243 books
Research and development in the field of advanced materials has become an interdisciplinary activity, necessitating synergy among materials scientists, metallurgists, design engineers and technologists. Tailoring the structure at the nano or even molecular level can be explored as a successful approach to materials processing when the homogeneity and the structural information of a small-volume element can be scaled up to macroscopic (component) dimensions. ...
Papers presented at the Workshop on Western India and the Indian Ocean, held at Heidelberg in 1999.
Our contemporary moment is characterized by a global resurgence of religion which manifests itself in many forms—from religious fundamentalism to a spiritual renewal of self and society. While religious fundamentalism and its globalization has aroused much interest and concern, mobilization of practical spirituality at the contemporary juncture has been a neglected theme and area of scholarly exploration. In this unusual study which combines anthropology and ...
Five times a day, close to a billion people turn to the Ka’aba in submission to Allah/God. In the seventh century C.E., the religion of Islam was revealed to the Prophet Mohammad through the Holy Koran. Since then, Islam has spread to every corner of the world: from Jerusalem to Sydney, and from Dakar to London and Detroit, Islam has shown continuity with creative versatility. This book presents the historic beginnings of Islam, the growth and contribution of ...
Despite the reshifting of values that has affected every aspect of life in the 20 century, William Shakespeare still stands as the greatest writer the English language has ever produced. Even so, many people have never read him. If you have never read "the Bard"—or if you’ve tried and given up in frustration—you need Shakespeare for Beginners. Author Brandon Toropov opens with the observation (and who can argue?) that Shakespeare’s genius is not ...
Eco-Economy discusses the need for a dramatic shift in our worldview by asking the urgent question: is the environment part of the economy or the economy part of the environment? Lester Brown argues the latter, pointing out that treating the environment as part of the economy has produced an economy that is destroying its natural support system. In this book, Brown describes how to restructure the global economy to make it compatible with the earth’s eco-system ...
Ferdinand de Saussure’s work is so powerful that it not only redefined modern linguistics, it also opened our minds to new ways of "doing" anthropology, literary criticism, and psychoanalysis. Genius like Saussure’s is meant to be shared, it is shameful to confine it to the "experts". Unfortunately, unless you were a linguist, Saussure was virtually unreadable. Until now, Saussure For Beginners is a clear, accessible guide to one of the ...
This is a deeply local and irreducibly global story about the construction of nature in Southern India. In its telling, Kavita Philip reveals how science, both as a scholarly discipline and as a concept in the popular imagination, was critical to building hegemony in the British Empire. Science also inspired alternative ideas of progress by elites and the disenfranchised. These competing spectres continue to haunt postcolonial modernities. Why and how has science ...
This is the story of a Himalayan community and their struggle for a quality of life, both for themselves and for the environment which shelters them. Robert Alter has spent a lifetime serving the people of what is now the new hill state of Uttaranchal. As he reflects upon his life and work at the NGO he set up and co-ordinated, his humanistic approach and gentle narrative transform and transmute experiences of the everyday. Ordinary lives take on epic proportions ...
The book deals with very current topics and is a compendium of 10 papers in 3 sections: 1. Labour in Development 2. Dual Economy Models in Development 3. Trade and Development. Each section explores the theoretical and empirical dimensions of one particular aspect of development. A book relevant to contemporary economic problems in India.
This volume examines the history, politics and anthropology of migration in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, as well as in numerous overseas locations (such as Fiji, Africa, the Caribbean and North America) where South Asians migrated during and after the colonial period. It addresses the meanings of ‘community’, and the important and contentious issue of the connections between migration, problems of identity, and ethnic conflict, from a comparative and ...
Preface. Acknowledgements. List of abbreviations. 1. Woman, ideology, empire: inventing the white woman in nineteenth-century British India. 2. Statis, Bibis, Purdahnashins: Anglo-India and the Indian woman. 3. Gender and 'Imperial citizenship': nineteenth-century British Raj fiction. 4. (Re)presenting Chivalric rescue: the novels of Philip Meadows Taylor. 5. Gender and the white (Wo)man's Burden: Flora Annie Steel. 6. Imagining (Anglo) India: Rudyard Kipling and ...
This book examines a monastic institution – the Madhva Matha of Udupi (Udipi) in Southern Karnataka – as a site of the formation of religious opinion, of monastic training, and practice, and the transmission of knowledge. The author brings both sociological and textual perspectives to bear on his work. While anthropologists and sociologists have worked on cults, practices, categories of specialists and concepts, Vasudeva Rao’s is one of the few books to ...
Zen from its foundation in China of the sixth century AD, has always been more than a religion. It is an intriguing system of principles and practices designed to give each individual the experience of eternity in a split second, the knowledge of divinity in every living thing. To create a book about Zen, however, is risky. It is one thing to describe the factual history of this exotic strain of Buddhism. It’s quite another thing to successfully convey the ...
Cleverly weaving narrative with excerpts from Corbett’s books and drawing on in-depth interviews with Corbett’s friends, here is another biography of a truly incredible man—Jim Corbett of Kumaon—legendary big game hunter turned naturalist, writer, photographer and humanist. Although Corbett’s six books offer several biographical details of his life, the portrait is ...
This book describes the rise of EDI and its implications for operations. Based on the premise that EDI is the province of senior management and cannot be left to technicians alone, the book shares the experience of companies worldwide that have implemented EDI, thus providing senior managers with pointers on how to establish and implement an effective EDI set-up. An appendix has been added to this edition, outlining the recent developments in India.
The History of Cinema for Beginners is an informative introductory text on the history of narrative film and a reference guide for those who seek basic information on interesting movies. The book spans over one hundred years of film history, beginning with events leading up to the invention of the medium, and chronicles the early struggle of the pioneers. Readers are introduced to people behind and in front of the camera and presented with all major achievements ...
This book is located within the contemporary discourse of human geography, ecology and the cultural landscape. These essays amend earlier anthropocentric perspectives on the conquest of nature, by placing people in symbiosis with their environment. By doing so, they seek to ensure a common future for both. In the face of global transformation and the hegemony of technology, several of these studies focus on the survival of different communities in the remoter ...
The practice of yoga has in the past century spread far from its source, and the exercises of Hatha Yoga are now taught in thousands of yoga schools all across the world. This book presents the reader with a simple introduction to the basic exercises of yoga, how to do them simply and safely, and how they benefit both body and mind. It gives valuable hints about the lifestyle to adopt for longevity and good health, and as well as a view of Hatha Yoga in the ...
For nearly thirty years from 1940, the Gemini Studios of Madras (Chennai) was the most influential film-producing organisation of India and its founder, the brilliant multi-faceted entrepreneur S.S. Vasan lent substance and quality to the rather fragile and unpredictable movie business. The Gemini emblem of two small boys with bugles was true to Vasan’s slogan for the Studios, ‘when the bugles blow, there is a great show,’ Gemini films entertained millions ...
The Bundelkhand cultural region straddles several districts of southern Uttar Pradesh and northern Madhya Pradesh in the Indian Union. In the pre-Independence period the Uttar Pradesh districts formed British Bundelkhand while the Madhya Pradesh districts comprised the native states. The present account deals with the social structure and history of the native states of Bundelkhand. The theme of this book is the evolution, patterning and socio-cultural ...
Western Medicine and Public Health in Colonial Bombay maps a crucial area in the medical history of India, otherwise marked by competing claims of dominance by, and submission to, a colonial regime. Mridula Ramanna has researched the impact of Western medical thinking and practices on the early institutions of rest and cure in mid-nineteenth-century Bombay. Among the major themes she addresses here are: British medical reformist policies and the Indian reactions ...
Cinema has never been saved by writers. We may have more of them now than ever before, but at the same time there are more and stronger shoulders now to shrug them off. No. Words are not enough. Words need the backing of action, or there is no revolution. And the only action that counts is that which a film maker calls into play by snapping out his words of command in his own particular field of battle. If his victory, and of many others like him, restore even a ...