Nicholas B Dirks
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 81585 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Nicholas B Dirks |
| NOMBRES | Nicholas B |
| APELLIDO | Dirks |
| FIRMA | DIRKS N B |
| AFILIACIONES | California Institute of Technology |
| VERIFICADO | No |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 32 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 651 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 33 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 2 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1979 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 10 |
Among the Ruins of the University
In this essay I evaluate the current state of the university in relation to the escalating crises of the past 10 years. I survey critiques that have been made by both the right and the left. Pointing to how the late works of Max Weber and Bruno Latour can be helpful in adjudicating these critiques, I suggest the need to limit the political demands made on the university, while working to orient the humanities toward the myriad of current human ch…
So You Want to Be a Historian
If the directed focus on "scholarly personae" recommended in How to Be a Historian: Scholarly Personae in Historical Studies, 1800-2000 is to be genuinely useful, we would need to attend far more systematically to historiographical differences, debates, and styles as rooted not only in the counterpoint between individuals and institutions but also in the larger contexts that govern how we identify what historical issues matter and the larger purp…
Culture/Power/History
Autobiography of an Archive
A leading figure in higher education reflects on his early encounter with India, its history, and his discipline's turn to the study of ordinary lives and cultural rhythms. Nicholas B. Dirks revisits his early investigations of kingship in India, the rise of the caste system, the emergence of English imperial interest in controlling markets and India's political regimes, and the development of a crisis in sovereignty that led to an extraordinary …
G.S. Ghurye and the Politics of Sociological Knowledge
Castes of Mind
The Scandal of Empire
Hollow Crown
The Scandal of Empire
The Scandal of Empire reveals that the conquests and exploitations of the East India Company were critical to England's development in the eighteenth century and beyond. In this powerfully written critique, Nicholas Dirks shows how the empire projected its own scandalous behavior onto India itself.
Bernard S. Cohn (1928–2003)
Edward Said and Anthropology
Since the publication of Orientalism in 1978, it has been virtually impossible to study the colonial world without explicit or implicit reference to Edward Said's charge that the sources, basic categories, and assumptions of anthropologists, historians of the colonial world, and area studies experts (among others) have been shaped by colonial rule. This article charts Said's influence on anthropology, tracing both anthropology's engagement with c…
Castes of Mind
When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. In academic and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, marking it as fundamentally different from other places while expressing its essence. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern ph…
Schools of Thought
Schools of Thought brings together a cast of prominent scholars to assess, with unprecedented breadth and vigor, the intellectual revolution over the past quarter century in the social sciences. This collection of twenty essays stems from a 1997 conference that celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Institute for Advanced Study's School of Social Science. The authors, who represent a wide range of disciplines, are all associated with the …
Castes of Mind
From the Margins
In near ruins
Différence et Discrimination La politique des castes dans l'Inde post-coloniale
Le 19 septembre 1990, un étudiant de New Delhi s'arrose de kérosène et s'immole par le feu. Selon certaines versions, Rajeev Goswami n'avait à l'origine d'autre intention que de parodier les immolations traditionnelles et comptait sur quelques amis pour étouffer immédiatement le feu naissant, sitôt l'événement fixé sur les pellicules. But de l'opération : s'assurer de clichés spectaculaires et d'une couverture de presse maximale pour braquer 1' a…
Bombay
Colonialism and Culture
CHAPTER Fifteen Ritual and Resistance
Culture/Power/History
The intellectual radicalism of the 1960s spawned a new set of questions about the role and nature of "the political" in social life, questions that have since revolutionized nearly every field of thought, from literary criticism through anthropology to the philosophy of science. Michel Foucault in particular made us aware that whatever our functionally defined "roles" in society, we are constantly negotiating questions of authority and the contro…
The Hollow Crown
The Home and the World
Colonialism and Culture
The articles in this important volume explore the multifaceted nature of colonialism and its cultural manifestations and treat the unspoken values, hidden assumptions, and buried connections out of which states are made and power is simultaneously exercised and thwarted
Castes of Mind
parative sociology and in common parlance, caste has become a central trope for India, metonymically indexing it as fundamentally different from other places, synecdochically expressing its essence. A long history of writing, from the grand treatise of the Abbe Dubois to the general anthropology of Louis Dumont, or from the desultory observations of Portuguese adventurers in the sixteenth century to the eye-catching headlines of the New York Time…
The Hollow Crown
Castes of Mind
Castes of Mind
parative sociology and in common parlance, caste has become a central trope for India, metonymically indexing it as fundamentally different from other places, synecdochically expressing its essence. A long history of writing, from the grand treatise of the Abbe Dubois to the general anthropology of Louis Dumont, or from the desultory observations of Portuguese adventurers in the sixteenth century to the eye-catching headlines of the New York Time…
Beyond The Fringe
History as a Sign of the Modern
The Original Caste
This article examines the historical construction of caste in India. Dirks argues against the dominant view of caste as a static and ancient system, instead proposing that it was significantly shaped by colonial interventions. He explores how British administrators, seeking to understand and control Indian society, codified and reified caste categories, thereby transforming fluid social relations into rigid hierarchies. The article focuses on the…
From Little King to Landlord
In the last few years, modern historians of India have pushed the historical frontier of their field backwards in time. Colonialism is no longer considered the great watershed it once was thought to be. Historians who concern themselves with economic processes such as protoindustrialization tend in particular to minimize the impact of the consolidation of colonial rule in the late eighteenth century. Changes viewed as significant by these histori…
Colonialism and Culture
The Pasts of aPāḷaiyakārar
This article examines a text containing the late eighteenth-century family history of a line of South Indian "little kings," orpāḷaiyakārars. The text provides the basis for a discussion of the Maṟavar caste of the Tirunelvēli region in southern Tamil Nāṭu and the notions held by this and other related groups concerning royal appropriateness and sovereign authority, political and social relations, and kingly privileges and gifts. Further, the tex…
Edward Said and Anthropology
Since the publication of Orientalism in 1978, it has been virtually impossible to study the colonial world without explicit or implicit reference to Edward Said's charge that the sources, basic categories, and assumptions of anthropologists, historians of the colonial world, and area studies experts (among others) have been shaped by colonial rule. This article charts Said's influence on anthropology, tracing both anthropology's engagement with c…
The structure and meaning of political relations in a south Indian little kingdom 1
Différence et Discrimination La politique des castes dans l'Inde post-coloniale
Le 19 septembre 1990, un étudiant de New Delhi s'arrose de kérosène et s'immole par le feu. Selon certaines versions, Rajeev Goswami n'avait à l'origine d'autre intention que de parodier les immolations traditionnelles et comptait sur quelques amis pour étouffer immédiatement le feu naissant, sitôt l'événement fixé sur les pellicules. But de l'opération : s'assurer de clichés spectaculaires et d'une couverture de presse maximale pour braquer 1' a…
The Home and the World
G.S. Ghurye and the Politics of Sociological Knowledge
The structure and meaning of political relations in a south Indian little kingdom 1
The Pasts of aPāḷaiyakārar
This article examines a text containing the late eighteenth-century family history of a line of South Indian "little kings," orpāḷaiyakārars. The text provides the basis for a discussion of the Maṟavar caste of the Tirunelvēli region in southern Tamil Nāṭu and the notions held by this and other related groups concerning royal appropriateness and sovereign authority, political and social relations, and kingly privileges and gifts. Further, the tex…
From Little King to Landlord
In the last few years, modern historians of India have pushed the historical frontier of their field backwards in time. Colonialism is no longer considered the great watershed it once was thought to be. Historians who concern themselves with economic processes such as protoindustrialization tend in particular to minimize the impact of the consolidation of colonial rule in the late eighteenth century. Changes viewed as significant by these histori…
The Hollow Crown
A pioneering piece of ethnohistory, The Hollow Crown uses a variety of interdisciplinary means to reconstruct the sociocultural history of a warrior polity in south India between the fourteenth and the twentieth centuries. Central to the book is the belief that comparative sociology has systematically denied the importance of the Indian state and obscured the political basis of Indian society by representing caste as fundamentally a religious sys…
Beyond The Fringe
The Hollow Crown
The Hollow Crown
List of illustrations List of maps List of tables Preface Glossary of terms Map of the Madras Presidency, 1900 Map of Pudukkottai State The Tondaiman line of Pudukkottai Part I. Introduction: 1. The study of state and society in India Part II. History and Ethnohistory: 2. The historical context of the old regime 3. The discourse of kingship: representations of authority in the old regime Part III. A Little Kingdom in the Old Regime: 4. Pudukkotta…
The Hollow Crown
The Original Caste
This article examines the historical construction of caste in India. Dirks argues against the dominant view of caste as a static and ancient system, instead proposing that it was significantly shaped by colonial interventions. He explores how British administrators, seeking to understand and control Indian society, codified and reified caste categories, thereby transforming fluid social relations into rigid hierarchies. The article focuses on the…
History as a Sign of the Modern
Colonialism and Culture
The articles in this important volume explore the multifaceted nature of colonialism and its cultural manifestations and treat the unspoken values, hidden assumptions, and buried connections out of which states are made and power is simultaneously exercised and thwarted
Castes of Mind
parative sociology and in common parlance, caste has become a central trope for India, metonymically indexing it as fundamentally different from other places, synecdochically expressing its essence. A long history of writing, from the grand treatise of the Abbe Dubois to the general anthropology of Louis Dumont, or from the desultory observations of Portuguese adventurers in the sixteenth century to the eye-catching headlines of the New York Time…
The Hollow Crown
The Home and the World
CHAPTER Fifteen Ritual and Resistance
Culture/Power/History
The intellectual radicalism of the 1960s spawned a new set of questions about the role and nature of "the political" in social life, questions that have since revolutionized nearly every field of thought, from literary criticism through anthropology to the philosophy of science. Michel Foucault in particular made us aware that whatever our functionally defined "roles" in society, we are constantly negotiating questions of authority and the contro…
Bombay
Colonialism and Culture
Différence et Discrimination La politique des castes dans l'Inde post-coloniale
Le 19 septembre 1990, un étudiant de New Delhi s'arrose de kérosène et s'immole par le feu. Selon certaines versions, Rajeev Goswami n'avait à l'origine d'autre intention que de parodier les immolations traditionnelles et comptait sur quelques amis pour étouffer immédiatement le feu naissant, sitôt l'événement fixé sur les pellicules. But de l'opération : s'assurer de clichés spectaculaires et d'une couverture de presse maximale pour braquer 1' a…
In near ruins
Castes of Mind
When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. In academic and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, marking it as fundamentally different from other places while expressing its essence. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern ph…
Schools of Thought
Schools of Thought brings together a cast of prominent scholars to assess, with unprecedented breadth and vigor, the intellectual revolution over the past quarter century in the social sciences. This collection of twenty essays stems from a 1997 conference that celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Institute for Advanced Study's School of Social Science. The authors, who represent a wide range of disciplines, are all associated with the …
Castes of Mind
From the Margins
Edward Said and Anthropology
Since the publication of Orientalism in 1978, it has been virtually impossible to study the colonial world without explicit or implicit reference to Edward Said's charge that the sources, basic categories, and assumptions of anthropologists, historians of the colonial world, and area studies experts (among others) have been shaped by colonial rule. This article charts Said's influence on anthropology, tracing both anthropology's engagement with c…
History (26 obras) · Political science (21 obras) · Sociology (19 obras) · Law (16 obras) · Archaeology (13 obras) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (12 obras) · Anthropology (12 obras) · Colonialism (12 obras) · History (11 obras) · Law (9 obras)