Indian peasant uprisings: Myth and reality

A.R. Desai (ed.), Peasant Struggles in India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1979. Pp.xxv + 772; Rs. 140.

Sunil Sen, Peasant Movements in India: Mid‐Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1982. Pp.275; Rs.75.

D.N. Dhanagare, Peasant Movements in India: 1920–1950, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Pp.xii + 254; £12.

This review of some important recent works on peasant movements in India examines four major questions concerning (a) the social locus of rebellions, (b) the role of capitalism and imperialism, (c) the part played by existing state power, and (d) the role of parties or organisations. It is argued that while there is no unchanging social base the disproportionately high degree of tribal participation in armed rebellion may provide some clue to the relative lack of similar participation among the mainstream peasantry, that capitalist imperialism is a multi faceted phenomenon impinging on the peasantry in many ways, that existing state power plays a major part in rebellions, and that a party or organisation is a necessary precondition for any trans‐local or trans‐tribal movement. It concludes by suggesting that varieties of mobilisation within the framework of parliamentary politics should be studied in order to assess the really significant role of the peasantry in the political evolution of post‐independence India.     

Urban Faciality and Thanatos

This essay explores the politics of memorialization and the relationship between grief, death, gesture and public space in the performances of Pia Lindman in New York City between 2002 and 2005.     

Industrial Policies and Development Cooperation for a Learning Society

In the countries that have been most successful in development over the past half century, government played a central role (the development state), especially through industrial policies that promoted manufacturing exports. But changes in the global economy mean that African countries won’t be able to rely on the manufacturing export-led growth model. This paper analyzes the reasons for the success of that model, and shows how the same outcomes can be achieved through a multipronged strategy, a comprehensive development plan that pays particular attention to learning and employment.     

A Golden Week On Horseback

Genghis Khan once said,It is easy to conquer the world from the back of a horse. With this in mind,I confidently mounted my first Mongolian horse at a camp two hours outside of Ulan Bator and settled into the wooden-framed saddle. Choo! I shouted,using the Mongolian     

Fame and Fortress

正Fujian architectural sites see resurgence In the mountainous regions of southeast China lie collections of immense circular compounds, once mistakenly identified in aerial reconnaissance photographs as UFO's or missile silos. Their novel design first attracted architects, and has now found an audience among China's many tourists. Known as earthen buildings, or tulou in Mandarin, the fortresses are made of packed mud, sand, and clay, fortified on the inside     

Descent of the nation: Kinship and citizenship in Lebanon

The mechanisms which underpin kinship are mobilized by states to organize the citizenry for state‐building, often transporting patriarchy and (reinscribing it in public arenas. While the gendering and aging of citizenship is predictable in the deployment of patriarchal kin institutions for state‐building, the focus of this paper is less on these outcomes (well theorized elsewhere) and more on a mechanism undertheorized in feminist analyses of patriarchy and state dynamics—patrilineality. Patrilineality is commonly subsumed in feminist analyses of patriarchy, particularly in the study of the Middle East. Understood as kinship descent through the father's lineage, patrilineality is often conflated with patriarchy in societies in which both are present, resulting in the essentialization of patriarchy and a glossing of critical cultural differences in the gendering and aging of citizenship. While kinship in Lebanon has been fluid and Lebanese have mobilized both patrilineal and matrilineal principles of kinship as deemed necessary, the codification of rules of patrilineal descent in citizenship laws by the state has narrowed the spaces for negotiation for women and men, children and adults. By disaggregating patrilineality from patriarchy, this paper exposes a key substructure of patriarchy, significant to the gendering and aging of citizenship in Lebanon.