrine became the main ground of contention. By empha iz­ing the centrality of the text and the importance of adherent actually tudying the text in que tion, the e movement acquired a di tinctly "Prote tant" flavor. At the arne time, the pre wa one of the factor that enabled orne of the e movement to adopt a mode of organization characteri tic of voluntary a ociation in the We t; the re ult was the emergence of a type of religiou a ociation quite without precedent in South A ia.

It mu t not be imagined, however, that the e trend culminated in religiou uniformity.

In Sri Lanka, Buddhi t re ponded to the challenge of Chri tian pro elytization by adopting the weapon

VOLUME 44, NUMBER 4

of their adversarie , and the mo t powerful weapon wa the printing pre . A in India, the print format fo tered the emergence of a belief-oriented, "Prote -tant" ver ion of the older tradition, and in Sri Linka thi ver ion of the tradition was a ociated, from it earlie t manife tation , with a vi ion of Buddhi t as a national community of co-believer . Emblematic of the di embedding of Buddhi m from older ocial matrice wa the hift of the center of Sri Lankan Buddhi m from Kandy and Galle to bu tling Co­lombo. Perhap the mo t revealing of the new expre ion of Buddhi m wa the Buddhist Cate­chism which, de pite the fact that it author was an American (Henry Steel Olcott, 1833-1907), became central to the diffu ion of a implified ver ion of Buddhi t tradition, reca t a a creed on Chri tian line.

Chromolithography··

Central to religiou ob ervance in the Hindu tradition i darsall, the au piciou eeing of a divine being. Given that fact, it i hardly urpri ing that the mechanical reproduction of picture of deitie ha become one of the mo t ubiquitou feature of modem religion in South A ia.

In thi century, printing technology ha greatly increa ed the patial and ocial mobility of iconic ymbol in South A ia. Among other thing ,thi has

contributed to the pread of certain devotional cults, and has made it po ible for otherwi e localized "per onality cult " of holy men to develop and maintain wide network of upport. But the re ult has not been religiou homogenization. Although pan-Indian deitie are prominent in religiou po ter art, regional deitie are al 0 repre ented. Moreover, thi genre ha been the ource of religiou innova­tion that eem to enrich the variety of way in which tradition can be manife ted. Po ter arti t , for example, have portrayed well-known deitie in new combination . The fluidity of thi medium (by compari on with more convention-bound temple iconography) eem to permit an unprecedented degree of iconic experimentation, which in tum ha generated and upported new yncreti m . Thi arne fluidity i even more marked in the combination and permutation of deity po ter found in dome tic hrine and in other micro- etting . Here iconic

•• The proce of printing color picture from a rie of tone or zinc plate by lithography.

DECEMBER 1990

symboli m eem to re pond directly to the religious imagination of individual and mall group , and the re ult i a pattern in which ubcontinental tradition , reflected in tandard image , can be manife ted in endle ly local way .

Religiou po ter art has contributed to the growth of a new "omnipraxy." Thi i a pop~1i t ver ion of tradition; it i incon picuou , cau aI, informal, and unmediated by peciali t . At it heart i the imple t ritual ge ture performed before inexpen ive litho­graphed image , and it i often found in what might eem to be quite mundane and ordinary etting . It

seem likely that uch minimali t ritual have alway been a part of the South A ian religiou cene, but the ornnipre ence of popular religiou art urely has omething to do with current perva ivene of the

pattern. It i time we di peUed the wide pread notion that

religiou po ter art i devoid of genuine e thetic expre ion and alienated from it cultural urround­ing . In the oeuvre of C. Kondiah Raju (1898-1976), we find a true rna ter arti t who, all of hi life regarded hi art a an activity deeply re pon ible to religiou tradition. The genre he created retain trace of painted cene u ed in traditional drama, which wa the milieu from which Kondiah came. Hi relation hip with hi pupil wa of the traditional master-di cipline ort. Thi ha been the case with mo t arti t in thi genre, and the re ulting phenome­non of arti tic "lineage' ha been an important factor in the tandardization of popular image of deitie . Image tend to be recycled within lineage , and when thi i combined with the enormou reproductive power of photo-off et printing, the con equence can be tartling. The arti tic (and piritual) in ight of one man, a lineage-founder like Kondiah, can be "amplified" in uch a way a to become normative within the tradition. Kondiah' rendition of certain deitie have become the way the e deitie are actually vi ualized by South Indian .

The chromolithographic tandardization of image ha become quite marked, and a a re ult we are witne ing the emergence of a "national ae thetic" in which the univer ality of certain image draw Hindu everywhere into a common vi ion of the divine and it manife tation . So authoritative have certain tandardized image become that when di played in temple they eem to have the function of authenticating the 'real" three-dimen ional icon within. Chromolithographed image have made the

ITEMS173

Hindu world maller, both patially and ocially. Pilgrimage can become vicariou for tho e who mu t remain at home. People can become devotee of deitie from who e temple they are barred. How­ever, tandardized image are combined in way that reflect the religiou microdialect of familie and iqdividual . Religiou and ecular image are often di played together in dome tic etting, which ugge t that popular art ha enabled Hindu to

engage in an entirely new kind of iconic commentary on relation hip between divine being and event and figure in the contemporary world.

Audio Recording

No modern communication medium i more intru ive in modern Indian life than recorded and electr nically amplified ound. To orne, urban India may eem acou tically polluted. But omewhere in the cacophony, and perhap an increasingly important part of it, i recorded religiou mu ic. Such i the ca e of the genre known a qawwali.

Recording technology ha a powerfully decontextu­alizing effect on religiou mu ic. No longer doe a community hare the li tening experience a a ritual event; Ii tener in tead become anonymou individu­al who interact neither with each other nor with perfonner . Between the creator of mu ic and Ii tener, market relation obtain; the mu ic i deper onalized, tandardized, and altered in re pon e to the mechanical and electr nic requirement of recording technology. But in the ca e of qawwali thi di mal picture may not apply completely, for the altered product ha returned to it ource in ritual ob ervance, and may be enriching that ource.

Qawwali wa particularly well uited to become a recorded genre: it wa never een a "acred mu ic," it performer lacked pecial religiou tatu, and it heritage ha alway tre ed the propagation of Suf-i m to all hearer of whatever community. It unor­thodoxy, that i, hielded it from the ire of the ortho­dox. The earlie t recorded qawwali wa marketed mainly to urban Mu lim bu ine commumt,e, e pe­cially in Bombay, and it wa trongly influenced by the then-developing convention of film mu ic. From the fortie onward. "narrative qawwali" came to the fore. a fonn well uited t the expre ion of nation­ali m and cultural ecumeni m that were common in the qawwali of the period. Ultimately a completely ecularized ver ion of the fonn emerged in film ,

74 ITEM

where it wa utilized to ugge t a "Mu lim" atmo-phere. The po t-independence trend in India wa for

recorded qawwali to continue to empha ize religiou inclu ivene ; in Paki tan, not urpri ingly, there wa a reempha i on Mu lim element .

In contemporary Paki tan. traditional perfonner mu t re pond to audience who e ta te have been fonned by Ii tening to recorded qawwali. But becau e the acceptability of a given piece depend on whether it pa e mu ter with the perfonnance' religiou leader, the Sufi a embly i in no danger of being wamped with mu ical kit ch. What we ee in tead i

a controlled interchange in which recorded "entertain­ment" qawwali enriche the repertoire of traditional perfonner , but in a way that i re pon ive to traditional religiou imperative. Preci ely becau e recorded and traditional qawwali have maintained thi ort of contact, it i po ible for qawwali to be a

mu ical idiom that at once entertain ,ex pre e devotional I lam, and upport a en e of mutual identity among South A ian Mu lim .

The extraordinary impact of ca ette technology on the recording indu try in India i largely a con e­quence of economic of production and con umption. On a per- ong ba i ,ca ette are cheaper for con umer than record • and they can be produced in one-room factorie . The e happy circum tance have re ulted in a democratization of the world of recorded mu ic; pecific categorie of religiou mu ic that had rarely been recorded before are now available on tape, and regional mu ic genre • largely ignored by the big recording finn , are now being recorded. Bhajan , or devotional ong a ociated with particular ritual . are now available on ca ette, a are ong a ociated with the cult of certain holy men ( uch a Sai Baba). Tape of religiou di cour e have al 0

come into prominence. Another effect of the econom­ic of ca ette production ha been the end of the complete dominance of film mu ic in the indu try; 0

cheap are tape to produce and buy that the impetu of a hit film i no longer nece ary to generate ufficient ale to recover producer ' inve tment .

The late t "craze" in non-film recorded mu ic i , in fact, devotional mu ic, which i challenging film mu ic for ale upremacy. and which producer tend to favor becau e of the relative tability of the market. Although the recording indu try tended in it earlier pha e to fo ter tandardization, the economie made po ible by ca ette technology have enabled an

VOLUME 44. Nu tBER 4

expanded and diver ified recording indu try to reflect South A ia' cultural and religiou variety.

Comics

In what i urely one of the more a toni hing vig­nette reported in South A iani t cholar hip, we learn that Anant Pai, founder of the Amar Chitra Katha comic erie , once overheard two high govern­ment official ettle an argument about orne point in the Ramayana by referring to one of Pai' comic. Whatever el e one might make of thi ,it eem clear that omething quite new has entered the encultura­tion proce of at least orne member of India' mo t important elite . Comic book are ea y to overlook; the form it elf ha generally in pired little re pect among aficionado of high culture and eem to many to be deeply un eriou . And yet it i clear that they may well be among the more important channel of contact between Engli h-educated, middle-cia chil­dren and South A ian religiou tradition.

The comic erie ' worldview ha largely been an expre ion of the outlook of one man, Anant Pai, which in turn i a reflection of the ideal and ocial vi ion of India' modern urban middle cia . In thi en e the erie a a whole may be con idered a kind

of anthology of the religiou and ocial attitude of India' mo t influential elite . The tated aim of the erie i to provide children with a comprehen ive

understanding of India' "cultural heritage." The erie actuaJly pre ent a highly elective ver ion of

thi heritage. Some group receive much Ie attention than others. Women and Mu lim , for example, are egregiou ly underrepre ented in the "Makers of Modern India" erie. There i a trong Kri hnaite empha i in the erie ' pre entation of the Hindu tradition, and Kri hna' "co mo -embodying form" eem to receive pecial favor. Thi tre on co mic integration re onate with the erie' ocial vi ion in which the accent i on inclu ivene and communal harmony. Communal conflict i "air-bru hed" away. Thu , for example, Hindu and Mu lim are never pre ented a ho tile, and all trace of anti-Mu lim entiment have been expunged from the erie ' version of Bankim Chandra Chatterji' AlIandamath.

When one compare hagiography in the Amar Chitra Katha erie with the way aint 'live have been portrayed in centurie pa t, the difference are con iderable. In con onance with it middle-cia

DECE IBER 1990

outlook the erie tend to deempha ize " uper ti­tion," violence, ocial conflict, exuality; it tre e ocial harmony and • national integration." In general

the erie pre ent oftened and Ie provocative version of the aint. Mirabai, for example, i repre ented by tradition as a figure who defied family and ocial convention, but Pai' Mira i a Sita-like "ideal Hindu wife." Kabir appears primarily a an apo tie of Hindu-Mu lim unity, and the theme of reconciliation i a dominant motif in the pre entation of variou aint' live . The erie tre e a network of connection between North Indian aint, and ectarian rivalry i downplayed, a are the link to

Brahman tatu that tradition a ign to many of the e figure . Ravida ,a aint of the untouchable camar community, i treated with pecial delicacy; the re ult i a omewhat denatured Ravida who e principal me age i a devotionali t vi ion of non-hierarchical ocial integration.

Emerging in the ever-growing Amar Chitra Katha corpu i a kind of "canon," one that in recent time ha begun to incorporate the contribution of multiple group and individual . The content of the erie ha increa ingly been negotiated with important group and in titution in Indian ociety, and the erie ha now become omething approximating a national in titution projecting an influential view of Indian nationhood. Thi view of national integration i one in which the di tinction between "Indian" and "Hindu" i becoming di turbingly fuzzy.

Moving Images

India' film indu try i a true colo u, and there have been link between Indian film and religion from the medium' earlie t day. It wa in fact religiou film -the o-called "mythological " that fir t generated an audience for cinema in India. Moreover, the impact of film on religion ha been quite con picuou ; a good example i the film­generated cult of the god de Santo i Ma.

However, the cia ical religiou film, the mytho­logical, i very much on the wane. In the 1970 only five percent of film produced belonged to thi category. 0 ten ibly ecular film are in fact trongly influenced by religion. In part thi i a

matter of form. Entertainment film of all kind are haped by the convention of folk drama, which of

cour e traditionally pre ent mainly religiou material. The punctuation of plot line by ong and dance, the

ITE 1 , 75

extravagant peeche , the utter predictability of plot, and the black-and-white moral oppo ition between characters are well known feature of Hindi cinema that derive from variou traditional dramatic genre . But more important yet, characterization in ecular fLlm draw heavily from Hindu-mythical tereotypes: wome!} appear a dutiful and long- uffering Sita or vengeful Kali , men a virtuou Ram or villainou Ravan ,and 0 on. Some film maker are apparently quite elf-con ciou and deliberate in the u e of uch mythical model . Thi may be the real new a far a religion and film i concerned: that behind the back of nearly everyone a di tinctly religiou imagery ha found it way into India' mo t influential entertain­ment medium, an imagery that may be defining a emi- ecular national culture embodying value ,

e pecially tho e pertaining to family and ocial life, that are Hindu to the core.

The mo t ignificant recent innovation in media technology i the video ca ette recorder (VCR). In middle-cia India, a el ewhere, VCR technology eem certain to revolutionize pattern of home

entertainment, and judging by the ubiquity of video parlor in urban area , the proce may already be well under way. The VCR may be regarded a an "add-on" to televi ion, but in fact it characteri tic are quite different.

In an extremely ucce ful modern Hindu religiou movement called Swadhyaya, the Swadhyayee make exten ive u e of videotape of the di course of the movement' founder, Pandurang V. Athavale. At first glance, the mo t ignificant u e to which the e tape are put would eem to be recruitment to the move­ment. Although Athavale' tape are certainly exten-ively employed in pro elytizing, the movement'

obviou ucce in thi endeavor i probably rooted in the time-honored trategy of utilizing preexi ting 0-

cial network . The real ignificance of the tape lie

76\ ITE I

in the role they play in maintaining what might be called the movement' "piritual co he ion."

The tape are a central part of the ritual ob er­vance of the movement wherever they occur, in India or abroad, and the evidence pre ented how that devotee conceive viewing the e tape a a true devotional encounter with a acred being. The tape them elve are regarded a acred object. They tran mit traditional religiou di course , pravacans, and, when they are played, all the framing device of ritual performance are pre ent, from opening benediction to clo ing ara,; ceremony. It i well known that in India (and el ewhere too) book can be regarded a vehicle for the tran mi ion of acred power a well a mere information. In the VCR we ee that copper, ilicon, and magnetized tape can al 0

convey acred power. Swadhyaya i in fact a typical example of a type of

religiou movement common in India; the key to it tructure i a highly personalized tie between a group

of devotee and a ingle, focal, chari matic individ­ual . Movement of thi type often uffer from a limitation that eem inherent to their tructure, namely, an inability to project a en e of the chari -matic leader' pre ence to large number of devotee over great di tance . In the ca e of Swadhyaya, the e limitation have been overcome by the u e of video technology. The tape have allowed the movement to utilize a highly traditional ritual format in a way that allow the central, acred figure to be multilocational. Like Kri hna, Athavale can be multiplied and yet remain whole and entire to each of hi widely cattered local congregation . Thi i a highly ignificant development, and may portend a modern

flore cence of movement of the Swadhyaya type, relea ed by technology from the pri on of traditional cultic ocial tructure. •

VOLUME 44. NUMBER 4

Public Culture in Late 20th-Century India by Arjun Appadurai and Carol A. Breckenridge*

The underlying pre uppo ition of the project on public culture in late 20th-century India i that modernity i today a global experience-even if the tenn modernity i ,in orne en e, a category of We tern hi tory and reflexivity. A a global experi­ence, it i nece ary to tudy all the ite of moder­nity (including tho e of the We t) on the arne term . Not only i it the ca e that mo t ocietie today po e the mean for the local production of modernity, but, a their members move around the world, the e experience inform and modify one another, thu making even the paradigmatic moder­nity of the United State and We tern Europe (it elf not an unproblematic a umption) no more pri tine. Korean , Samoan, Turk, Indian, Chine e, Mexican , Haitian , and Mongol now move to the countrie of the We t (and tay) equipped with their own under tanding of modernity to negotiate with the one they encounter. Modernity i nowevery­where, it i imultaneou ly everywhere, and it i interactively everywhere.

The public culture project i exploring and problematizing the cultural experience of modernity in place like India where the world i dominated by the media, by con umption, and by global cultural flow . Like many other place , India ha developed fonn of public culture which draw it into the co mo­politani m of the re t of the world. Yet today' co­mopolitan cultural form contain a paradox. A fonn , they are emerging everywhere: film , pack­aged tour, pecialized re taurant ,videoca ette, and port pectacle eem to be drawing the world into a di turbing commercial amene . But a vehi­cle for cultural ignificance and the creation of group identitie ,every ociety appear to bring to the e form it own pecial hi tory and tradition • it own cultural tamp, it own quirk and idio yncra ie .

A tudy of co mopolitan cultural form uch a con umption and adverti ing in contemporary India i

• Arjun App durai i profe r of anthropology at the UOIversity of Penn ylvania; Carol A. Breckenridge i a lecturer in th Depanment of Hi tory. They are co-directors of the Center for Tran nati nal Cultural Studt at the uOlven.tty.

DECEMBER 1990

of con iderable and intrin ic intere t for tho e con­cerned with under tanding modernity a a global phe­nomenon. However, it i propo ed that the e co mo­politan form rai e a larger et of terminological a well a interpretive problem about the way in which public life in the contemporary world i being cultur­ally articulated. Thi larger pr:oblem can fruitfully be engaged by hypothe izing in an area - which we call public culture-in which the emergent co mopolitan cultural form of today' India hape each other.

Public culture in late 20th-century India i thu a conte ted terrain. The actor in the conte t are a variety of producer of culture and their audience ; the material in the conte t are the many cultural modalitie mentioned above; and the method , increa ingly hared by all partie , involve the rna media, a well a mechanical mode of reproduction. What i at take in the conte t i , of cour e, no Ie than the con ciou ne of the emergent Indian public. The me age of public culture are therefore directed to audience without regard to the limit of family, locality or ocial category. Thi doe not mean that they are de igned to appeal to a diver ity of audi­ence . Their rhetoric i ecumenical. not parochial. and under the pre ent political regime they are intended to create the new citizen.

Four a umption underlie the public culture project:

(1) Circulation. An increa ing number of people. good , and image in the contemporary world are to be found circulating far from their point of origin. While the economic, demographic. and political dimen ion of the e phenomena have been given orne eriou attention. the tudy of their cultural

dimen ion ha not. (2) Homogenization and Izeterogellization. The

model of the world a growing increa ingly homoge­nized (Americanized and coca-colonized) i largely incorrect. Cultural heterogenization eem to outpace homogenization, at lea t in the medium run. partly becau e audience and con umer in different part of the world eem to con i tently alter tran national flow to uit local ta te and purpo e . although they may ub equently export the e newly indigenized form them elve . Thi "turn tile" effect need clo e examination.

(3) Imagined world. We need to make a hift from what Benedict Anderson (1983) has called "imagined communitie " to what Arjun Appadurai (1990) ha el ewhere called "imagined world." Print media, a

ITEMS177

well a other vi ual and electronic media, create imagined world in that they allow the creation of a plurality of conception of the globe, which are a much ubject to collaboration and conte tation a are the national etting in which the e conception are generated. Thu the world imagined by the Arab when they conceptualize their oil trategy i not the arne a the world imagined by the South Korean a

they tage their Olympic , and neither of the e i the arne a the world projected by the Indian e tabli h­

ment in their "Fe tival of India." A the owner hip of the mean of communication become increasingly globalized, the analy i of the interaction of the e imagined world will become increa ingly urgent. Thi i a key area where cultural analy i will need to be infonned by tudie in international economic , demography, and politic .

(4) Deterritoriali~atioll. All of thi lead to one major a umption, which ummarize the a umption above: we live in a deterritorialized world who e dynamic we barely under tand. Deterritorialization affect the loyaltie of group (e pecially tho e involved in complex dia pora ), their tran national manipulation of currencie a well a of identitie , and the trategie of tate . The 100 ening of the bond among people, wealth, and territory i the ba i of the interaction of the imagined world di cu ed earlier. Their analy i will radically alter current model of immigration, plurali m, and diversity.

One trand of the e a umption i pre ently being pur ued by the JCSA by looking at con umption and it emergent cia correlative in tran national per pective with particular attention on the relation-hip among media, con umption, clas fonnation, and

global flow . The fir t of three JCSA work hop will focu on India (1991) with two ub equent one on Japan (1992) and Latin America (1993) . The pre ence of academic and practitioner-intellectual from the United State will be a con tant in all three work-hop , not only becau e the Council i in thi country

but al 0 becau e "Americanization" i a critical part of global con umeri m.

Work hop 1: Adverti ing, Con umption and the ew Middle Clas in India

The fir t work hop on "Adverti ing, Con umption and the New Middle Cia e in India" (1991) will focu on the emergent co mopolitani m of contem-

78\ ITEM

porary India by targeting three que tion : How do adverti er and market re earchers conceptualize the new market? What are the ocial, political, and cultural logic that drive new fonn of con umption? Do the e new fonn herald the formation of a new ort of middle cia ?

Scholar , journali t , and citizen today realize that we live in an interdependent global context, not olely in matter of diplomacy, defen e, and ecurity,

but aloin matter of art, lei ure, and con umption. The fonner have been well attended but the latter i ue have been given cant attention. Thi work-hop, u ing India a a te t ca e, will explore the way

in which aLternative modernities are emerging out ide the po t-indu trial We t in way that would not have been predicted by earlier theorie of modernity or modernization. More preci ely, the work hop will examine the cultural dynamic of con umption in contemporary India, in relation to the new middle cia e, a one dimen ion of the making of an alternative modem world. Workshop member are inve tigating the con truction of the Indian con umer, paying pecial attention to the domain that the We t would glo as "lei ure": port, touri m, re taurant , cinema, and televi ion.

The work hop focu i on the context of con ump­tion in contemporary India (rna media, travel, the emergent middle cia ) a well a on the content of cultural production (TV how, cinematic theme , new folk fonn of perfonnance and elf-repre enta­tion) . Special attention i being paid to print adverti -ing and the "communitie of con umption" it imultaneou ly imagine , textualize , and create . In

thi regard, an attempt will be made to link the idea of the 'imagined community" (Ander on 1983) that underlie the nation- tate to what Stanley Fi h ha called "interpretive communitie .. in the context of We tern reader hip. Thi interpretation of the emergent Indian con umer will addre the following po ibilitie:

• One, that there i a di tinctive hi tori cal trajectory within which the Indian con umer merge ,a a ocial type, and that thi trajectory i not the arne a our common- en e model of what fonned the modem con umer in the po t-indu trial We t. Put imply, in the We t, technologie of production (quinte entially in indu trial revolution) and ideologie of nationali m preceded the growth of ophi ticated technologie of merchandi ing and adverti ing, and of ideologie of ta te and con umer "right ." In India (and in many

VOL IE 44. N MBER 4

other part of the world), by contra t, the e develop­ment have been coeval and synergistic. Al 0, the very rapid emergence of a izable middle cla with a ignificant di po able income and co mopolitan ta te

ha led to recent, and explo ive, effort on the part of entrepreneur to clo e the gap between ign and dream. on the one hand. and product and market, on the other.

• Two, that the Indian con umer live in a peculiar mixed economy of me age and products, which involve a complex and poorly under tood terrain of collaboration (and conte tation) between the tate and the private "culture indu trie ." Since both make heavy u e of film, TV. billboard , and magazine to ell their product and me age, the Indian con umer

operate in a land cape of vi ual and aural me age in which "capitali m reali m" (Schud on 1984) and " ociali m reali m" are con tantly playing hide-and- eek with each other. Thu , the motive of con umption in India are unlikely to yield to any imple ver ion of Veblen' theory of con picuou

con umption, or it modem exten ion , but mu t be interpreted along the line ugge ted by Albert Hir chman' idea about "loyalty and exit" (Hir ch­man 1970).

• Three, that in term of the longue duree of Indian (e pecially Hindu) civilization, the image that are beamed at the Indian con umer appear to play with (and ubtly ubvert) long tanding Indic idea about bodily vitality. about pro perity, and about the importance of collectivitie over the individual. A great deal of the imagery of contemporary adverti ing revolve around product and image de igned to exploit the Indian preoccupation with the body a a ite of vitality, beauty, and longevity. But the e

image ubtly unyoke the body from it traditional moral penumbra. Likewi e, much current adverti ing in India draw on the Indian preoccupation with the link between pro perity and religiou devotion, but where older logic tied pro perity to the di cipline of genero ity and gift. the newer one tie pro perity to acqui ition . Finally, while drawing on the deep importance of ocial genera, type , and collectivitie in Indic thought, the new ideologie of con umption al 0 partake of the ideology of We tern adverti ing which di gui e the following paradox: one become a ingular per on by buying thi or that product or experience, but the ucce of the me age i mea ured by the creation of whole categorie of uch

OEcE lBER 1990

" pecial person ," thu undermining any given con umer' pecialne .

History of the project

The re earch project "Public Culture in Late 20th-Century India" wa launched in 1985 at the Univer ity of Penn ylvania and wa enlarged with re pect to India and expanded with re pect to the globe a a re ult of dialogue with the Joint Commit­tee on South A ia. Driven by the global implication of the Indian re earch, the project ha come to focu on the tran national cultural flow and the moderni­tie that are both it expre ion and it loci of tran mi ion. With partial eed money from the JCSA, a multidi ciplinary journal wa e tabli hed, entitled Public Culture (1988), and the momentum generated by the upport of the JCSA facilitated the founding of the Center for Tran national and Cultural Studie at the Univer ity of Penn ylvania (1989). The journal and the center, with the encouragement of the JCSA, have extended and inten ified di cu ion and re earch around the i ue of co mopolitani m, globali m, and post-colonial cholarship. The JCSA al 0 upported an international work hop on "Public Culture in India and it Global Problematic " (1989).

The project i currently focu ed on the ten ion between the public culture of particular ocietie , on the one hand, and globali m and deterritorialization, on the other. The broader underlying agenda that ha been the re ult in part of dialogue with the JCSA can be ummarized a follow:

(I) Articulating the relation hip between area studies and cultural tudie . The current nationwide intere t in cultural tudie a a way to clo e the gap between literary. hi torical, anthropological. and political approache to "culture" i laudable. and many major univer itie (including Penn) are making important effort to place "cultural tudie" on a firm in titutional footing. Unfortunately, little corre pond­ing thought ha been given to how the diver ity of the global experience ince World War II (and before) can be brought into the main tream of cultural tudie . Thi i partly becau e cultural tudie have

tended to be dominated by approache coming out of literary tudie , particularly the "new hi torici m," and partly becau e even decanonization i u ually een a an exclu ively "humani tic" concern. thu

limiting the room for imaginative u e of ocial cientific approache to the many "alternative

ITEM 179

modernitie " that are emerging in today' world. Particularly given the current rethinking of "area" tudie ,it eem e pecially important to bring area tudie and cultural tudie into a new configuration,

which would wean area tudie away from narrowly philological or antiquarian concern ; and wean cultural tudie away from a tendency to re-vi ion the We tern canon armed largely with Eurocentric alternative in theory and hi tory. . (2) Dissolving the line between approache to globalism that set rigid boundaries between humanis­tic and social-science approaches. The concern of comparative literature or the comparative tudy of lingui tic and folkloric form are in ufficiently linked to equally important global concern with the environment, with international peace and ecurity i ue, and with tudie of tran national media. If ever there wa a problem with our current tendency to organize our univer itie and funding agencie around the humanitie ,the ocial cience, and the natural cience a di crete categorie , it i in the area of globalization: the environment i a much per­ceived as it i experienced, international politic i a much a matter of tyle a of capabilitie , and tran national media involve complex i ue both of hardware and of oftware. In a world where image and re ource are inextricably linked, it eem wa teful to carry on dialogue about global i ue in a context dominated by di ciplinary fence that ob cure natural affinitie .

(3) Erasing the artificial boundaries between studies of post-Orientalist, post-colonial modes of

80\ ITEM

scholarship as regards the non-Western "other," and similar studies of cultural plurality, cosmopolitanism and modernity in Europe and the United States. The world as a whole i now confronted with hared global, po t-colonial problem (even if not all countrie have directly experienced coloniali m and it accompanying Orientali m ). Our challenge a cholars i to link the tudy of proce e of plurali m,

di crimination, and dia pora a they affect African­Americans, Native American, and Hi panic­American (among other national minoritie ), with counterpart i ue in the re t of the world, 0 that a new dialogue can emerge between cholars concerned with ethnicity and heritage in thi hemi phere and in Europe, and tho e concerned with imilar i ue in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific world, including Au tralia. The larger agenda is to globalize the tudy of diversity and minority experience , and to tudy the globalization of the e experience . •

Refer'e

Anderson, Benedict. lmogin~d Communiti~s: R~~ctions on tM Origin and Spr~ad of Nationalism . London: Verso, 19 3.

Appadurai, Asjun. "Di juncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy." Public Cultur~ , Fall: I- 24, 1990.

Breckenrid e, Carol A. "The Work of Lei ure , the Culture of Place: Video and the Humble Geographic of Touri m in India." In Brecken­ridge, editor, Mod~rn Sit~s: Cultur~ and Cont~station in a Po t­Colonial World (forthcoming).

Hirschman, Alben. Exit. Voic~ . and Loyalty: R~spons~s to D~c1in~ in Firms. Organizations. and Stat~s . Cambridge, M huset : Harvard University Pre ,1970.

Schud n, Michael. Adv~rtising . th~ Un~asy P~r uasion: Its Dubious Impact on Am~rican Soci~ty. New York: B ic Boo , 1984.

VOLUME 44, NUMBER 4

Humanities in South Asian Studies by Sheldon Pollock*

Over the pa t fifteen to twenty year , the method , material , and perhap the very en e of mi sion of humani tic inquiry have been undergoing radical change. A imilar tran formation has occurred in area studie , and perhap nowhere more profoundly than in South A ian tudie . Scholarship in the South A ian humanitie ,find it elf at pre ent in a moment of doubly inten e reconceptualization. A all who are making plan to recon titute South A ia program for the coming century, or even, Ie dramatically, to develop a yllabu for next year' undergraduate general education course are vividly aware, old certaintie about the defining characteri tic and central method of the South A ian humanitie , the central texts, or the central purpo e , have largely vani hed.

The change in humani tic tudy broadly viewed I have been provoked by ever more challenging

que tion emerging from the realm of cultural theory, I with re peet to method and to di ciplinary identities,

o much 0 that we are no longer ure even what the domain of the "humanitie " i . Shift in boundary have been accompanied by hift in ub tance. Now, for example, we read poetic text from the per pec­tive of ocial power theori t ,and eek to con truct a "poetic of power" through ocial "text ," while at the arne time directing attention to altogether new area of cultural practice (performance, film and video, "public culture"). The change undergone by area tudie have been to a large degree re pon e to development in the ocial cience, above all the hi tori cal and political-economic critique of the relation hip between We tern power over A ia and We tern knowledge of A ia. Edward Said' Oriental­ism (1979) wa only one of the more pointed expre ion of what ha been a two-decade-long examination in area tudie of the relation hip between knowledge and human intere t .

In the pring of 1988, the Joint Committee on South A ia decided to make a preliminary a e ment of orne of the e complex development . Five South

• Sheldon Pollock i the George V. Bobrin koy Profe r of San krit and Indian Studie at the Umversity of Chicago.

DECEMBER 1990

Asian humani t from different di cipline were invited to participate in a work hop to di cu the current ituation and future development in South Asian humani tic cholarship. They were asked in particular to con ider how to reformulate the que -tion that can be po ed about the nature of humani tic inquiry and creative activitie in and about South Asia, to articulate their idea about relevant theorie and methodologie , and to help ugge t project the JCSA could con ider taking up in the future. The workshop took place in the New York office of the SSRC in September of that year, with pre entation on modem literature (Vinay Dharwadkar), art hi tory (Michael Mei ter), "hi toricity" (Sheldon Pollock), ethnomu icology (Regula Qure hi), and folklore (A.K. Ramanujan). In the di cu ion initiated by invited re pondent and enriched by the participation of the Joint Committee' humani ts and ocial cienti t , and at the wrap-up meeting on the econd

day, everallarger problematic in the humanitie were identified as promi ing theme for conference development.

Over the following year and a half, the Joint Committee reviewed a number of draft propo als for what came to be referred to a the "South A ian Humanitie Project." It became increa ingly clear that the i ue involved were too large and complex to reduce to a typical JCSA conference, and that, instead, a erie of work hop over a longer period, more "bottom-up" in formulation, more inclu ive in cope, and more decentralized in location wa called

for. Cooperation with other intere ted in titution would be both de irable and nece ary. A ba ic plan to enact the e idea wa hared with the directors of the nine South A ia National Re ource Center at their pring 1990 meeting, and wa enthu iastically endorsed. Fund are currently being ought from the Department of Education to upplement re ource identified by the JCSA for a erie of work hop to be held over three year beginning in 1992.

The South A ia humanitie work hop will be Ie s forum for the pre entation of poli hed work than arena for articulating and vigorou ly debating large matter of a theoretical nature on the ba i of particular ca e from within the South A ian humani­tie . They will be organized according to ignificant problematics and interdi ciplinary in cope. Since many of the i ue confronting the South A ian humanitie are common to other non-We tern area, the per pective of peeiali t from out ide the South

ITEMS/81

A ian cholarly community will be a potentially valuable addition. At the arne time, the very nature of the problem a fonnulated make e ential the inclu ion of cholar working in the method and theorie of European and American culture.

It i propo ed to organize the work hop under the following rubric :

• South Asian Humanities and Cultural Theory. The e work hop will addre the relevance to the South A ian humanitie of We tern cultural the ry. How u eful are the tool thi provide for the analy i of South A ian literary or arti tic work? To what degree i it po ible, on the ba i of South A ian material ,to u tain or challenge the po tulate of uch theory regarding cultural fonn and change? Do

the South A ian humanitie them elve have compel­ling theoretical model to ugge t for the analy i of . other cultural fonnation ? Work hop currently being planned will addre the e and related que tion from within the framework of more narrowly defined problematic: "canonicity," for example, "text and hi tory," and "identity."

• South A ian Humanities and the Social Science . The e e ion will addre the claim of the ocial

2\1TfM

cience , e pecially a they are practiced in South A ian tudie , on the South A ian humanitie . How far can we ociologize culture in South A ia 0 a to interpret it production and con umption from the per pective of rank and power? What are the implication for the humanitie of the current critique of coloniali m? Conver ely, to what degree are the practice of the South A ian ocial cience open to critique from the ide of the humanitie ?

• South A ian Humanitie in North American Education. The implication of We tern theory and of ocial- cience and po t-colonial problematic for the

teaching of South A ian humanitie in American univer itie will be a e ed. What curricular change are entailed in both humanitie and the ocial cience ? What new text and textbook hould we be

preparing, what new con tellation of problem hould we try to incorporate in undergraduate

teaching? What are the pedagogical implication of a new generation of South-A ian-American undergradu­ate enrolling in South A ian language and culture cour e ? What are the implication for graduate training in the South A ian humanitie in the coming century? •

VOL IE 44. N IBER 4

Current Activities at the Council

MacArthur Foundation Grant

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation ha awarded the Council a grant of $7.6 million to upport activitie on peace and ecurity in a changing world over the next five year. Thi grant will upport an international competition for a total of 56 di ertation and po tdoctoral fellow hip from 1991 to 1994; a competition for funding of Re earch Work hop among member of the Interna­tional MacArthur community of re earcher and cholar; a Vi iting Scholar Program for person in the developing world; and a erie of conference and work hop intended to create a new international community of re earcher . The e activities will be under the direction of the Committee on International Peace and Security.

Further, the MacArthur grant provide a major impetu to the involvement of other Council committee in international peace and ecurity-related re earch. It doe 0 through the creation of a fund in the office of the pre ident

I for inter-committee comparative and tran national re earch within the field of peace and ecurity tudie .

Soviet Studies

• Economic and political reform and the implications for re earch and training. The Joint Commit­tee on Soviet Studie (JCSS) provided upport for a conference held on March 8-9, 1990 at Georgetown Univer ity on the

DECE fBER 1990

implication for re earch and training in Soviet tudie of the ocial, economic, and political

change that have occurred during the fir t five year of Soviet Pre ident Gorbachev' gla no t and pere troika policie .

Conference participant pre ented paper on re earch implication in a number of fields including ociology, foreign policy, economics, dome tic politic , literature and culture, and international ecurity tudie .1

Variou ugge tion were offered to improve re earch trategie . A key theme of the

conference wa the incorporation of more comparative approache to proce e that have taken or are taking place in other ocietie , and the application of normal cience technique uch a

quantitative analy i and urvey re earch to the tudy of the Soviet

I PanicipanlS included: Harley Balzer. Georgetown University; Marjorie Mandel tam Balzer. Georgetown Univer..ity; tuart Brown. Georgetown University; Robert Campbell. Indiana UniversIty; Karen Dawl ha. University of Maryland; Murray Fe hb ch. Ge rgetown Umversily; Paul Goble. Radio Free Europe; Helena Go .10. Universlly of Pillsburgh; Ro Gonemoeller. The RA D Corporall n. Thane Gu taf n. Georgetown Univer..lly; Dal Herspnng. U.S. Dept. of tate and Th Brool.ing Instllution; Jerry Hough. Dul.e UnIversity and the BrooKing In titution; Robert Huber. S RC; G II Lapidu • University of California at Berl.eley; Herbert Levine. Umverslly of Penn ylvania; Robert Lieber. Georgetown Umversity; DaVId Ran el. Indian Unive ity; Alfred J. Rieber. Umverslly of P nn ylvania; Blair Rubl • The Kennan In IIIU1 ; Gertrude hroeder·Green lade. Unive lIy of V,rgon,a; Angela tnt. Gc rge· town Umversity. Vladimir VOonOVI h. Auth r. Germany: Ted Warner. Th RA D Corpora· lion; Jo phone Woll. Howard Univ r..oty: ~ark Zlotnil.. Central Intelligence Agency.

Union. A conference volume derived from elected paper pre ented at the conference will be publi hed in the near future by We tview Pre .

• Soviet contemporary literature and popuLar culture. The fir t of three eminar conducted under the au pice of aU. S. -Soviet working group on contemporary literature and popular culture wa held in Mo cow from June 23-30, 1990 at the In titute of World Literature, USSR Academy of Science . It wa pon ored by the JCSS and it Subcommit­tee on Literature and Popular Culture.

The purpo e of the working group i to shift cholarly analy i away from particular literary work or author and toward more comprehen ive interpretive model . Nancy Condee and Vladimir Padunov, both of the Univer ity of Pitt burgh, directed the eminar; Robert Huber and Ro e London of the Council erved a taff. Working in clo e cooperation with Ludmilla Skvort ova of the In titute of World Literature, the eminar wa organized around

pre entation that ought to interpret the ignificance of new model of literature and culture through the ynthe i of many genre , including mu ic, litera­ture, theater, cinema, radio, and televi ion. In addition to formal pre entation by working group member ,graduate tudent from a number of Soviet in titu­tion took part in di cu ion concerning the evolution of literature and culture in the Soviet

ITEM /83

Union. 2 It i anticipated that a conference volume will be publi hed in the near future.

• Seminar ill economics. The ixth annual Summer Work hop

on Soviet and Ea t European Economic wa held at the Univer ity of Pitt burgh, on July 8-19, 1990. The program wa conducted in cooperation with the Univer ity' Ru ian and Ea tern European Studie Center, with primary funding provided by the Ford and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation .

Herbert S. Levine of the Univer ity of Penn ylvania directed the work hop. He wa joined on the faculty by George Bre lauer, Univer ity of Califor­nia, Berkeley; Richard Eric on, Columbia Univer ity; Mike Marre e, Northwe tern Univer-ity; Andrei Poletayev, In titute

for World Economic and International Relation (Mo cow); and Jan Svejnar, Univer ity of Pitt burgh. Gue t peaker Judith Thornton of the Univer ity of Wa hington, Martin Weitzman of Harvard Univer ity, and William Zimmerman of the Univer ity of Michigan al 0 di cu ed their re earch and per pective . Robert Huber and Ro e London of the Council erved a taff.

The 1990 work hop program focu ed on eminar pre entation by the 22 individual work hop participant • including even Soviet and Ea t Eur pean graduate tudent . 3 In addition to

84 ITE 1

eminar e ion, the work hop offered lecture and di cu ion period with the faculty and invited peaker. Among the major topic under examination were the mathematical modeling of the tran ition from a command to a market economy, the effect of market tran ition on labor employment and unemployment, the mix of centralized and decentralized economic tructure optimal for ucce ful economic reform, and the evolution of the " econd economy" in the tran ition to capitali m.

• Domestic politic and society. The JCSS and it Subcommittee on Dome tic Politic pon ored it third annual Summer Work hop on Soviet Dome tic Politic and Society at the Univerity of Tor­onto on June 10-22, 1990. The program wa conducted in coop­eration with the Center for Ru -ian and Ea t European Studie of

the University of Toronto. Pri­mary funding wa provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Robert Huber and Ro e London erved a taff.

The objective of the work hop were focu ed on the training of young cholar in the tudy of

Univen;lty. Marek G ra. Central choolof Planning and tall Ii ; Barbara H pin. Unive Ity of Maryland. Gleb A Ko hevoy. M . ow ta Universily~ Yevg ny Kuzn I v. Mo. ow tale Univen;lty~ J hn Litwack. Stanford Univen;ily; Ding Lu. rthwe lern Umve ily; Pa\\,el Mil bedzl..l. UnhersilY f Gdan k; Janel Milchell . Cornell Univ ily; Beth Mllchneck. The Brooking In Iltuli n; Jan Mlad k. Czech A demy of in; Jame Clay 1olz. Duke niven.iIY; Ig r

ikul'nikov. Ro IOV tal nive Ily; Mariu z Pilch. niversily of Lodz~ Kathel en Quinn. Univen;ily of Penn ylvama. 1ar1.. Reirnen. P ifi LUlheran Univen.IIY; Bry n Robert . M chu II In UIUI of Techn I gy; Michael pagal. Univ ily of Illin i: nd Milan Vod plev. World Bani.. .

Soviet dome tic politic . I ue di cu ed included " ourceman­hip" and the management of

large amounts of information now becoming available from new ource , the utilization of

appropriate re earch que tion and methodologie in a time of rapid political reform and change, and the relation hip between theory and re earch. Morning e ion were organized around eminar pre entation by each of the 20 participant , focu ing on their current re earch project on a variety of topic including in titution-building, property relation , group formation in the Soviet political y tem, and nationality policy both before and ince the period of glasno t.

Informal di cu ion al 0

en ued concerning the changing condition and infra tructure for conducting re earch in the Soviet Union. and the state of employ­ment pro pect for young political cienti t with emerging experti e

on the Soviet Union. It i anticipated that a conference volume, with elected pre enta­tion from the first three work-h p , will be publi hed.

Thane Gu taf on of George­town Univer ity, Peter H. Solomon, Jr. and Su an Solomon of the Univer ity of Toronto directed the work hop program. They were joined on the work-hop faculty by Jerry Hough,

Duke Univer ity, M . Solomon, and Viliam Smirnov, In titute of State and Law, USSR Academy of Science (Mo cow). Vi iting peaker Paul Gobel of Radio

Free EuropelRadio Liberty, Franklyn Griffith of the Univer­ity of Toronto, Andrei Klimov of

the Leningrad Documentary Film Studio. and Gennady Ozernoi of

VOL 1E 44. NUMBER 4

the Univer ity of Ottawa aI 0

di cu ed their re earch and perspective .4

• EarLy East Slavic culture and society. The committee pon ored it fir t interdi ciplinary work hop on premodern Ea t Slavic hi tory on June 2-7, 1990 at the Univer ity of California, Lo Angele . The program wa conducted in cooperation with the univer ity' Center for Medieval

• Participants in luded Dominiqu Arel. University of lIIinoi ; Li a Bagli ne. Cornell University; Johanna Bloemsma. UOIversity of Am terdam; Jean Fameth Boone. Georgetown University; Su n Bron n. University of Mi higan; Ellen Camaghan. New York University; Andrea Chandler. Columbia' UOIversity; Tad Daley. RA DfUOIve ity of California. Lo Angel ~ Cynthia Duff. University of Virginia~ Gerald Easter. Duke UOIversity; Yoram G rlizki. t. Antony' College; Joel Hellman. Columbia University; John Lepingwell. University of (llin i • Ja n McDonald. Univen.ity of California. Berl..eley: Randall Poole. Notre Dame University~ Kathleen mlth. UnIversity of California. Berkeley: Michael Smith. Ge rgetown University. Matthew Trail. University of California. Berkeley; and Don V n Alta. Hamilton College.

DECEMBER 1990

and Renai ance Studie , with fund provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The work hop wa con tructed around the theme of building interdi ciplinary approache to the tudy of early Ea t Slavic ociety

through (1) the promotion of new analytical approache and re earch method ; (2) communication between junior and enior cholar on ource of re earch;

(3) technique for evaluating the authenticity and ignificance of ource ; and (4) the coordination

of philological, mu icological, art hi torical, literary, and politico­cultural methodologie .

Nancy Shield Kollman, Stanford Univer ity, directed a working group of cholar that conducted the work hop. Other members of the working group included Michael Flier, Univer ity of California, Lo Angele; Gail Lenhoff, Univer ity of California, Lo AngeJe ; Robert Mathie en, Brown Univer ity; and Daniel Rowland, Univer ity of Kentucky.

Robert Huber and Kathryn Becker erved a taff. A total of 23

junior and enior cholar participated.s

Pre entation focu ed on uch i ue as the nature of literature in early Ea t Slavic ociety, ubject-object eparation among

medieval chronicler , the u e and mi u e of ource uch a the portrayal of live of the aint for pecific political purpo e ,

interpreting vi ual ource of ritual , icon , and fre coe ; and mu ic and liturgy a hi torico­literary ource . An edited conference volume i being compiled by the working group for publication in the near future.

5 Senior holars were: Paul Bu hkovitch; Jame Cracraft; Robert Crummey; Chri tian Hannick; Norman Ingham; Edward Keenan; Bori Klo ; Jakov V. Luria~ Robert M thie· sen; Hugh Olmsted; Donald (htrow ki ; Richard Pope; ancy Sevcenko. William Ved r; and Daniel Waugh.

Junior holars were: Paul Holling worth; Mich I Khodarkovky; Val ri Klvel n; Georg MIchel ; Olga Strakhova; and Nina Ulff-Moller.

ITE 1 / 5

Recent Council Publications

The Allied Occupation of Japan, 1945-1952: An Anno­tated Bibliography of Western Language Materials, compiled and edited by Robert E. Ward and Frank Jo eph Shulman, with Ma a hi Ni hihara and Mary Tobin E pey; foreword by John Richard on, Jr. Spon ored by the Joint Committee on Japane e Studie and the Center for Japane e Studie , Univer ity of Michigan. Chicago: American Library A ociation, 1974. Reprinted, Tokyo: Nihon To ho Center, 1990. 867 page.

Chinese Local Elites and Patterns of Dominance, edited by Jo eph W. E herick and Mary Backu Rankin. Studie on China 11. Ba ed on a conference held in Banff, Canada, in Augu t of 1987 and pon ored by the Joint Committee on Chine e Studie . Berkeley: Univer ity of California Pre ,1990. xvii + 450 page. Cloth, $55.00.

Thi volume provide a panoramic view of local elite during the dramatic change of late Imperial and Republican China. Eleven peciali t pre ent detailed tudie of ubject ranging from cultivated upper gentry to 20th-century militari ts, from wealthy urban merchant to village leader . The editor a e the pioneering gentry tudie of the 1960 , draw com pari on to elite in Europe, and ugge t new way of looking at the top people in Chine e local ocial y tern .

The author do not equate pre-20th-century Chine e local

86\ITEM

elite with gentry holder of tate examination degree . In tead they argue that a wide range of local elite relied on combination of re ource that varied in different arena and changed over time. The volume focu e more on the trategie through which elite

a erted their po ition at home than on elite- tate tie. Elite haped ocial organization

through network , kin group , and a ociation. Culture, ex-pre ed in life tyle and ymbolic di play ,wa particularly important in defining elite , buttre ing their claim to high tatu , and reinforcing their

hegemony over lower cla e through patronage and mediation. Rather than being marked by a few tatic characteri tic , Chine e elite were di tingui hed by their flexible u e of multiple re ource , the adaptability of their ocial behavior, and their trong reliance on cultural ymbol . Such attribute contributed to the comparative continuity of local elite familie in China-even when large tructural change altered re ource -and they till infu e behavior today.

Human Nature: An Interdisci­plinary Biosocial Per pective, edited by Jane B. Lanca ter. Volume 1, no . 1-4, 1990. A journal publi hed by Aldine de Gruyter, Inc., Hawthorne, New York. Based on activitie of the Committee for Bio ocial Perspec­tive on Parent Behavior and Off pring Development.

"The ocial, behavioral, and

biological cience have tradition­ally pur ued eparate path , both in re earch and in education," write the editor of thi new journal. "Yet it i increa ingly apparent that the mo t perva ive and crucial i ue of our time are fundamentally behavioral in their nature and lie quarely at the interface of the e artificially eparated di cipline . The e i ue

pre ent them elve at both global and national level ."

Although the i ue appear to be of overwhelming magnitude and multiplicity, they belong to a ingle interrelated complex, at the

heart of which i human behavior and human nature it elf. Human Nature i dedicated to advancing the interdi ciplinary inve tigation of the biological, ocial, and environmental factor which underlie human behavior. It primary focu i on the continu­ou interaction of the e factor , e.g., evolutionary, biological, and ociological proce e a they

interact with human ocial behavior; biological and demo­graphic con equence of human hi tory; and cro -cultural, cro - pecie , and hi tori cal per pective of human behavior.

The journal focu e on recent re earch in bio ocial cience relevant to the applied and practicing cience uch a medicine, public health, ocial work, and p ychology. Sample article include "New Approache to the Study of Day Care," by Michael F. Lamb (no. 2); "An Evolutionary Theory of Cui ine," by Solomon H. Katz (no. 3); "How Do Babie Know Their Friend and Foe ? ' by Lonnie R.

VOL ~E 44, NUMBER 4

Sherrod (no. 4); and "Why Crime Really I Natural," by Lawrence E. Cohen and Richard Machalek (forthcoming).

The editor, Jane B. Lanca ter i an anthropologi t at the Univer ity of New Mexico. Human Nature i publi hed a one volume of four quarterly i ue per year. It may be obtained from Aldine de Gruyter, 200 Saw Mill River Road, Hawthorne, NY 10532. Sub crip­tion price for in titution, 90.00; for individual, 50.00 plu $5.00 for po tage and handling.

India through Hindu Catego­ries, edited by McKim Marriott. An indexed, cloth edition of the journal Contributions to Indian Sociology, 23(1), 1989. Spon-ored by the Joint Committee on

South A ia. New Delhi: Sage Publication , 1990. 209 page .

It i an anomalou fact that the ocial cience in India have

developed from We tern rather than Indian cultural realitie . A a re ult, We tern di cipline often do not recognize and therefore cannot deal with the realitie reflected in many Indian ocial in titution .

Thi volume explore ocial cience idea which can be

developed from the realitie known to Indian people. The e idea are drawn from Hindu cultural categorie , not merely becau e they offer coherent and comprehen ive y tem of thought, but e pecially becau e they illuminate variation which e cape the notice of conventional ocial cience.

The contributor to thi volume are bound by a common purpo e:

DECE lBER 1990

to explore the connection between cultural knowledge and life a it i lived. They ynthe ize humani tic and ocial cience learning and do not attempt to po it any ingle South A ian value or ocial configuration.

The often extreme variation explored in the e paper -differentiated dependencie among ca te and kin, varied period of healing after death, diver e imputation of cau e, di tinct kind of political power, contrast­ing tran action with god , pecialization of dome tic pace-can be interpreted by

Hindu and by other who would under tand them a paradigm that are recognizable becau e they are repeatedly generated through combination and permutation of familiar component . Like the variou fabric that can be woven of the ame thread , or the varied utterance that can be formed from one language, the diver e people of the Hindu world can ee them elve , too, a compo ite

and contingent outcome of that world' multivariate proce e.

Muslim Traveller : Pilgrimage, Migration, and the Religious Imagination, edited by Dale F. Eickelman and lame Pi catori. Spon ored by the Committee on the Comparative Study of Mu lim Societie . London: Routledge, 1990. xxii + 281 page. Publi hed imultaneou Iy by Univer ity of California Pre , Berkeley (Comparative Studie in Mu lim Societie , Volume 9). Cloth, $45.00; paper, 14.95.

Travel often lead to new per pective on the world and co mo , new under tanding of

one' home community, and new definition of one elf. Thi i no Ie true in Mu lim ocietie than el ewhere. Indeed, the effect and meaning imbued in travel may be particularly inten e among Mu lim a a con equence of the role of the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, a a central pillar of the faith. Mu lim everywhere, phy ically and financially able to do 0, are enjoined to make the hajj at lea t one in their live . Several million make the journey to the holy citie and ite in Saudi Arabia every year.

Participation in the rite at the e location ,a well a the proce of pilgrimage it elf, are intended to inten ify per onal religiou commitment . But the hajj aloha many other eco­nomic, political, and cultural con equence -and metaphorical u e . While the hajj often create new linkage acro the larger Mu lim community (umma), it al 0 generate new and more differentiated per pective on one elf and one' home commu­nity. At the ame time, localized travel to hrine within one' own country, a well a international travel for tudy, trade, or employment, are often modeled on the hajj or taken a metaphor for it, and are often inve ted with their own powerful religiou dimen ion and meaning.

Drawing on material from variou Mu lim ocietie from Malay ia to We t Africa and We tern Europe, and covering both the contemporary and hi torical period , the e ay in thi volume explore the tran na­tional and local ignificance of pilgrimage, migration, and other form of travel. They examine how uch journey both heighten

ITEM / 7

a universal en e of "being Mu lim" while imultaneou ly in piring ubtle redefinition of frontiers, ect, language, territory and nation. In the proce ,the e ay document how encounter with Mu lim "other" are frequently a important in haping community and personal elf­definition a encounters with European "other."

Dale F. Eickelman i Ralph and Richard Lazaru Profe or of Anthropology and Human Relation at Dartmouth College. Jame Pi catori i Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Univer ity College of Wale , Abery twyth.

The New Chosen People: Immigrants in the United State , by Guillermina Ja 0 and Mark R. Ro enzweig. A publica­tion in the erie , "The Popula­tion of the United State in the 1980 ." Spon ored by the Committee for Re earch on the 1980 Cen u . New York: Ru ell Sage Foundation, 1990. 480 page. Cloth, $49.95.

"The ab orption of per on born out ide the United State into full participation in U.S. ociety repre ent one of the

enduring hallmark of the United State a a country. Storie of immigrant ucce ,for example, are u ed to illu trate the openne of opportunitie in the United State that are derived from principle of political and economic freedom." But, caution the author in their introduction to The New Chosen People, the foreign-born are al 0 at time een a competitor for carce

re ource who may alter the cheri hed tradition and way

88\ITEMS

of life of native-born U.S. citizen.

Becau e the criteria by which immigrant are admitted (or "cho en") embody orne of the fundamental value of a ociety, and becau e of the dual view of immigrant as ymbol of ideal and hope , and as threat to economic and ocial well-being, immigration policy ha provoked harp debate. Con equently, U.S.

immigration law have undergone many change and reform over the la t century.

Ba ed on U.S. cen u data and admini trative record , thi volume provide a demographic and hi torical analy i of how and why the foreign-born population of the United State ha changed, drawing compari on between po t-1960 immigrant and tho e of 1900 through 1910.

The author trace the factor that influence the immigrant' adju tment and achievement in a broad area of concern : learning Engli h, finding work and earning a living, and rai ing a family. They devote pecial attention to family relation hip -kin hip mi­gration, family reunification, and the marriage market-and to the factor determining where immi­grant choo e to ettle. Al 0 di -cu ed are the factor that influ­ence deci ion to naturalize, and the economic and ocial con e­quence of achieving legal tatu.

Ja 0 and Ro enzweig al 0

detail the policy choice that affect the compo ition of the foreign-born population. What criteria determine who i eligible to enter the country? How do the e regulation differ for each country of origin, and how have they changed over the year ?

The New Cho en People

empha ize the determining influence of choice and election on the foreign-born population of the United State . For policy maker and ocial cienti t , the book provide a valuable a e ment of the economic and ocial well-being of the nation

and it newcomer. Guillermina Ja 0 i profe or

of ociology at the University of Iowa. Mark R. Ro enzweig i profe or of economic at the Univer ity of Penn ylvania.

Proceeding of the May 1988 Conference and Workshop on African Material Culture, edited by Mary Jo Arnoldi, Chri traud M. Geary, and Kri L. Hardin. Spon ored by the Joint Committee on African Studie . New York: Social Science Re earch Council, 1990. 135 page.

Thi conference, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, ought to combine three different per pec­tive on the tudy of African material culture: tho e approache that take the object a the ubject for analy i (e.g. art hi tory); tho e that focu upon the object' ocial context (hi tory and

anthropology); and African definition and categorie of object that point to the concept of material culture it elf a a culture-bound category. The planners hared a concern that tudie of African culture had

failed to pay ufficient attention to change. A main goal for the meeting wa to incorporate into material culture tudie an empha i on the importance of human agency and practice in the recon truction of ocial form. A econd objective was to examine

VOL 1E 44, MBER 4

the role of the African mu eum within the politic of repre enta­tion.

The conference wa finally I organized in two ection . In the

fir t half, a erie of ca e tudie addre ed the current cholarship on material culture in Africa. The e tudie were arranged thematically: technology and the production of form, con truction of elf and ociety, dynamic of hou ehold production and con umption, life hi torie of object , and the meaning of cultural heritage. The econd part of the conference di cu ed the function and purpo e of the mu eum in African and Euro­American etting, examining both the concept of the mu eum it elf a a creation of 19th-century European view of elf and other, as well a the practical ta k

today confronting African mu eum curator .

In the first ection, three generally hared conclu ion indicated promi ing line of future re earch. Fir t, it wa felt that technology and production need to be inve tigated as ocial proce e and 0 mu t be examined at lea t partially through local concept of production, creation and ocial relation. Second, it wa recog­nized that examining how object produce identity unite tudie of ae thetic and value with re earch in the field of politic , identity and choice in new and important way . Third, there wa a con en u about under tanding how object contribute to the tructuring of idea and hierar­

chie . In the econd part of the conference, the contribution on

mu eum ugge ted the need for a rethinking of the conceptual parameters which inform collect­ing practice . Too often exi ting convention influence the criteria for electing "collectible" object in a fa hi on which hinder a full exploration of African experience. In their ta k , African mu eum are additionally handicapped by the di proportionate hare of re ource and information in the hand of Euro-American cholars and in titution .

Thi volume i the first of two to be generated by the confer­ence. It contain ub tantial ynop e of the 26 paper a well

a detailed ummarie of the di cu ion which followed their pre entation. The econd volume will contain full ver ion of a election of the papers and will be

reviewed appropriately.

Staff A sociate for P ychologicaJ Research on Human Development ocial cience Research Council

The Social Science Re earch Council i planning to expand the range of it behavioral cience program and i recrultmg a re arch p ychologi t for the po ition of Staff A oci teo The initial focu of th expand d program will empha ize topic in child. dole cent. and adult development: it will empha ize re arch and theory building about cro. - ocietal. multi-ethnic and multi-cultural difference and comm nalitie in life- pan developmental proce se and tran ition . The Staff A ociate will al. 0 as i t the Co un iI in identifying a range of dditional intell ctual opponunitie to engage th di ipline of p ychology more fully in the interdi Iplinary agenda of the Council.

Dutie. would includ : e tabli hing and maintaining relation hip with individual ~holars. academic in titution • foundation . and other organization ; preparing and negotiating grant propo al ; planning minar. workshop • and conference ; and ove~eing fellow hip and grant competition . Staff A ociate undenake major re pon ibilitie for developing and admini tering several program of re!.earch and reo earch planning effons by committee and con onia of Council-cho n cholars in the U.S. and abro d.

Applicant mu t have a re arch Ph.D. in p ychology or human developm nt and be br dly knowledgeable about developmental influence ari ing from both biological and ociocultural fa ton;. Indi idual with ignificant experience in re arch program implementation. and/or ience admini tration are encouraged to apply. The Council trongly encourage min rity candidate to apply. Candidate who might take full-time leave. of ab nce from tenured faculty or imilar po ition. for a period of two or three yean; \\ould be con idered.

Council alarie are commen urate with experience and qualification . Provi ion are made to enable taff . ociate to continue their profe. ional de\elopment while at the Council.

To be a ured of full con ideration. candidate hould ubmit a letter of application. curriculum vitae. ample of written or pub Ii hed work. and nam of three profe ional referen e . The Council i seeking an pplicant who can take up the po ilion a oon

po ible. but the earch will continue until a uitable candidate i selected. Screening of application will begin on December 15. 1990. Nomination and application material . hould be addre d to:

DECEMBER 1990

Dorie Sinocchi A i tant to the Pre ident Social cience Research Council 605 Third Avenue New York. Y 1015

Inquirie can be directed to M . Sinocchi at (212) 661-02 0; Fax' (212) 370-7896 The Social cience Re arch Council i an Equal Opponunity Employer.

ITEMS/89

SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL 605 THIRD AVE UE, NEW YORK, Y 10158

(212) 661-0280 FAX (212) 370-7896

Th~ Council was incorporal~d in lh~ Slal~ of lIIinoi , Dec~mlHr 27, 1924, for llr~ purpost of admncing re earch in lhe ocial cienus. ongo~'ernmenlal and inludisciplinary in nalure, lh Council appoinrs commillU of cholars I.hich st~k 10 achi~~'~ lhe Council' purpo e lhrough lh~ genua/ion ofn~1I' ideas and lh~ lraining of cholars . The aClivilies of lhe Council ar~ upporl~d primarily by gram from priml~ foundalion and gm'ernm~nl agencies.

Direclors, 1990-91 : CL UDE AKE, University of Port Harcourt; SUZAN ED. BERGER, M chu tts In titute of Technology; RI H RD A. BERK, Umvellllly of California, Lo Angele; ROBERT M. COE ,Northwe tern University; ROBERT DAR. TO. , Princeton University; KAI T. ERIKSO. , Yale University, DAVID L. FEATHERMA , ocial Science Re arch Council; ALBERT FI HLOW, University of California, Berkeley; G RD. ER LI DZEY, Center ~ r Advanced Study in the Behavioral Science; BEVI Lo. G TRETH, Debevoi & Plimpton; DAVID MAGNt; SON, Stockholm University; CORA B. MARRETT, Univelllity of Wiseon in; EMILY MARTI • The John Hopkm University; WILLIA I H. SEWELL, JR., Unlversily of Michigan; BURTO. H. I GER, Yale University; FRA 'CI X. SUTTO. ,Dobb Ferry, New York; MAltTA TIENDA, University of Chi a 0; ROBEltT B. ZAlo. c, Univer ily of Michigan

Offiurs and SlaJJ: DAVID L. FEATHERMA ,Pr~sidem; STA LEY J. HEGI BOTHAM, Vic~ Pre Id~m: Ro. ALD J. PELE K, Vice Pre idem for Financ~: GLORIA KIR HHEIMER, EdilOr: DoRIE SINOCCHI, AssiSlanl 10 lhe Pre id~nI; RICHARD COHE ,Y MI E ERGA , C RY FRA ER, M RTH A. GEPHAltT, ERIC HERSHBERG, STEVE HEYDEMA , ROBERT T. HUBER, MIMI KIM, TOM loDGE. M RY BYR E McDo. fl L, R Q OVRY RIVERA , ELLE PERECMA , SILVIA RAw (on leave), Rt HARD C. ROCKWELL, M. Pltl ILLA STO. E, DAVID L. SZANTO. , TOBY ALI E VOLK I

The Social cience Re arch Council upports the program of the Commi ion on Pre rvati nand Acce and i repre. nted on the National Advi ory Coun il on Pre n,·ation. The paper used in thi publication meel the minimum requirement of American alional tandard for Informal ion Scien e -Perman nce of Paper for Printed Library Material. ANSI Z39.4 1984. The infinity ymbol pia d in a circle mdicate compliance with thi tandard.

Social Science Research Council 605 Third Avenue New York, NY 10158

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ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED

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ALBANY, N. Y. Permit No. 31

VOLUME 44, NUMBER 4