Description
Book SynopsisWhat terms are currently up for debate in Indian society? How have their meanings changed over time? This book highlights key words for modern India in everyday usage as well as in scholarly contexts. Encompassing over 250 key words across a wide range of topics, including aesthetics and ceremony, gender, technology and economics, past memories and future imaginaries, these entries introduce some of the basic concepts that inform the ''cultural unconscious'' of the Indian subcontinent in order to translate them into critical tools for literary, political, cultural and cognitive studies. Inspired by Raymond Williams'' pioneering exploration of English culture and society through the study of keywords,
Keywords for India brings together more than 200 leading sub-continental scholars to form a polyphonic collective. Their sustained engagement with an incredibly diverse set of words enables a fearless interrogation of the panoply, the multitude, the shape-shifter that is ''India''.
Trade ReviewThis book delineates concepts that dive into the depths of realism, imagery, life experiences, and the ever-evolving cognition that is both conscious and unconscious in the Indian thought process and psyche.
Keywords for India introduces the finer nuances of India to the world. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. * CHOICE *
Trying to capture the soul of a country in key words, particularly if that country is as immense and ancient as India, is a daring task. The extraordinary fact is that the authors of
Keywords for India accomplish it brilliantly. This is an exciting tour guided by the most knowledgeable guides into a fascinating country in which the monuments and landscapes are words. A truly unique book. * Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Professor of Sociology, University of Coimbra, Portugal and Distinguished Legal Scholar, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA *
At last, a book that examines keywords in everyday use in contemporary India in all their complexity and depth. This is not only a magnificent linguistic atlas. It provides an enormously rich constellation of essays exploring the new imaginative connotations, febrile controversies and critical self-reflections with which India takes part in the global communications revolution of the 21st century. A landmark study, extraordinarily useful for a wide range of disciplines as well as to the general reading public. * Caroline Humphrey, Emeritus Sigrid Rausing Professor of Anthropology, University of Cambridge, UK *
I am in awe of
Keywords for India. Its brilliant editors, Rukmini Bhaya Nair and Peter Ronald deSouza, and its over 200 contributors are indispensable guides to one of the world's most historic and crucial cultures. This book is a gift from that culture. * Catharine R. Stimpson, University Professor and Dean Emerita, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, New York University, USA *
Table of Contents1. Acronyms 2. Affect Terms/Rasa 3. Arts and Aesthetics 4. Culture Words 5. Economic Mantras 6. Everyday Objects and Material Culture 7. Festivals and Ceremonial Occasions 8. Food and Beverage 9. Gender 10. Gods, Saints and Others 11. Group Identities 12. Iconic Proper Names and Honorifics 13. Boundaries: Geographical, Kinship and Taboo Words 14. Language Descriptions 15. New Vocabularies and Borrowings 16. Politics/Rajniti 17. Post-Independence Social Movements 18. Tech Terms
