Darjeeling Reconsidered
Histories, Politics, Environments
Price: 995.00 INR
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ISBN:
9780199483556
Publication date:
14/05/2018
Hardback
336 pages
Price: 995.00 INR
We sell our titles through other companies
Disclaimer :You will be redirected to a third party website.The sole responsibility of supplies, condition of the product, availability of stock, date of delivery, mode of payment will be as promised by the said third party only. Prices and specifications may vary from the OUP India site.
ISBN:
9780199483556
Publication date:
14/05/2018
Hardback
336 pages
Edited by Townsend Middleton and Sara Shneiderman
Darjeeling Reconsidered rethinks Darjeeling’s status in the postcolonial imagination. Mobilizing diverse disciplinary approaches from the social sciences and humanities, this definitive collection of essays sheds fresh light on the region’s past and offers critical insight into the issues facing its people today.
Rights: World Rights
Edited by Townsend Middleton and Sara Shneiderman
Description
Darjeeling occupies a special place in the South Asian imaginary with its Himalayan vistas, lush tea gardens, and brisk mountain air. Thousands of tourists, domestic and international, annually flock to the hills to taste their world-renowned tea and soak up the colonial nostalgia.
Darjeeling Reconsidered rethinks Darjeeling’s status in the postcolonial imagination. Mobilizing diverse disciplinary approaches from the social sciences and humanities, this definitive collection of essays sheds fresh light on the region’s past and offers critical insight into the issues facing its people today. While the historical analyses provide alternative readings of the systems of governance, labour, and migration that shaped Darjeeling, the ethnographic chapters present accounts of dynamics that define life in twenty-first century Darjeeling, including the Gorkhaland Movement, Fair Trade tea, indigenous and subnationalist struggle, gendered inequality, ecological transformation, and resource scarcity. The volume figures Darjeeling as a vital site for South Asian and postcolonial studies and calls for a timely reexamination of the legend and hard realities of this oft-romanticized region.
About the Editors
Townsend Middleton teaches in the Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.
Sara Shneiderman teaches in the Department of Anthropology and School of Public Policy & Global Affairs/Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Edited by Townsend Middleton and Sara Shneiderman
Table of contents
List of Tables and Figures
Acknowledgements
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
Note on Language
Introduction: Reconsidering Darjeeling
Sara Shneiderman and Townsend Middleton
Section I Histories of Exception
1. Unwritten Histories: Difference, Capital, and the Darjeeling Exception
Townsend Middleton
2. ‘A Summer Place’: Darjeeling in the Tourist Gaze
Rune Bennike
3. Himalayan Darjeeling and Mountain Histories of Labour and Mobility
Jayeeta Sharma
Section II Politics and Social Movements
4. Electoral Competition and the Gorkhaland Movement
Bethany Lacina
5. Virtuous Movements and Dirty Politics: The Art of Camouflage in Darjeeling
Miriam Wenner
6. The Rowdies of Darjeeling: Politics and Underdevelopment in the Hills
Mona Chettri
7. The Quest to Belong and Become: Ethnic Associations and Changing Trajectories of Ethnopolitics in Darjeeling
Nilamber Chhetri
8. The Promise of Class Analysis in Understanding Nepali National Identity in Darjeeling: An Engagement with Kumar Pradhan’s Work and Thought
Swatahsiddha Sarkar and Babika Khawas
Section III Environments and Labour
9. Subnational Occupations: A Year in the Life of the Darjeeling Tea Management Training Centre
Sarah Besky
10. Connection amidst Disconnection: Water Struggles, Social Structures, and Geographies of Exclusion in Darjeeling
Georgina Drew and Roshan P. Rai
11. Women, Fair Trade Tea, and Everyday Entrepreneurialism in Rural Darjeeling
Debarati Sen
Afterword
Tanka Subba
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
About the Editors and Contributors
Edited by Townsend Middleton and Sara Shneiderman
Features
- Offers new insights by working against widely held popular conceptions of Darjeeling
- Sheds fresh light on Darjeeling's past and offers critical insight into the issues facing its people today
- Frames Darjeeling as a crucial site for South Asian and Postcolonial Studies
- Provides alternative readings of systems of governance, labour, and migration that shaped Darjeeling in the postcolonial context
Edited by Townsend Middleton and Sara Shneiderman
Review
‘Darjeeling Reconsidered is an essential and timely book on a place of special significance in Northeast India. The essays within question the longstanding colonial and tourist romance surrounding the ‘Queen of the Hills,' and examine the political, social, environmental, and labour movements that shape its contemporary life. With this collection, Townsend Middleton and Sara Shneiderman upend outdated myths in favour of rigorous new scholarship. The reader is left with a portrait of Darjeeling that is as complex and dynamic as it is intricate.’
Manjushree Thapa
—Author and Translator of Indra Bahadur Rai’s There’s a Carnival Today
Description
Darjeeling occupies a special place in the South Asian imaginary with its Himalayan vistas, lush tea gardens, and brisk mountain air. Thousands of tourists, domestic and international, annually flock to the hills to taste their world-renowned tea and soak up the colonial nostalgia.
Darjeeling Reconsidered rethinks Darjeeling’s status in the postcolonial imagination. Mobilizing diverse disciplinary approaches from the social sciences and humanities, this definitive collection of essays sheds fresh light on the region’s past and offers critical insight into the issues facing its people today. While the historical analyses provide alternative readings of the systems of governance, labour, and migration that shaped Darjeeling, the ethnographic chapters present accounts of dynamics that define life in twenty-first century Darjeeling, including the Gorkhaland Movement, Fair Trade tea, indigenous and subnationalist struggle, gendered inequality, ecological transformation, and resource scarcity. The volume figures Darjeeling as a vital site for South Asian and postcolonial studies and calls for a timely reexamination of the legend and hard realities of this oft-romanticized region.
About the Editors
Townsend Middleton teaches in the Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.
Sara Shneiderman teaches in the Department of Anthropology and School of Public Policy & Global Affairs/Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Reviews
‘Darjeeling Reconsidered is an essential and timely book on a place of special significance in Northeast India. The essays within question the longstanding colonial and tourist romance surrounding the ‘Queen of the Hills,' and examine the political, social, environmental, and labour movements that shape its contemporary life. With this collection, Townsend Middleton and Sara Shneiderman upend outdated myths in favour of rigorous new scholarship. The reader is left with a portrait of Darjeeling that is as complex and dynamic as it is intricate.’
Manjushree Thapa
—Author and Translator of Indra Bahadur Rai’s There’s a Carnival Today
Table of contents
List of Tables and Figures
Acknowledgements
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
Note on Language
Introduction: Reconsidering Darjeeling
Sara Shneiderman and Townsend Middleton
Section I Histories of Exception
1. Unwritten Histories: Difference, Capital, and the Darjeeling Exception
Townsend Middleton
2. ‘A Summer Place’: Darjeeling in the Tourist Gaze
Rune Bennike
3. Himalayan Darjeeling and Mountain Histories of Labour and Mobility
Jayeeta Sharma
Section II Politics and Social Movements
4. Electoral Competition and the Gorkhaland Movement
Bethany Lacina
5. Virtuous Movements and Dirty Politics: The Art of Camouflage in Darjeeling
Miriam Wenner
6. The Rowdies of Darjeeling: Politics and Underdevelopment in the Hills
Mona Chettri
7. The Quest to Belong and Become: Ethnic Associations and Changing Trajectories of Ethnopolitics in Darjeeling
Nilamber Chhetri
8. The Promise of Class Analysis in Understanding Nepali National Identity in Darjeeling: An Engagement with Kumar Pradhan’s Work and Thought
Swatahsiddha Sarkar and Babika Khawas
Section III Environments and Labour
9. Subnational Occupations: A Year in the Life of the Darjeeling Tea Management Training Centre
Sarah Besky
10. Connection amidst Disconnection: Water Struggles, Social Structures, and Geographies of Exclusion in Darjeeling
Georgina Drew and Roshan P. Rai
11. Women, Fair Trade Tea, and Everyday Entrepreneurialism in Rural Darjeeling
Debarati Sen
Afterword
Tanka Subba
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
About the Editors and Contributors
