A01=Bhrigupati Singh
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anthropology
asia
Author_Bhrigupati Singh
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belief
bonded
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=JBSL
Category=JFSL3
Category=JHMC
class
classism
community
COP=United States
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drought
eastern
eq_bestseller
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnographic
ethnography
exploitation
faith
food
goods
income
indentured
india
indian
inequality
injustice
justice
labor
laborer
Language_English
local
material
migration
oppression
PA=Available
poor
possessions
poverty
power
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
rajasthan
region
religiosity
rural
shahabad
shortage
softlaunch
southeast
spiritual
spirituality
wealth
worker
Product details
- ISBN 9780226194547
- Weight: 510g
- Dimensions: 15 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 06 Apr 2015
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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The Indian subdistrict of Shahabad, located in the dwindling forests of the southeastern tip of Rajasthan, is an area of extreme poverty. Beset by droughts and food shortages in recent years, it is the home of the Sahariyas, former bonded laborers, officially classified as Rajasthan's only "primitive tribe." From afar, we might consider this the bleakest of the bleak, but in Poverty and the Quest for Life, Bhrigupati Singh asks us to reconsider just what quality of life means. He shows how the Sahariyas conceive of aspiration, advancement, and vitality in both material and spiritual terms, and how such bridging can engender new possibilities of life. Singh organizes his study around two themes: power and ethics, through which he explores a complex terrain of material and spiritual forces. Authority remains contested, whether in divine or human forms; the state is both despised and desired; high and low castes negotiate new ways of living together, in conflict but also cooperation; new gods move across rival social groups; animals and plants leave their tracks on human subjectivity and religiosity; and the potential for vitality persists even as natural resources steadily disappear.
Studying this milieu, Singh offers new ways of thinking beyond the religion-secularism and nature-culture dichotomies, juxtaposing questions about quality of life with political theologies of sovereignty, neighborliness, and ethics, in the process painting a rich portrait of perseverance and fragility in contemporary rural India.
Bhrigupati Singh is assistant professor of anthropology at Brown University and is coeditor of The Ground Between: Anthropologists Engage Philosophy.
