Hybridity in an Arid Field
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2582152 |
|---|---|
| Authors | M Herzfeld (0000-0002-8080-2542, corresponding author), Akhil Gupta (0000-0002-3751-1600) |
| Year | 1999 |
| Volume | 72 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 131 |
| Publication date | 1999-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Anthropological Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-5491 • E-ISSN: 1534-1518 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/3317427 |
| OpenAlex | W248037878 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 7 |
Postcolonial Developments: Agriculture in Making of Modern AKHIL GUPTA. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1998; xv + 409 pp. By any standards Postcolonial developments is a remarkable achievement. A critical and original contribution to ethnography of Indian subcontinent and of Third World peasantries more generally, it also decisively shifts ground on which some key battles in both anthropology and international environmental politics are fought. No one who reads this book will remain unmoved: some will almost certainly be angered by it, but many will find in it a provocative source of reflection. For anthropologists interested in advancing epistemological and methodological coherence of ethnography, it is a treasure trove. Gupta has taken on what many have deemed an impossible task: to draw attention of development experts to ethnographic level at which consequences of their interventions for supposed beneficiaries become apparent. Despite his critical unpacking of experts' discourse, moreover, Gupta is no wild-eyed postmodernist - if indeed such a creature ever existed outside rhetoric of ideological number-crunchers. Deeply conversant with agronomics and agricultural economics, he is nevertheless highly responsive to - literally -- material consequences of rhetoric and symbolism for lives of ordinary people. While his research focus is largely on village of Alipur, in western Uttar Pradesh, he is also alert to larger policies and discourses in which local actions are embedded, and his training in areas beyond anthropology allows him to comment with persuasive authority on weaknesses of development theory and practice that vicissitudes of Alipur villagers expose to his critical eye. Some discussions of development rather improbably assume a homogeneous body of clients; for authors of such works, local reception of development initiatives is neither relevant nor interesting except insofar as it seems to frustrate well-intended interventions. For Gupta, by contrast, it is precisely this local response that must be theorized - an insight that closely parallels, but does not precisely reproduce, those of Wolfgang Iser (for example, 1993) in literary studies. Gupta is especially adept at showing what political scientists so often ignore -- that local tail wags an electoral dog of some magnitude (p. 71). Ethnography, not statistical analysis of voter returns, tells us, without resorting to tautology, how populism actually works - how ordinary people come to identify with movements that are often creations of distant intellectuals and politicians. It thus provides a critical perspective on what Gupta, following Foucault, calls governmentality (see p. 321), with all variations in its forms, locations, and associated practices. Populism is one of a set of key terms in this work, brought into fruitful juxtaposition with hybridity and the postcolonial condition. For Gupta, latter is a condition in which very possibility of cultural authenticity - fostered by colonialism and nationalism alike - is both placed in question and defended. He also addresses lability of what appear on surface to be highly specific discourses, showing how invention of a populist politics can generate opposition in its own terms. Thus, rhetoric of Indira Gandhi created its own response in nationalism of those who, exploiting her failure to translate her words into sufficient and tangible benefits for dispossessed, championed response of a supposedly pure, rurally-based, and orthodox Hindu Bharat to a corrupt, urban, and secularist counterpart called India. This conceptual opposition between rural purity and urban corruption is not unique to Indian scene. Indeed, it has curious echoes - not explored in this book - with kind of romantic essentialism explored in European context by such diverse writers as George Mosse (1985) and Raymond Williams (1973)
Arid · Biology · Ethnology · Field (mathematics · Genealogy · Geography · Hybridity · Sociology · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Anthropology · Ecology · History · Mathematics · Multidisciplinary Warburg-centric Studies
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,08 |
| Citation span | 2000 - 2013 (14) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |