The power of peasant poets
Writing rural histories in South India (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries)
Dados Bibliográficos
| ID | 7515541 |
|---|---|
| Autores | Gunasekaran (0000-0001-7623-6819), S Gunasekaran (0000-0001-7619-5519, Jawaharlal Nehru University, autor correspondente) |
| Ano | 2026 |
| Volume | 63 |
| Fascículo | 1 |
| Páginas | 103-132 |
| Data de publicação | 2026-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Sim |
| Open Access | Sim |
| Tipo | ARTICLE |
| Periódico | The Indian Economic & Social History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Identificadores do periódico | ISSN: 0019-4646 • E-ISSN: 0973-0893 |
| Editora | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00194646251411681 |
| OpenAlex | W7119516707 |
| Idioma | EN |
| Referências citadas | 12 |
A few centuries before the onset of colonial rule in South India, the focus of historical narratives underwent a gradual shift from the affairs of courts and temples to those of rural communities—migrations, land settlements and the political life of local chiefs. These narratives, referred to as ‘social documents’ in this article, evolved through a range of social institutions and found expression across diverse literary genres. Building on modern historical scholarship on this subject and focusing on the Kongu uplands of South India, this article explores three interrelated processes: socio-economic transformations in a frontier peasant society; shifts in the ‘social framework’ that shaped diverse modes of remembering the past; and the intersecting roles of bards, poets and scribes in recording and transmitting social memory at the local level. The opening sections examine the social function of the past in upland society, focusing on Pulavars as genealogists and custodians of peasant memory, and on the social negotiations that shaped collective and localised pasts. The subsequent sections discuss the processes of transmission and textualisation of social memory
Colonialism · Custodians · Frontier · Narrative · Negotiation · Peasant · Politics · Power (physics · Scholarship · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Indian and Buddhist Studies
The Past Before Us
How Societies Remember
Creative Pasts
Cattle Raiding and Heroic Tradition
Communicative and Cultural Memory
On Collective Memory
A Sociological Approach to the Caste Puranas
Graeco-Roman Historiography in Its Relation to Biblical and Modern Thinking
"Seeing" the Past
The Persianization of Itihasa
State and Religion in the Chola Empire
| Velocidade de citação | historical |
|---|---|
| Altamente citado | Não |