South Asia

Over the last twenty years, Cultural Anthropology has published a range of articles on South Asia. Authors have examined how hierarchy and caste have been constructed and queried in the anthropological literature, how local and global forces have cross pollinated and take on new meanings, and changing understandings of freedom and citizenship amidst the rise of professional classes. The topical breadth of these essays is impressive, including globalization and neoliberalism, nationalism, rural political movements, dance and media.

Arjun Appadurai's critically acclaimed 1988 essay, "Putting Hierarchy in Its Place," for example, examines the genealogy of the concept of hierarchy in anthropology. Focusing particularly on Dumont's conception of hierarchy as the key to caste society in India, Appadurai's essays draws out how different trajectories in Western thought have been constitutive of the ways we think about "natives." Stacy Leigh Pigg's 2001 essay, "Languages of Sex and AIDS in Nepal: Notes on the Social Production of Commensurability," examines the "expected epidemic" of AIDS in Nepal, describing the difficulties that Nepali health workers faced in their efforts to "bend," "mold," or "force" AIDS knowledge to "the contours of the Nepali social ground." In a 2003 essay, "'Very Bombay': Contending with the Global in an Indian Advertising Agency," William Mazzarella describes Indian advertising professionals as cultural brokers, "mediating players in the game of globalization," who have played key roles in the construction of "a global Indianness, a world-class Indianness." Mazzarella's essay won the Society for Cultural Anthropology's 2004 "Cultural Horizon Prize."

Cultural Anthropology essays can be accessed electronically through AnthroSource, http://www.anthrosource.net/, which is available through most research libraries and to all members of the American Anthropological Association. Cultural Anthropology can also be accessed through a pay-per-view system. Journalists may request PDFs from Cultural Anthropology's editorial office: ea@culanth.org.

Branding the Mahatma: The Untimely Provocation of Gandhian Publicity
William Mazzarella
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 2010, Vol. 25, No. 1: 1-39
Supplemental Material

Inscribing Subjects to Citizenship: Petitions, Literacy Activism, and the Performativity of Signature in Rural Tamil India
Francis Cody
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 2009, Vol. 24, No. 3: 347-380
Supplemental Material

The Coolie
Valentine E Daniel
Cultural Anthropology May 2008, Vol. 23, No. 2: 254-278.
Supplemental material

Pastoral Power in the Postcolony: On the Biopolitics of the Criminal Animal in South India
Anand Pandian
Cultural Anthropology Feb 2008, Vol. 23, No. 1: 85-117.
Supplemental material

Editors’ Introduction to the "Coke Complex"
Kim and Mike Fortun
Cultural Anthropology Nov 2007, Vol. 22, No. 4: 616-620.

Pesticides in Coca-Cola and Pepsi: Consumerism, Brand Image, and Public Interest in a Globalizing India
Neeraj Vedwan
Cultural Anthropology Nov 2007, Vol. 22, No. 4: 659-684.
Supplemental material

The Allure of the Transnational: Notes on Some Aspects of the Political Economy of Water in India
Ananthakrishnan Aiyer
Cultural Anthropology Nov 2007, Vol. 22, No. 4: 640-658.
Supplemental material

Good Gifts for the Common Good: Blood and Bioethics in the Market of Genetic Research
Deepa S. Reddy
Cultural Anthropology Aug 2007, Vol. 22, No. 3: 429-472.
Supplemental material

Between Global Flows and Local Dams: Indigenousness, Locality, and the Transnational Sphere in Jharkhand, India
Kaushik Ghosh
Cultural Anthropology Nov 2006, Vol. 21, No. 4: 501-534.

Technologies of the Voice: FM Radio, Telephone, and the Nepali Diaspora in Kathmandu
Laura Kunreuther
Cultural Anthropology Aug 2006, Vol. 21, No. 3: 323-353.

Of Children and Jinn: An Inquiry into an Unexpected Friendship during Uncertain Times
Naveeda Khan
Cultural Anthropology May 2006, Vol. 21, No. 2: 234-264.

The "Already Surmounted" yet "Secretly Familiar": Malaysian Identity as Symptom
Andrew Willford
Cultural Anthropology Feb 2006, Vol. 21, No. 1: 31-59.

Crossbreeding Institutions, Breeding Struggle: Women's Empowerment, Neoliberal Governmentality, and State (Re)Formation in India
Aradhana Sharma
Cultural Anthropology Feb 2006, Vol. 21, No. 1: 60-95.

Empty Citizenship: Protesting Politics in the Era of Globalization
Ritty Lukose
Cultural Anthropology Nov 2005, Vol. 20, No. 4: 506-533.

Truth, Fear, and Lies: Exile Politics and Arrested Histories of the Tibetan Resistance
Carole McGranahan
Cultural Anthropology Nov 2005, Vol. 20, No. 4: 570-600.

Geeks, Social Imaginaries, and Recursive Publics
Christopher Kelty
Cultural Anthropology May 2005, Vol. 20, No. 2: 185-214.

Carnal Economies: The Commodification of Food and Sex in Kathmandu
Mark Liechty
Cultural Anthropology Feb 2005, Vol. 20, No. 1: 1-38.

Development without Institutions: Ersatz Medicine and the Politics of Everyday Life in Rural North India
Sarah Pinto
Cultural Anthropology Aug 2004, Vol. 19, No. 3: 337-364.

The Context of Diaspora
Brian Keith Axel
Cultural Anthropology Feb 2004, Vol. 19, No. 1: 26-60.

Material Consumers, Fabricating Subjects: Perplexity, Global Connectivity Discourses, and Transnational Feminist Research
Priti Ramamurthy
Cultural Anthropology Nov 2003, Vol. 18, No. 4: 524-550.

Phantasms in a "Starry" Place: Space and Identification in a Central New Delhi Market
Paolo Favero
Cultural Anthropology Nov 2003, Vol. 18, No. 4: 551-584.

Traces of Folk Medicine in Jaunpur
Jean M. Langford
Cultural Anthropology Aug 2003, Vol. 18, No. 3: 271-303.

Gender and the Politics of Voice: Colonial Modernity and Classical Music in South India
Amanda Weidman
Cultural Anthropology May 2003, Vol. 18, No. 2: 194-232.

"Very Bombay": Contending with the Global in an Indian Advertising Agency
William Mazzarella
Cultural Anthropology Feb 2003, Vol. 18, No. 1: 33-71.

Contingent Selves: Love and Death in a Buddhist Society in Nepal
Ernestine McHugh
Cultural Anthropology May 2002, Vol. 17, No. 2: 210-245.

Performing Respectability: The Beravā, Middle-Class Nationalism, and the Classicization of Kandyan Dance in Sri Lanka
Susan A. Reed
Cultural Anthropology May 2002, Vol. 17, No. 2: 246-277.

Imitation Is Far More Than the Sincerest of Flattery: The Mimetic Power of Spirit Possession in Rajasthan, India
Jeffrey G. Snodgrass
Cultural Anthropology Feb 2002, Vol. 17, No. 1: 32-64.

Languages of Sex and AIDS in Nepal: Notes on the Social Production of Commensurability
Stacy Leigh Pigg
Cultural Anthropology Nov 2001, Vol. 16, No. 4: 481-541.

Ambiguous Narratives
Thomas Lyons
Cultural Anthropology May 2001, Vol. 16, No. 2: 183-201.

Living Ethnological Exhibits: The Case of 1886
Saloni Mathur
Cultural Anthropology Nov 2000, Vol. 15, No. 4: 492-524.

Beyond Identity Fetishism: "Communal" Conflict in Ladakh and the Limits of Autonomy
Martijn van Beek
Cultural Anthropology Nov 2000, Vol. 15, No. 4: 525-569.

Roadwork: Offstage with Special Drama Actresses in Tamilnadu, South India
Susan Seizer
Cultural Anthropology May 2000, Vol. 15, No. 2: 217-259.

The Poetics of "Madness": Shifting Codes and Styles in the Linguistic Construction of Identity in Matlab, Bangladesh
James M. Wilce
Cultural Anthropology Feb 2000, Vol. 15, No. 1: 3-34.

Identity Dub: The Paradoxes of an Indian American Youth Subculture (New York Mix)
Sunaina Maira
Cultural Anthropology Feb 1999, Vol. 14, No. 1: 29-60.

The Credible and the Credulous: The Question of "Villagers' Beliefs" in Nepal
Stacy Leigh Pigg
Cultural Anthropology May 1996, Vol. 11, No. 2: 160-201.

Doors of Perception: Power and Representation in Bali
Margaret J. Wiener
Cultural Anthropology Nov 1995, Vol. 10, No. 4: 472-508.

Ayurvedic Interiors: Person, Space, and Episteme in Three Medical Practices
Jean Langford
Cultural Anthropology Aug 1995, Vol. 10, No. 3: 330-366.

Panopticon in Poona: An Essay on Foucault and Colonialism
Martha Kaplan
Cultural Anthropology Feb 1995, Vol. 10, No. 1: 85-98.

Refractions of the Field at Home: American Representations of Hindu Holy Men in the 19th and 20th Centuries
Kirin Narayan
Cultural Anthropology Nov 1993, Vol. 8, No. 4: 476-509.

The Body of One Color: Indian Wrestling, the Indian State, and Utopian Somatics
Joseph S. Alter
Cultural Anthropology Feb 1993, Vol. 8, No. 1: 49-72.

The Song of the Nonaligned World: Transnational Identities and the Reinscription of Space in Late Capitalism
Akhil Gupta
Cultural Anthropology Feb 1992, Vol. 7, No. 1: 63-79.

Ethnography, Literature, and Politics: Some Readings and Uses of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses
Talal Asad
Cultural Anthropology Aug 1990, Vol. 5, No. 3: 239-269.

Bombay Talkies, the Word and the World: Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses
Michael M. J. Fischer, Mehdi Abedi
Cultural Anthropology May 1990, Vol. 5, No. 2: 107-159.

Cultural Exchange: New Developments in the Anthropology of Commodities - The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective by Arjun Appadurai.
Review by James Ferguson
Cultural Anthropology Nov 1988, Vol. 3, No. 4: 488-513.

Putting Hierarchy in Its Place
Arjun Appadurai
Cultural Anthropology Feb 1988, Vol. 3, No. 1: 36-49.

Understanding a Mandi Story
Robbins Burling
Cultural Anthropology May 1986, Vol. 1, No. 2: 188-202.