Autobiography of an Archive

A Scholar's Passage to India

Bibliographic Data

ID19945110
AuthorsNicholas B Dirks (corresponding author)
Year2015
Pages390
Publication date2015-12-31
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueAutobiography of an archive (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherColumbia University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.7312/dirk16966
OpenAlexW612390642
Open LibraryOL26888886M
ISBN9780231169660
LanguageEN
Citations received9

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 nationalist struggle. He shares his personal encounters with archives on these subjects, ultimately revealing the limits of colonial knowledge and single-disciplinary perspectives. Drawing parallels to the way American universities balance the liberal arts and specialized research today, Dirks encourages scholars to apply multiple approaches to their research and build a more global archive

Annals · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Biography · Colonialism · Ethnography · Futures contract · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Subversion · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Classics · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · History · Law · Anthropological archives · Anthropology and history · Education · General · higher · Higher Education · India · Interdisciplinary research · Philosophy · Research · Social Science · united states

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