Pub Date : 2023-08-08DOI: 10.1017/s0026749x22000506
Thiruni Kelegama, B. Korf
This paper studies the contradictions of peasant politics in Sri Lanka’s dry zone frontier in a highly militarized colonization scheme (‘System L’ of the Mahaweli Development Programme in Weli Oya in northern Sri Lanka). Through a detailed ethnographic study of the life histories of settlers who came in two waves to this scheme (1980s and post-2009), we show the workings of what we call the ‘lure of land’: first, as the (al)lure that attracts landless families to live out the mythical dream of becoming a paddy farmer; second, this lure of land is intimately tied to a nationalist territorial aspiration that transforms the settler into a patriotic colonizer of the land: due to its strategic location in the frontier zone between Sinhalese and Tamil inhabited territories, settlers became ‘home guards’ who live on and protect the frontier. But the lure of land is not without contradictions: Life in the frontier is dangerous (for the early settlers) and economically precarious (for the early and late settlers), because the state is unable to deliver the promise of land and water. Government officials deploy various tactics of repeatedly deferred promises and subtle threats to discourage settlers to abandon the colonization scheme despite the settlers’ precarious life conditions, disappointments, and frustrations. A ‘cunning state’ thereby betrays its own ‘frontiersmen’, while safeguarding its nationalist territorial agenda.
{"title":"The lure of land: Peasant politics, frontier colonization and the cunning state in Sri Lanka","authors":"Thiruni Kelegama, B. Korf","doi":"10.1017/s0026749x22000506","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x22000506","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper studies the contradictions of peasant politics in Sri Lanka’s dry zone frontier in a highly militarized colonization scheme (‘System L’ of the Mahaweli Development Programme in Weli Oya in northern Sri Lanka). Through a detailed ethnographic study of the life histories of settlers who came in two waves to this scheme (1980s and post-2009), we show the workings of what we call the ‘lure of land’: first, as the (al)lure that attracts landless families to live out the mythical dream of becoming a paddy farmer; second, this lure of land is intimately tied to a nationalist territorial aspiration that transforms the settler into a patriotic colonizer of the land: due to its strategic location in the frontier zone between Sinhalese and Tamil inhabited territories, settlers became ‘home guards’ who live on and protect the frontier. But the lure of land is not without contradictions: Life in the frontier is dangerous (for the early settlers) and economically precarious (for the early and late settlers), because the state is unable to deliver the promise of land and water. Government officials deploy various tactics of repeatedly deferred promises and subtle threats to discourage settlers to abandon the colonization scheme despite the settlers’ precarious life conditions, disappointments, and frustrations. A ‘cunning state’ thereby betrays its own ‘frontiersmen’, while safeguarding its nationalist territorial agenda.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41964227","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-25DOI: 10.1017/s0026749x23000185
N. Baranovitch
In recent decades, as part of the efforts of the Chinese government first to integrate and, more recently, to forcibly assimilate the Uyghur population into China’s mainstream culture and society, the Uyghur language has been marginalized and repressed to an unprecedented extent. The academic literature on Xinjiang’s language policy has repeatedly acknowledged that this repression is a major source of concern and discontent among many Uyghurs. However, to date, little has been written about the public response of Uyghurs to this policy and their open efforts to challenge it. In particular, with very few exceptions, little is known about the public response of Uyghur writers and artists. In this article I analyse a large corpus of Uyghur poems and songs that engaged openly with the Uyghur language crisis and were published and disseminated in the Uyghur public sphere between the mid-1990s and the mid-2010s. Unlike some studies that try to assess the condition of certain languages at a certain point in time through objective methodologies, these literary and artistic works provide an insider view on how the Uyghur cultural elite and many other Uyghurs experienced the repression and loss of their native language, and also, how they struggled against this repression. In the article I examine the diverse sentiments, perceptions, and discourses that these literary and artistic expressions communicate, and the different strategies that the Uyghurs used to struggle against the language policy and its consequences. I also explore what these works tell us about the development of Xinjiang’s language policy over time, the linguistic reality in the region, and the impact that the language policy has had on Uyghur society. Finally, the article also investigates the broad political meanings of these works and speculates on the link between them and the efforts of the Chinese government to further marginalize the Uyghur language.
{"title":"‘Farewell, My Uyghur Language’: Linguistic anxiety and resistance in Uyghur poetry and songs, 1990s–2010s","authors":"N. Baranovitch","doi":"10.1017/s0026749x23000185","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x23000185","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In recent decades, as part of the efforts of the Chinese government first to integrate and, more recently, to forcibly assimilate the Uyghur population into China’s mainstream culture and society, the Uyghur language has been marginalized and repressed to an unprecedented extent. The academic literature on Xinjiang’s language policy has repeatedly acknowledged that this repression is a major source of concern and discontent among many Uyghurs. However, to date, little has been written about the public response of Uyghurs to this policy and their open efforts to challenge it. In particular, with very few exceptions, little is known about the public response of Uyghur writers and artists. In this article I analyse a large corpus of Uyghur poems and songs that engaged openly with the Uyghur language crisis and were published and disseminated in the Uyghur public sphere between the mid-1990s and the mid-2010s. Unlike some studies that try to assess the condition of certain languages at a certain point in time through objective methodologies, these literary and artistic works provide an insider view on how the Uyghur cultural elite and many other Uyghurs experienced the repression and loss of their native language, and also, how they struggled against this repression. In the article I examine the diverse sentiments, perceptions, and discourses that these literary and artistic expressions communicate, and the different strategies that the Uyghurs used to struggle against the language policy and its consequences. I also explore what these works tell us about the development of Xinjiang’s language policy over time, the linguistic reality in the region, and the impact that the language policy has had on Uyghur society. Finally, the article also investigates the broad political meanings of these works and speculates on the link between them and the efforts of the Chinese government to further marginalize the Uyghur language.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44495969","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-19DOI: 10.1017/s0026749x23000197
Dayal Paleri, R. Santhosh
The lack of electoral success of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the South Indian state of Kerala is often explained through the idea of Kerala ‘exceptionalism’, a broad term used to explain the unique historical, political, and developmental trajectory of the state. However, such explanations do not adequately address the systematic and concerted attempts by Hindu nationalist organizations to transform the cultural sphere of Kerala into a fertile ground for its future electoral politics. Through an ethnographic study of three Hindu nationalist organizations in the civil society sphere of Kodungallur, a multi-religious town in central Kerala, this article explores the politics and implications of their cultural interventions. The article argues that, peeved by an ‘absent Hindu atmosphere’ in Kerala, these organizations are trying to construct new forms of sociality and subjectivity and a grassroots public sphere embedded in Hindu nationalist ideology in Kodungallur. Often described by these organizations as ‘apolitical’ and ‘cultural’, these interventions are indeed a critique of the Kerala public sphere which is characterized by religious pluralism and secular sociality. Hence, the attempt to create a ‘Hindu atmosphere’ by these organizations is a deeply political endeavour aimed at creating an exclusivist Hindu hegemony in the cultural sphere, which they assume will pave the way for their electoral hegemony in Kerala in the long run.
{"title":"‘Elections can wait!’ The politics of constructing a ‘Hindu atmosphere’ in Kerala, South India","authors":"Dayal Paleri, R. Santhosh","doi":"10.1017/s0026749x23000197","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x23000197","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The lack of electoral success of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the South Indian state of Kerala is often explained through the idea of Kerala ‘exceptionalism’, a broad term used to explain the unique historical, political, and developmental trajectory of the state. However, such explanations do not adequately address the systematic and concerted attempts by Hindu nationalist organizations to transform the cultural sphere of Kerala into a fertile ground for its future electoral politics. Through an ethnographic study of three Hindu nationalist organizations in the civil society sphere of Kodungallur, a multi-religious town in central Kerala, this article explores the politics and implications of their cultural interventions. The article argues that, peeved by an ‘absent Hindu atmosphere’ in Kerala, these organizations are trying to construct new forms of sociality and subjectivity and a grassroots public sphere embedded in Hindu nationalist ideology in Kodungallur. Often described by these organizations as ‘apolitical’ and ‘cultural’, these interventions are indeed a critique of the Kerala public sphere which is characterized by religious pluralism and secular sociality. Hence, the attempt to create a ‘Hindu atmosphere’ by these organizations is a deeply political endeavour aimed at creating an exclusivist Hindu hegemony in the cultural sphere, which they assume will pave the way for their electoral hegemony in Kerala in the long run.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42464068","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-19DOI: 10.1017/s0026749x23000161
Yucong Hao
In the first half of the 1960s China witnessed an unprecedented florescence of theatrical works on Third World decolonization, which aimed to disseminate the ideology of Maoist internationalism and cultivate transnational and interracial solidarity among the Chinese public. Existing scholarship on Maoist internationalist theatre tends to understand the phenomenon as the domestication of Third World decolonization for China’s political ends. This article, by focusing on the heterogeneous processes of production, adaptation, and reception, illuminates the practical and epistemological challenges of representing an internationalist subject, the imperfect performance of foreign culture and history, and the porous process of meaning-making for Chinese performers and audiences. Using previously untapped historical materials, such as performance programmes, personal recollections, and newspapers, this article explores the staging of the Congo Crisis (1960–1965)—a widely mediated international event in Maoist China and a central conflict in the global Cold War—in the spoken drama War Drums on the Equator (1965), its many local variations, and a dance drama adaptation, The Raging Congo River (1965). By mediating and enacting ‘embodied and affective knowledge’ about Congo, these theatrical works made the political motif of internationalist solidarity into sonorous and kinaesthetic artefacts that engendered plural meanings to Chinese performers and audiences. This article further reveals flawed perceptions, processes of corrections, and the epistemological limitations in the performance of the Congo Crisis in Maoist China.
{"title":"Afro-Asian resonances: Staging the Congo Crisis in 1960s’ Chinese theatre","authors":"Yucong Hao","doi":"10.1017/s0026749x23000161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x23000161","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In the first half of the 1960s China witnessed an unprecedented florescence of theatrical works on Third World decolonization, which aimed to disseminate the ideology of Maoist internationalism and cultivate transnational and interracial solidarity among the Chinese public. Existing scholarship on Maoist internationalist theatre tends to understand the phenomenon as the domestication of Third World decolonization for China’s political ends. This article, by focusing on the heterogeneous processes of production, adaptation, and reception, illuminates the practical and epistemological challenges of representing an internationalist subject, the imperfect performance of foreign culture and history, and the porous process of meaning-making for Chinese performers and audiences. Using previously untapped historical materials, such as performance programmes, personal recollections, and newspapers, this article explores the staging of the Congo Crisis (1960–1965)—a widely mediated international event in Maoist China and a central conflict in the global Cold War—in the spoken drama War Drums on the Equator (1965), its many local variations, and a dance drama adaptation, The Raging Congo River (1965). By mediating and enacting ‘embodied and affective knowledge’ about Congo, these theatrical works made the political motif of internationalist solidarity into sonorous and kinaesthetic artefacts that engendered plural meanings to Chinese performers and audiences. This article further reveals flawed perceptions, processes of corrections, and the epistemological limitations in the performance of the Congo Crisis in Maoist China.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41989249","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-23DOI: 10.1017/s0026749x23000203
{"title":"ASS volume 57 issue 4 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0026749x23000203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x23000203","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":"57 1","pages":"f1 - f2"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42117224","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-23DOI: 10.1017/s0026749x23000215
{"title":"ASS volume 57 issue 4 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0026749x23000215","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x23000215","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":" ","pages":"b1 - b2"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45866456","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-22DOI: 10.1017/s0026749x23000173
O. Kwon
After the Second World War, the US government established a new oil order, forming close ties with three major oil companies—Standard Vacuum, Shell, and California-Texas—referred to as the ‘Three Sisters’ in Korea, which was newly liberated from Japanese colonialism. Even after the South Korean government was established, the US government and the Three Sisters worked to maintain the order. Using the carrot of the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) funds, in 1949 the US government pressured the South Korean government into oil agreements that would facilitate the supply of petroleum products to the country. The 1949 oil agreements were completed after three rounds of negotiations. The process of signing the agreements was not limited to the import, storage, and sale of petroleum products in exchange for US aid to South Korea. It also sought to respond to the various interests of Koreans who wanted to create an independent economic structure in the midst of establishing a new government. This article explores the three rounds of negotiations for the 1949 oil agreements whereby the symbiotic relationship between the US government and the Three Sisters was realized in partnership with the interests of the South Korean government. Furthermore, it seeks to broaden the research on the history of Korean oil by promoting an understanding of how US oil policy affected Korea immediately after its liberation from Japanese colonial rule.
{"title":"The secret of September: The 1949 oil agreements between the United States and South Korea","authors":"O. Kwon","doi":"10.1017/s0026749x23000173","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x23000173","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 After the Second World War, the US government established a new oil order, forming close ties with three major oil companies—Standard Vacuum, Shell, and California-Texas—referred to as the ‘Three Sisters’ in Korea, which was newly liberated from Japanese colonialism. Even after the South Korean government was established, the US government and the Three Sisters worked to maintain the order. Using the carrot of the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) funds, in 1949 the US government pressured the South Korean government into oil agreements that would facilitate the supply of petroleum products to the country. The 1949 oil agreements were completed after three rounds of negotiations. The process of signing the agreements was not limited to the import, storage, and sale of petroleum products in exchange for US aid to South Korea. It also sought to respond to the various interests of Koreans who wanted to create an independent economic structure in the midst of establishing a new government. This article explores the three rounds of negotiations for the 1949 oil agreements whereby the symbiotic relationship between the US government and the Three Sisters was realized in partnership with the interests of the South Korean government. Furthermore, it seeks to broaden the research on the history of Korean oil by promoting an understanding of how US oil policy affected Korea immediately after its liberation from Japanese colonial rule.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47314462","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-15DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X23000070
Anand A. Yang
All societies embody various forms of exchange. In South Asia, different mechanisms, including economic markets, have long engaged buyers and sellers in transactions involving goods and services for money or other goods and services. This assessment of Rethinking Markets in Modern India: Embedded Exchange and Contested Jurisdiction begins by briefly rehearsing Karl Polanyi’s formative ideas about the workings of precapitalist and capitalist economies. Although only a few of its 13 chapters explicitly reference Polanyi, his insights about embedded exchange represent a significant point of departure for the entire volume, as they often have for scholars in anthropology, economic sociology, geography, history, and even economics (at least those associated with institutional economics). All the essays in Rethinking Markets build on arguments about the intersections of economy and society that hark back to Polanyi’s seminal writings in the 1940s and 1950s about the market principle being foundational to the economic organization of modern society. For much of human history, transactions were largely negotiated through institutions and practices that he terms ‘reciprocity’ and ‘redistribution’. These modes of exchange predominated until the ‘great transformation’ ushered in by the Industrial Revolution led to the rise of a capitalist economy in the nineteenth century, first in Britain and Europe and subsequently in other world regions. Thereafter, the primary mode of economic integration was through a market economy whose participants behaved seemingly in accord with what Adam Smith and neoclassical economists assume to be an inherent human propensity to ‘truck, barter,
{"title":"Everywhere a market: Rethinking embedded exchange in modern India","authors":"Anand A. Yang","doi":"10.1017/S0026749X23000070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X23000070","url":null,"abstract":"All societies embody various forms of exchange. In South Asia, different mechanisms, including economic markets, have long engaged buyers and sellers in transactions involving goods and services for money or other goods and services. This assessment of Rethinking Markets in Modern India: Embedded Exchange and Contested Jurisdiction begins by briefly rehearsing Karl Polanyi’s formative ideas about the workings of precapitalist and capitalist economies. Although only a few of its 13 chapters explicitly reference Polanyi, his insights about embedded exchange represent a significant point of departure for the entire volume, as they often have for scholars in anthropology, economic sociology, geography, history, and even economics (at least those associated with institutional economics). All the essays in Rethinking Markets build on arguments about the intersections of economy and society that hark back to Polanyi’s seminal writings in the 1940s and 1950s about the market principle being foundational to the economic organization of modern society. For much of human history, transactions were largely negotiated through institutions and practices that he terms ‘reciprocity’ and ‘redistribution’. These modes of exchange predominated until the ‘great transformation’ ushered in by the Industrial Revolution led to the rise of a capitalist economy in the nineteenth century, first in Britain and Europe and subsequently in other world regions. Thereafter, the primary mode of economic integration was through a market economy whose participants behaved seemingly in accord with what Adam Smith and neoclassical economists assume to be an inherent human propensity to ‘truck, barter,","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":"57 1","pages":"1666 - 1676"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49291747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-15DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X23000069
Isabelle Guérin
The edited volume Rethinking Markets in Modern India offers a fresh and stimulating look at the day-to-day fabric and running of markets in the Indian context, both past and present. Much more broadly, it is a solid contribution to the conceptualization of markets as a material, social, moral, political, and unequal process, and not as an abstract concept and a normative ideal. Yet the idea of the market as an abstract concept and as an economically and morally superior reality remains the foundation of neoclassical economics. And neoclassical economics tends to be increasingly hegemonic, both in terms of research and teaching. India is no exception. The rich tradition of plural economics schools of thought has been constantly challenged since the neoliberal reforms of the early 1990s, and this is even more the case with the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power in 2014. Neoclassical economics conceptualizes themarket as an abstractmechanism,which results from the confrontation of supply and demand between two types of actors— producers and consumers—who are assumed to be equal, rational, and seeking to maximize their individual interests. Moreover, neoclassical economics considers the ‘perfect’ market as the most efficient and fairest mechanism for allocating resources. Even though various branches of neoclassical economic theory have developed sophisticated models that relax certain assumptions, the market as the optimal and fairest mode of resource allocation remains prevalent. Of course, any theory aims at a
{"title":"Rethinking markets to rethink economics","authors":"Isabelle Guérin","doi":"10.1017/S0026749X23000069","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X23000069","url":null,"abstract":"The edited volume Rethinking Markets in Modern India offers a fresh and stimulating look at the day-to-day fabric and running of markets in the Indian context, both past and present. Much more broadly, it is a solid contribution to the conceptualization of markets as a material, social, moral, political, and unequal process, and not as an abstract concept and a normative ideal. Yet the idea of the market as an abstract concept and as an economically and morally superior reality remains the foundation of neoclassical economics. And neoclassical economics tends to be increasingly hegemonic, both in terms of research and teaching. India is no exception. The rich tradition of plural economics schools of thought has been constantly challenged since the neoliberal reforms of the early 1990s, and this is even more the case with the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power in 2014. Neoclassical economics conceptualizes themarket as an abstractmechanism,which results from the confrontation of supply and demand between two types of actors— producers and consumers—who are assumed to be equal, rational, and seeking to maximize their individual interests. Moreover, neoclassical economics considers the ‘perfect’ market as the most efficient and fairest mechanism for allocating resources. Even though various branches of neoclassical economic theory have developed sophisticated models that relax certain assumptions, the market as the optimal and fairest mode of resource allocation remains prevalent. Of course, any theory aims at a","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":"57 1","pages":"1658 - 1665"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47600563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-15DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X23000112
Ajay Gandhi, B. Harriss‐White, Douglas E. Haynes, Sebastian Schwecke
Abstract In this Modern Asian Studies book symposium, scholars of South Asia analyse the political, ethical, and epistemic aspects of market life. They build on the 2020 Cambridge volume, Rethinking Markets in Modern India: Embedded Exchange and Contested Jurisdiction, edited by Ajay Gandhi, Barbara Harriss-White, Douglas Haynes, and Sebastian Schwecke. This interdisciplinary conversation approaches transactional realms from the disciplines of history, anthropology, development studies, and political economy. The symposium’s contributors examine a range of pertinent issues that encompass customary forms of exchange and capitalist aspects of trade. Among the topics discussed are those of market fetishism, bazaar knowledge, social embeddedness, forms of transactional representation and translation, and institutional and regulatory contexts for commerce.
{"title":"Translating transactions: Markets as epistemic and moral spheres","authors":"Ajay Gandhi, B. Harriss‐White, Douglas E. Haynes, Sebastian Schwecke","doi":"10.1017/S0026749X23000112","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X23000112","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this Modern Asian Studies book symposium, scholars of South Asia analyse the political, ethical, and epistemic aspects of market life. They build on the 2020 Cambridge volume, Rethinking Markets in Modern India: Embedded Exchange and Contested Jurisdiction, edited by Ajay Gandhi, Barbara Harriss-White, Douglas Haynes, and Sebastian Schwecke. This interdisciplinary conversation approaches transactional realms from the disciplines of history, anthropology, development studies, and political economy. The symposium’s contributors examine a range of pertinent issues that encompass customary forms of exchange and capitalist aspects of trade. Among the topics discussed are those of market fetishism, bazaar knowledge, social embeddedness, forms of transactional representation and translation, and institutional and regulatory contexts for commerce.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":"57 1","pages":"1690 - 1706"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49606974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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