Edward Simpson
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 105642 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Edward Simpson |
| PRENOMES | Edward |
| SOBRENOME | Simpson |
| ASSINATURA | SIMPSON E |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5359-8259 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 37 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 164 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 37 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1949 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 8 |
Adrian C. Mayer (1922–2025)
Interdisciplinary perspectives on the intersections of roads, sustainable development, and disaster resilience
Natural hazard-influenced disasters, sustainable development, and roads are closely intertwined. Governments and funding agencies worldwide are increasingly focused on delivering disaster-resilient road infrastructure. However, the multifaceted, ubiquitous, and contested nature of road networks means that making them resilient to disasters is a complex task. Efforts to build resilient roads generate trade-offs against other policy goals like clim…
Highways and Hierarchies
Obituary (I)
I first met Freddy at his home in the hills outside San Diego in 2011.The smell of English-breakfast bacon wafted through the pine-fresh California air.He was warm, welcoming and interested that I was interested in the research he had undertaken in India in the 1950s.We called that research project The Ark Royal, a name given to us by Freddy, who recalled watching the launch of the vessel at the Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead in the North W…
Illumination as a material service
How Might a Stoic Eat in Accordance with Nature and “Environmental Facts”
Forgetfulness without memory
For many good reasons, after natural disasters it is common to work with 'memory' as part of a collective catharsis and a globalized humanitarian logic. Long-term anthropological research on the aftermath of the 2001 earthquake in Gujarat, however, also demonstrates the significance of forgetting in local practice. Immediately after the disaster, people vowed to abandon the sites of their loss, leave the ruins as monuments, and rebuild anew on sa…
Marriage and the crisis of peasant society in Gujarat, India
This contribution takes marriage as the example of a crisis of production and reproduction in rural India. Through the juxtaposition of ethnography separated by six decades, we detail a shift away from land and agriculture as the primary markers of status among the Patidars of central Gujarat, western India, in favour of a hierarchical understanding of international migration. The paper discusses the disconnect between a cultural revolution in fa…
A Brief History of Incivility in Rural Postcolonial India
Anthropological studies of Indian villages conducted in the 1950s and 1960s form a valuable archive of rural life soon after India's independence. We compare sections of that archive with recent fieldwork in the same villages in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Odisha. If we trust the ethnography of the 1950s, domestic and caste spheres were the locations of village incivility. It is noteworthy that there is no reference in the early work to the Part…
Area Studies and Anthropology in the Age of Acceleration
(2017). Area Studies and Anthropology in the Age of Acceleration. South Asian Review: Vol. 38, No. 3, pp. 33-42
On trusting ethnography
We draw on David Pocock's fieldwork of the 1950s in central Gujarat, India, as a comparative resource to think about social change and anthropological knowledge. Revisiting where Pocock had been through new fieldwork, we were encouraged to think about the ways in which places are accessed and subsequently understood. Against our conscious will, the pathways we were able to take through the field strongly resembled those Pocock took sixty years ea…
Portrait
Aftermath and amnesia in Gujarat, India (Hurst, 2013)
Is anthropology legal
This article is a contribution to the growing literature that suggests that the methodological and writing practices of anthropology are out of kilter with the times. The processual structures and regulative mechanisms that produce anthropological knowledge were formed when objection and engagement were not the almost-inevitable consequence of publication. Those who inform anthropological research now frequently object to the ways they are repres…
The Changing Perspectives of Three Muslim Men on the Question of Saint Worship over a 10-Year Period in Gujarat, Western India
Introduction In this essay I discuss how three Muslim men hold to be true apparently contradictory ideas about the legitimacy of saints. The principal argument is that much of the sociology of religion, at least as often expressed in contemporary anthropology, relies on somewhat static and instrumental notions of belief and knowledge. I illustrate this and demonstrate the consequences for the more general understanding of popular Islam and reform…
Islamic Reform in South Asia
The articles in this volume build up ethnographic analysis complementary to the historiography of South Asian Islam, which has explored the emergence of reformism in the context of specific political and religious circumstances of nineteenth-century British India. Taking up diverse popular and scholarly debates as well as everyday religious practices, this volume also breaks away from the dominant trend of mainstream ethnographic work, which cele…
Death and the Spirit of Patriarchy in Western India
Blame Narratives and Religious Reason in the Aftermath of the 2001 Gujarat Earthquake
Recent writing on religion in Gujarat has often confused political rhetoric with common religious belief and practice. Thus, religious categories have become caricatures standing for sociological realities and totalised worldviews. In this scheme, ‘Hindus’ and ‘Muslims’ are supposed to believe different things which ensure that they see and act in the world quite differently. In this paper, I examine the narratives of blame that emerged after the…
The legacy of Hurricane Mitch
David Pocock's Contributions and the legacy of Leavis
David Pocock (1928-2007) co-founded this journal with Louis Dumont, and it is easy to assume that they were intellectually more 'like-minded' than we believe was really the case. In the first part of this appreciation, we offer some biographical and intellectual context for Pocock's career. In the second, we identify the principal ways in which his sociological project did converge with Dumont's and the respects in which it seems fundamentally di…
The Changing Perspectives of Three Muslim Men on the Question of Saint Worship over a 10-Year Period in Gujarat, Western India
In many religious traditions, those who mediate relations between men and gods are often the focus of controversy and moral ambiguity. The ethnography in this paper outlines a number of perspectives on the role of such intermediaries (here 'saints') in Muslim society in western India. In the South Asian literature, historians have provided a thorough treatment of the doctrinal history and content of these debates. However, very little attention h…
Peasant pasts
Remembering natural disaster
This article explores some of the memorial practices to have emerged after an earthquake in Gujarat during 2001 and along the eastern and southern coasts of Sri Lanka following the tsunami of 2004. In both locations, acts of memorialization have been inseparable from reconstruction initiatives and broader political currents. In the Gujarat case, this has tied memorials firmly to the politics of religious communalism, regionalism and mainstream Hi…
Muslim Society and the Western Indian Ocean
Based on substantial ethnographic, textual and archival research, this interesting book offers a new perspective on the anthropology of the western Indian Ocean. Writing in a clear, engaging style, and covering an impressive range of theoretical terrain, Simpson critically explores the relationships between people and things that give life to the region and drive shifting patterns of social change among Muslims in the highly-politicized state of …
Communal Violence, Forced Migration and the State
Communal Violence, Forced Migration and the State: Gujarat since 2002, by Sanjeevini Badigar Lokhande." South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 40(2), pp. 421–422
Between Africa and India
Scholarship on the Indian Ocean is generally comparative in its approach. In this paper, we draw from our research experiences on the Swahili and Gujarati coasts in order to discuss some of the epistemological consequences of comparison for the ways in which East Africa and Western India have been understood. We critically examine the frames and terms of comparison in the work of the historian Thomas Metcalf and the anthropologists A.H.J. Prins, …
The Geography of Things That May Become Memories
This article explores the politics of reconstruction and the competing memorial practices that emerged after a devastating earthquake in western India during 2001. The material is drawn from extensive ethnographic research and analyses of the politics of rehabilitation in the “prememorial era,” the period before an official memorial is erected when the gap between the signified (the earthquake) and the signifier (the memorial) is still wide open …
Apprenticeship in western India
A number of recent attempts to describe what happens in the 'embodied' space between action and the discursive language used to describe that action have been primarily informed by various Western theories of mind. In this article, I present an indigenous theory of what happens among Sunni Muslims in a South Asian context in the gap between linguistic utterances and the actions they purport to represent. The ethnography focuses on learning craft …
Remembering natural disaster
This article explores some of the memorial practices to have emerged after an earthquake in Gujarat during 2001 and along the eastern and southern coasts of Sri Lanka following the tsunami of 2004. In both locations, acts of memorialization have been inseparable from reconstruction initiatives and broader political currents. In the Gujarat case, this has tied memorials firmly to the politics of religious communalism, regionalism and mainstream Hi…
The State of Gujarat and the Men without Souls
In 2002, Gujarat, a state in the west of India, was home to one of the worst rounds of religious violence the country had seen for decades. The victims were mostly Muslims. In this article, I argue, as others have done, that this violence was a product of the growing influence of a Hindu nationalist agenda at state and national levels. However, I also suggest that the violence emerged from the related patterns of neo-liberal reform which are radi…
On trusting ethnography
We draw on David Pocock's fieldwork of the 1950s in central Gujarat, India, as a comparative resource to think about social change and anthropological knowledge. Revisiting where Pocock had been through new fieldwork, we were encouraged to think about the ways in which places are accessed and subsequently understood. Against our conscious will, the pathways we were able to take through the field strongly resembled those Pocock took sixty years ea…
The 'Gujarat' earthquake and the political economy of nostalgia
This article is an ethnographic exploration of the rise and fall of nostalgia as a form of collective narrative among survivors of the 2001 'Gujarat' earthquake. In the social sciences, nostalgia is commonly regarded as an inevitable consequence of alienation from natural and social worlds in both space and time. My data is presented here as a way of scrutinising the complex series of social relationships that create the misleading appearance of …
David Pocock's Contributions and the legacy of Leavis
David Pocock (1928-2007) co-founded this journal with Louis Dumont, and it is easy to assume that they were intellectually more 'like-minded' than we believe was really the case. In the first part of this appreciation, we offer some biographical and intellectual context for Pocock's career. In the second, we identify the principal ways in which his sociological project did converge with Dumont's and the respects in which it seems fundamentally di…
Marriage and the crisis of peasant society in Gujarat, India
This contribution takes marriage as the example of a crisis of production and reproduction in rural India. Through the juxtaposition of ethnography separated by six decades, we detail a shift away from land and agriculture as the primary markers of status among the Patidars of central Gujarat, western India, in favour of a hierarchical understanding of international migration. The paper discusses the disconnect between a cultural revolution in fa…
Migration and Islamic reform in a port town of western India
This article explores some of the social consequences of migration for a port town in western India. The town has a long history of immigration and emigration, and in the first part of this article it is suggested that the origins of migrants arriving in the town in ancient times have formed the basis for ordering social hierarchy among local Muslims. In modern times the town's fleet takes a large number of men overseas each year to the ports of …
Is anthropology legal
This article is a contribution to the growing literature that suggests that the methodological and writing practices of anthropology are out of kilter with the times. The processual structures and regulative mechanisms that produce anthropological knowledge were formed when objection and engagement were not the almost-inevitable consequence of publication. Those who inform anthropological research now frequently object to the ways they are repres…
The Changing Perspectives of Three Muslim Men on the Question of Saint Worship over a 10-Year Period in Gujarat, Western India
In many religious traditions, those who mediate relations between men and gods are often the focus of controversy and moral ambiguity. The ethnography in this paper outlines a number of perspectives on the role of such intermediaries (here 'saints') in Muslim society in western India. In the South Asian literature, historians have provided a thorough treatment of the doctrinal history and content of these debates. However, very little attention h…
Muslim Society and the Western Indian Ocean
Based on substantial ethnographic, textual and archival research, this interesting book offers a new perspective on the anthropology of the western Indian Ocean. Writing in a clear, engaging style, and covering an impressive range of theoretical terrain, Simpson critically explores the relationships between people and things that give life to the region and drive shifting patterns of social change among Muslims in the highly-politicized state of …
Between Africa and India
Scholarship on the Indian Ocean is generally comparative in its approach. In this paper, we draw from our research experiences on the Swahili and Gujarati coasts in order to discuss some of the epistemological consequences of comparison for the ways in which East Africa and Western India have been understood. We critically examine the frames and terms of comparison in the work of the historian Thomas Metcalf and the anthropologists A.H.J. Prins, …
Forgetfulness without memory
For many good reasons, after natural disasters it is common to work with 'memory' as part of a collective catharsis and a globalized humanitarian logic. Long-term anthropological research on the aftermath of the 2001 earthquake in Gujarat, however, also demonstrates the significance of forgetting in local practice. Immediately after the disaster, people vowed to abandon the sites of their loss, leave the ruins as monuments, and rebuild anew on sa…
Communal Violence, Forced Migration and the State
Communal Violence, Forced Migration and the State: Gujarat since 2002, by Sanjeevini Badigar Lokhande." South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 40(2), pp. 421–422
A Brief History of Incivility in Rural Postcolonial India
Anthropological studies of Indian villages conducted in the 1950s and 1960s form a valuable archive of rural life soon after India's independence. We compare sections of that archive with recent fieldwork in the same villages in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Odisha. If we trust the ethnography of the 1950s, domestic and caste spheres were the locations of village incivility. It is noteworthy that there is no reference in the early work to the Part…
Dutch Explorers, Traders and Settlers in the Delaware Valley 1609-1664
Measurement of Diversity
Dutch Explorers, Traders and Settlers in the Delaware Valley 1609-1664
An Arable Farm in North Norfolk. Association of Agriculture Farm Study Scheme No. 7
A Survey of the Agriculture of Cheshire
The Farming Year
Coal and the Power Industries in Postwar Britain
Migration and Islamic reform in a port town of western India
This article explores some of the social consequences of migration for a port town in western India. The town has a long history of immigration and emigration, and in the first part of this article it is suggested that the origins of migrants arriving in the town in ancient times have formed the basis for ordering social hierarchy among local Muslims. In modern times the town's fleet takes a large number of men overseas each year to the ports of …
General
The 'Gujarat' earthquake and the political economy of nostalgia
This article is an ethnographic exploration of the rise and fall of nostalgia as a form of collective narrative among survivors of the 2001 'Gujarat' earthquake. In the social sciences, nostalgia is commonly regarded as an inevitable consequence of alienation from natural and social worlds in both space and time. My data is presented here as a way of scrutinising the complex series of social relationships that create the misleading appearance of …
The Geography of Things That May Become Memories
This article explores the politics of reconstruction and the competing memorial practices that emerged after a devastating earthquake in western India during 2001. The material is drawn from extensive ethnographic research and analyses of the politics of rehabilitation in the “prememorial era,” the period before an official memorial is erected when the gap between the signified (the earthquake) and the signifier (the memorial) is still wide open …
The State of Gujarat and the Men without Souls
In 2002, Gujarat, a state in the west of India, was home to one of the worst rounds of religious violence the country had seen for decades. The victims were mostly Muslims. In this article, I argue, as others have done, that this violence was a product of the growing influence of a Hindu nationalist agenda at state and national levels. However, I also suggest that the violence emerged from the related patterns of neo-liberal reform which are radi…
Apprenticeship in western India
A number of recent attempts to describe what happens in the 'embodied' space between action and the discursive language used to describe that action have been primarily informed by various Western theories of mind. In this article, I present an indigenous theory of what happens among Sunni Muslims in a South Asian context in the gap between linguistic utterances and the actions they purport to represent. The ethnography focuses on learning craft …
Muslim Society and the Western Indian Ocean
Based on substantial ethnographic, textual and archival research, this interesting book offers a new perspective on the anthropology of the western Indian Ocean. Writing in a clear, engaging style, and covering an impressive range of theoretical terrain, Simpson critically explores the relationships between people and things that give life to the region and drive shifting patterns of social change among Muslims in the highly-politicized state of …
The Changing Perspectives of Three Muslim Men on the Question of Saint Worship over a 10-Year Period in Gujarat, Western India
In many religious traditions, those who mediate relations between men and gods are often the focus of controversy and moral ambiguity. The ethnography in this paper outlines a number of perspectives on the role of such intermediaries (here 'saints') in Muslim society in western India. In the South Asian literature, historians have provided a thorough treatment of the doctrinal history and content of these debates. However, very little attention h…
Peasant pasts
Remembering natural disaster
This article explores some of the memorial practices to have emerged after an earthquake in Gujarat during 2001 and along the eastern and southern coasts of Sri Lanka following the tsunami of 2004. In both locations, acts of memorialization have been inseparable from reconstruction initiatives and broader political currents. In the Gujarat case, this has tied memorials firmly to the politics of religious communalism, regionalism and mainstream Hi…
David Pocock's Contributions and the legacy of Leavis
David Pocock (1928-2007) co-founded this journal with Louis Dumont, and it is easy to assume that they were intellectually more 'like-minded' than we believe was really the case. In the first part of this appreciation, we offer some biographical and intellectual context for Pocock's career. In the second, we identify the principal ways in which his sociological project did converge with Dumont's and the respects in which it seems fundamentally di…
Blame Narratives and Religious Reason in the Aftermath of the 2001 Gujarat Earthquake
Recent writing on religion in Gujarat has often confused political rhetoric with common religious belief and practice. Thus, religious categories have become caricatures standing for sociological realities and totalised worldviews. In this scheme, ‘Hindus’ and ‘Muslims’ are supposed to believe different things which ensure that they see and act in the world quite differently. In this paper, I examine the narratives of blame that emerged after the…
The legacy of Hurricane Mitch
Death and the Spirit of Patriarchy in Western India
The Changing Perspectives of Three Muslim Men on the Question of Saint Worship over a 10-Year Period in Gujarat, Western India
Introduction In this essay I discuss how three Muslim men hold to be true apparently contradictory ideas about the legitimacy of saints. The principal argument is that much of the sociology of religion, at least as often expressed in contemporary anthropology, relies on somewhat static and instrumental notions of belief and knowledge. I illustrate this and demonstrate the consequences for the more general understanding of popular Islam and reform…
Islamic Reform in South Asia
The articles in this volume build up ethnographic analysis complementary to the historiography of South Asian Islam, which has explored the emergence of reformism in the context of specific political and religious circumstances of nineteenth-century British India. Taking up diverse popular and scholarly debates as well as everyday religious practices, this volume also breaks away from the dominant trend of mainstream ethnographic work, which cele…
Portrait
Aftermath and amnesia in Gujarat, India (Hurst, 2013)
Is anthropology legal
This article is a contribution to the growing literature that suggests that the methodological and writing practices of anthropology are out of kilter with the times. The processual structures and regulative mechanisms that produce anthropological knowledge were formed when objection and engagement were not the almost-inevitable consequence of publication. Those who inform anthropological research now frequently object to the ways they are repres…
Area Studies and Anthropology in the Age of Acceleration
(2017). Area Studies and Anthropology in the Age of Acceleration. South Asian Review: Vol. 38, No. 3, pp. 33-42
Sociology (26 obras) · Political science (20 obras) · History (18 obras) · Law (17 obras) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (15 obras) · Archaeology (14 obras) · History (14 obras) · Law (14 obras) · Anthropology (13 obras) · Geography (13 obras)