N Mathur
Biographic Data
| ID | 40344 |
|---|---|
| NAME | N Mathur |
| GIVEN NAMES | N |
| FAMILY NAME | Mathur |
| SIGNATURE | MATHUR N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6084-2881 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 124 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Comparative Ethnographies of Crooked Beasts
This essay compares orcas off the coast of Gibraltar that have been mysteriously attacking boats and big cats in India that have been increasingly preying on humans. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research on changing human-animal relations in India, the essay uses this comparison to make three connected arguments about how we understand and write about the climate crisis. The essay first makes a case for embracing the uncertainty that lurks w…
Beastly identification in India
How does a big cat in India come to be identified as the one guilty of preying on humans? Indian conservationist law stipulates that the big cat must be identified before it is hunted down. But as I demonstrate ethnographically, there is no possible means of establishing the correct identity of a big cat before it is killed. Through an account of the impossibility of beastly identification, this article demonstrates the limits of both bureaucrati…
Afterword
Utopia, from the ancient Greek ‘’ (‘not a place’ or ‘nowhere’), quite literally refers to a place that is not there. Perhaps this emphasis on utopia as place is most starkly present in Thomas More’s 1516 Utopia which was an island. Bureaucracy, a combination of the French word (desk or office) and the Greek word (rule), also originated as a form of rule or political power that is embedded in place – a desk, an office. These two types of non‐place…
Trial by Fire
In this Introduction, we take two persistent tropes of fieldwork, the 'trial by fire' and the 'heroic fieldworker' to task. Our analysis traces out what we call everyday decentering of these tropes, which we argue is necessary for fieldwork to be taught and engaged with beyond romanticised twentieth century masculinist heroics. We argue that anthro-pology and related field research based disciplines might be better served by adopting a more ethno…
NRC se Azadi
This article considers the demands for azadi (freedom) from the National Register of Citizens (NRC) that were central to the protests that swept through India over 2019-2020. It does so by considering the processes through which such a gargantuan bureaucratic exercise would be executed as well as through a consideration of its attachment to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). This leads to a conceptualization of the NRC as a “paper monster” poss…
A Petition to Kill
In a political culture that experiences inordinately high levels of petitioning, what makes for a successful petition? This article studies petitions that have been efficacious in their appeals to capture or kill big cats in Himalayan India. The rates of success for any appeal against big cats are low in contemporary India, given the stringent legal regime that is geared almost exclusively towards the protection of the charismatic and endangered …
A Measure of the Measure of Measuring
Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy quite literally translates into rule by public office (‘bureau’). The anthropology of bureaucracy can be seen as falling under two broad approaches. Firstly, there is an expanding corpus of work that concentrates its attention on explaining how different bureaucracies – from different arms of the state to NGOs to supranational organizations – actually function; what their ‘inner worlds’ are like; and why and how they produce the resul…
Eating Money
This article studies corruption in India through an ethnographic elaboration of practices that are colloquially discussed as the 'eating of money' (paisa khana) in northern India. It examines both the discourse and practice of eating money in the specific context of the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 (NREGA). The article works through two central paradoxes that emerge in the study of corruption and the state. …
Paper Tiger
A big cat overthrows the Indian state and establishes a reign of terror over the residents of a Himalayan town. A welfare legislation aimed at providing employment and commanding a huge budget becomes 'unimplementable' in a region bedeviled by high levels of poverty and unemployment. Paper Tiger provides a lively ethnographic account of how such seemingly bizarre scenarios come to be in contemporary India. Based on eighteen months of intensive fi…
A 'Remote' Town in the Indian Himalaya
This article studies the impact of the creation of a new state in northern India through an analysis of space. The space under consideration is the town of Gopeshwar, which serves as the administrative headquarters of a district in the state of Uttarakhand. Uttarakhand was created as a distinct Himalayan state in 2000 after a prolonged period of mass agitation to this end. The movement for statehood had emphasized historical neglect coupled with …
It's a conspiracy theoryandclimate change
This paper traces the introduction of the category of climate change into the Indian\nHimalaya. Climate change emerged as an explanation for recurring incidences of human-animal conflict and the disappearance of a protected species through the labours of the\nlocal state bureaucracy. Even as the narratives on climate change were being imbued\nwith expert authority, counter narratives dealing with the very same phenomena voiced by\nlong-term resid…
The reign of terror of the big cat
This paper describes the arrival of a man-eating leopard in a small Himalayan town in India and the local state's subsequent struggle to control the big cat. By focusing on what went on within the apparatus of the state during this period, this paper attempts to contribute to the study of modern time in bureaucracy. It argues that the startling inefficiencies in the effective governance and regulation of the big cat stemmed from a clash of variou…
Transparent-making Documents and the Crisis of Implementation
This article examines an attempt by the Indian state to render its developmental operations 'transparent.' It does so by tracking the implementation of India's ambitious social security legislation, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (NREGA). NREGA is premised on the introduction of a vigorous transparency into a notoriously flawed state delivery system. On the basis of long-term immersion in the everyday world of government offices…
Wall Street at war. The secret struggle for the global economyby Ouroussoff, Alexandra
Statistical models relating peak expiratory flow rates to age, height, and weight in men and women
An epidemiological survey of 1239 normal subjects without respiratory symptoms was undertaken in an urban locality of New Delhi in 1974. The subjects were divided into males aged under or over 22 and females under or over 17. Various statistical models were calculated to relate peak expiratory flow rate to the age, height, and weight of the subjects in each group. The linear model was simple, convenient, and adequately explained the variation in …
Transparent-making Documents and the Crisis of Implementation
This article examines an attempt by the Indian state to render its developmental operations 'transparent.' It does so by tracking the implementation of India's ambitious social security legislation, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (NREGA). NREGA is premised on the introduction of a vigorous transparency into a notoriously flawed state delivery system. On the basis of long-term immersion in the everyday world of government offices…
It's a conspiracy theoryandclimate change
This paper traces the introduction of the category of climate change into the Indian\nHimalaya. Climate change emerged as an explanation for recurring incidences of human-animal conflict and the disappearance of a protected species through the labours of the\nlocal state bureaucracy. Even as the narratives on climate change were being imbued\nwith expert authority, counter narratives dealing with the very same phenomena voiced by\nlong-term resid…
The reign of terror of the big cat
This paper describes the arrival of a man-eating leopard in a small Himalayan town in India and the local state's subsequent struggle to control the big cat. By focusing on what went on within the apparatus of the state during this period, this paper attempts to contribute to the study of modern time in bureaucracy. It argues that the startling inefficiencies in the effective governance and regulation of the big cat stemmed from a clash of variou…
Trial by Fire
In this Introduction, we take two persistent tropes of fieldwork, the 'trial by fire' and the 'heroic fieldworker' to task. Our analysis traces out what we call everyday decentering of these tropes, which we argue is necessary for fieldwork to be taught and engaged with beyond romanticised twentieth century masculinist heroics. We argue that anthro-pology and related field research based disciplines might be better served by adopting a more ethno…
A 'Remote' Town in the Indian Himalaya
This article studies the impact of the creation of a new state in northern India through an analysis of space. The space under consideration is the town of Gopeshwar, which serves as the administrative headquarters of a district in the state of Uttarakhand. Uttarakhand was created as a distinct Himalayan state in 2000 after a prolonged period of mass agitation to this end. The movement for statehood had emphasized historical neglect coupled with …
Eating Money
This article studies corruption in India through an ethnographic elaboration of practices that are colloquially discussed as the 'eating of money' (paisa khana) in northern India. It examines both the discourse and practice of eating money in the specific context of the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 (NREGA). The article works through two central paradoxes that emerge in the study of corruption and the state. …
Beastly identification in India
How does a big cat in India come to be identified as the one guilty of preying on humans? Indian conservationist law stipulates that the big cat must be identified before it is hunted down. But as I demonstrate ethnographically, there is no possible means of establishing the correct identity of a big cat before it is killed. Through an account of the impossibility of beastly identification, this article demonstrates the limits of both bureaucrati…
NRC se Azadi
This article considers the demands for azadi (freedom) from the National Register of Citizens (NRC) that were central to the protests that swept through India over 2019-2020. It does so by considering the processes through which such a gargantuan bureaucratic exercise would be executed as well as through a consideration of its attachment to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). This leads to a conceptualization of the NRC as a “paper monster” poss…
Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy quite literally translates into rule by public office (‘bureau’). The anthropology of bureaucracy can be seen as falling under two broad approaches. Firstly, there is an expanding corpus of work that concentrates its attention on explaining how different bureaucracies – from different arms of the state to NGOs to supranational organizations – actually function; what their ‘inner worlds’ are like; and why and how they produce the resul…
A Petition to Kill
In a political culture that experiences inordinately high levels of petitioning, what makes for a successful petition? This article studies petitions that have been efficacious in their appeals to capture or kill big cats in Himalayan India. The rates of success for any appeal against big cats are low in contemporary India, given the stringent legal regime that is geared almost exclusively towards the protection of the charismatic and endangered …
Statistical models relating peak expiratory flow rates to age, height, and weight in men and women
An epidemiological survey of 1239 normal subjects without respiratory symptoms was undertaken in an urban locality of New Delhi in 1974. The subjects were divided into males aged under or over 22 and females under or over 17. Various statistical models were calculated to relate peak expiratory flow rate to the age, height, and weight of the subjects in each group. The linear model was simple, convenient, and adequately explained the variation in …
Transparent-making Documents and the Crisis of Implementation
This article examines an attempt by the Indian state to render its developmental operations 'transparent.' It does so by tracking the implementation of India's ambitious social security legislation, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (NREGA). NREGA is premised on the introduction of a vigorous transparency into a notoriously flawed state delivery system. On the basis of long-term immersion in the everyday world of government offices…
Wall Street at war. The secret struggle for the global economyby Ouroussoff, Alexandra
The reign of terror of the big cat
This paper describes the arrival of a man-eating leopard in a small Himalayan town in India and the local state's subsequent struggle to control the big cat. By focusing on what went on within the apparatus of the state during this period, this paper attempts to contribute to the study of modern time in bureaucracy. It argues that the startling inefficiencies in the effective governance and regulation of the big cat stemmed from a clash of variou…
Paper Tiger
A big cat overthrows the Indian state and establishes a reign of terror over the residents of a Himalayan town. A welfare legislation aimed at providing employment and commanding a huge budget becomes 'unimplementable' in a region bedeviled by high levels of poverty and unemployment. Paper Tiger provides a lively ethnographic account of how such seemingly bizarre scenarios come to be in contemporary India. Based on eighteen months of intensive fi…
A 'Remote' Town in the Indian Himalaya
This article studies the impact of the creation of a new state in northern India through an analysis of space. The space under consideration is the town of Gopeshwar, which serves as the administrative headquarters of a district in the state of Uttarakhand. Uttarakhand was created as a distinct Himalayan state in 2000 after a prolonged period of mass agitation to this end. The movement for statehood had emphasized historical neglect coupled with …
It's a conspiracy theoryandclimate change
This paper traces the introduction of the category of climate change into the Indian\nHimalaya. Climate change emerged as an explanation for recurring incidences of human-animal conflict and the disappearance of a protected species through the labours of the\nlocal state bureaucracy. Even as the narratives on climate change were being imbued\nwith expert authority, counter narratives dealing with the very same phenomena voiced by\nlong-term resid…
Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy quite literally translates into rule by public office (‘bureau’). The anthropology of bureaucracy can be seen as falling under two broad approaches. Firstly, there is an expanding corpus of work that concentrates its attention on explaining how different bureaucracies – from different arms of the state to NGOs to supranational organizations – actually function; what their ‘inner worlds’ are like; and why and how they produce the resul…
Eating Money
This article studies corruption in India through an ethnographic elaboration of practices that are colloquially discussed as the 'eating of money' (paisa khana) in northern India. It examines both the discourse and practice of eating money in the specific context of the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 (NREGA). The article works through two central paradoxes that emerge in the study of corruption and the state. …
A Petition to Kill
In a political culture that experiences inordinately high levels of petitioning, what makes for a successful petition? This article studies petitions that have been efficacious in their appeals to capture or kill big cats in Himalayan India. The rates of success for any appeal against big cats are low in contemporary India, given the stringent legal regime that is geared almost exclusively towards the protection of the charismatic and endangered …
A Measure of the Measure of Measuring
Afterword
Utopia, from the ancient Greek ‘’ (‘not a place’ or ‘nowhere’), quite literally refers to a place that is not there. Perhaps this emphasis on utopia as place is most starkly present in Thomas More’s 1516 Utopia which was an island. Bureaucracy, a combination of the French word (desk or office) and the Greek word (rule), also originated as a form of rule or political power that is embedded in place – a desk, an office. These two types of non‐place…
Trial by Fire
In this Introduction, we take two persistent tropes of fieldwork, the 'trial by fire' and the 'heroic fieldworker' to task. Our analysis traces out what we call everyday decentering of these tropes, which we argue is necessary for fieldwork to be taught and engaged with beyond romanticised twentieth century masculinist heroics. We argue that anthro-pology and related field research based disciplines might be better served by adopting a more ethno…
NRC se Azadi
This article considers the demands for azadi (freedom) from the National Register of Citizens (NRC) that were central to the protests that swept through India over 2019-2020. It does so by considering the processes through which such a gargantuan bureaucratic exercise would be executed as well as through a consideration of its attachment to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). This leads to a conceptualization of the NRC as a “paper monster” poss…
Beastly identification in India
How does a big cat in India come to be identified as the one guilty of preying on humans? Indian conservationist law stipulates that the big cat must be identified before it is hunted down. But as I demonstrate ethnographically, there is no possible means of establishing the correct identity of a big cat before it is killed. Through an account of the impossibility of beastly identification, this article demonstrates the limits of both bureaucrati…
Comparative Ethnographies of Crooked Beasts
This essay compares orcas off the coast of Gibraltar that have been mysteriously attacking boats and big cats in India that have been increasingly preying on humans. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research on changing human-animal relations in India, the essay uses this comparison to make three connected arguments about how we understand and write about the climate crisis. The essay first makes a case for embracing the uncertainty that lurks w…
Political science (12 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Politics (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (9 works) · Bureaucracy (8 works) · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies (8 works) · Law (6 works) · Political economy (6 works) · Economics (5 works)