Description
Book SynopsisThere are always at least two ''histories'' of encounter or contact, as each party would tell the story differently, but where and when is it really the ''first contact'' and for whom? This book deploys an analytical framework developed from Semiotics to have both sides of the story address each other. It is ethnography of dialogue, emerging from textual representation by outsiders and its relationship to visual response and presentations by the Andaman Islanders that this book aims to present as the critical ''ethnography of history.'' The section on Visuality looks at how the Other is incorporated into an organized knowledge-system, including Ongee myths and songs about outsiders and the early photographs of tribal people by British settlers and ethnographers. The section on Materiality concerns the investment in things made, to influence natural processes or to distinguish the human body, and discusses how they are transacted between cultures that come into contact. The concluding s
Trade ReviewThis extraordinary book brings long years of ethnographic engagement with the Ongee and the Jarawa, otherwise known as the Andaman Islanders, to render an intimate history of their contact with traders, colonialists, global tourists and the developmental state. Vishvajit Pandya displays a superb command over theory, history and ethnography that makes this one of the most important books to engage with the question of how ideas of wildness and civilization have been shaped through sensory experiences of vision, touch, smell and sound. The history of intimacy is rendered with consummate skill, making this a book that will be treasured by specialist and non-specialist alike. -- Veena Das, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University
Table of ContentsChapter 1. Introduction Part 2 Part I. Visuality Chapter 3 Chapter 2. The Past Imagined In the Dugong Elegies Chapter 4 Chapter 3. The Documentation of the Adamanese: From Photography to Ethnography Part 5 Part II. Materiality Chapter 6 Chapter 4. Things in Time: Carriers of Continuity and Change Chapter 7 Chapter 5. Materiality Mapped Part 8 Part III. History Chapter 9 Chapter 6. Signifying Practices: The "violent" Other Chapter 10 Chapter 7. Images and Imaginations: Modernist Encounters Part 11 Part IV. Conclusion and Beyond Chapter 12 Chapter 8. Towards a Political Economy of Visualized Material Chapter 13 Chapter 9. The Spectre of "hostility"-The Sentinelese Between Text and Image
