{"title":"Revisiting Cultural Theory Through Baiga Dance-Songs","authors":"Prithvi Raj","doi":"10.1177/23938617231163981","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23938617231163981","url":null,"abstract":"Cultural theory is assumed to be a tool or set of ideas to explain, interpret or analyse cultures or cultural realities. The realisation of embracing and internalising theory as a kind of transcendental signifier, within and beyond our undertaking at the same time, fixes our attention on the validity and prevalence that theory has gained in academic circles. Its ubiquity is perhaps its strength, which sustains it and makes it indispensable across disciples. However, theory has its own internal functioning, often stopping it from achieving the desired results. There is a constant need to weigh theories before we use them as tools to analyse something. The central concern of this article is to interrogate the validity and legitimacy of cultural theory to deal with problems arising in contextualising cultural theories to frame Baiga dance-songs and consequent issues arising out of it. The article points out an inherent discrepancy in cultural theory through Biaga dance-songs.","PeriodicalId":158055,"journal":{"name":"Society and Culture in South Asia","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135438417","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"As the Elders Sang: Exploring the Continuity and Novelty in the Folk Musical Performances of Goa","authors":"Ninotchka Mendes","doi":"10.1177/23938617231163980","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23938617231163980","url":null,"abstract":"Music, society and culture are intimately linked with each other. Music not only fulfils its primary need as a source of entertainment but also serves as a powerful medium for human communication. Music today has come to represent more as a commercial product, thus transforming its role in the socio-cultural domain of society. This article aims to explore the folk musical performances of the Christian Gawda, with special focus on one form of folk performance locally known as ghumata vazop. While presenting in brief the ideas put forward by some sociologists on music, ethnomusicology and folk music, the article attempts at a conceptual clarification between the two tribal identities of Gawda and Kunbi. Lastly, it explores aspects of continuity and novelty in the folk musical traditions of the Gawdas.","PeriodicalId":158055,"journal":{"name":"Society and Culture in South Asia","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136192102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Camelia Dewan, Misreading the Bengal Delta: Climate Change, Development, and Livelihoods in Coastal Bangladesh","authors":"Radhika Bhargava","doi":"10.1177/23938617231176791","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23938617231176791","url":null,"abstract":"Camelia Dewan, Misreading the Bengal Delta: Climate Change, Development, and Livelihoods in Coastal Bangladesh. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2022, 245 pp., US$30 (paperback), ISBN: 9780295749617.","PeriodicalId":158055,"journal":{"name":"Society and Culture in South Asia","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116675632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Sushmita Pati, Properties of Rent: Community, Capital and Politics in Globalising Delhi","authors":"Anish Vanaik","doi":"10.1177/23938617231167376","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23938617231167376","url":null,"abstract":"Sushmita Pati, Properties of Rent: Community, Capital and Politics in Globalising Delhi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), ISBN: 978-1-316-51727-7 (Price not known).","PeriodicalId":158055,"journal":{"name":"Society and Culture in South Asia","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115727279","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Rahul Ranjan, Political Life of Memory: Birsa Munda in Contemporary India","authors":"Supriya Ranjan, Vipanchika Sahasri Bhagyanagar","doi":"10.1177/23938617231176784","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23938617231176784","url":null,"abstract":"Rahul Ranjan, Political Life of Memory: Birsa Munda in Contemporary India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 296 pp., ₹1,295, ISBN: 9781009337908 (Hardbound).","PeriodicalId":158055,"journal":{"name":"Society and Culture in South Asia","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121726544","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Learner Diversity in Higher Education: Articulations of Diverse Subjectivities Through Everyday Life Experiences","authors":"A. Bose","doi":"10.1177/23938617231156549","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23938617231156549","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores how articulations of diverse learners’ identities and subjectivities emerge through everyday life experiences within a modern public university in India. The study adopts a constructivist grounded theory approach and, through in-depth conversational interviews, focuses on the voices of 35 learners belonging to diverse marginalised communities. Massification and the shifting demographics of learners in higher education have made university spaces a composite of heterogeneous identities. As learners belonging to diverse marginalised social groups began to increasingly navigate campus life, contestations emerged, due to the lack of recognition of these unfamiliar socio-political sensibilities and the emerging alternate discourses within these elite corridors of knowledge. Further, inherent elitism and meritocracy saliently dominating the normative cultural behaviour within the institutions, hindered the participation and inclusion of these learners, resulting in exclusivity and marginalisation in everyday life. As a result, the articulation and voice of learners emerged as acts of resistance and their agency freedom, leading to the emergence of a learner’s identity, an agential and assertive reflection of how learners articulate their self, succumb to or resist marginalisation, get excluded or participate and make choices for their future. Everyday life experiences, determined by learners’ situated articulations of their life course, became a framework explicating and articulating their distinct subjectivities, negotiations, challenges and aspirations. Therefore, learners’ capacity and will to negotiate, resist and persist, against the normativity in practice and processes in higher education, leads to cultivation of their agency freedom.","PeriodicalId":158055,"journal":{"name":"Society and Culture in South Asia","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115902892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Shannon Philip, Becoming Young Men in a New India: Masculinities, Gender Relations and Violence in the Postcolony","authors":"M. Agarwal","doi":"10.1177/23938617231176785","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23938617231176785","url":null,"abstract":"Shannon Philip, Becoming Young Men in a New India: Masculinities, Gender Relations and Violence in the Postcolony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 209 pp., ₹780, ISBN: 978-1-009-15871-8.","PeriodicalId":158055,"journal":{"name":"Society and Culture in South Asia","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115526880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Shrayana Bhattacharya, Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India’s Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence","authors":"Promodini Varma","doi":"10.1177/23938617231163985","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23938617231163985","url":null,"abstract":"Shrayana Bhattacharya, Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India’s Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence (Harper Collins, 2021), 445 pp., ₹699 (Paperback). ISBN: 978-93- 5489-193-9.","PeriodicalId":158055,"journal":{"name":"Society and Culture in South Asia","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131053124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Anasua Chatterjee, Margins of Citizenship: Muslim Experiences in Urban India","authors":"Sujata Das","doi":"10.1177/23938617221140563","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23938617221140563","url":null,"abstract":"Anasua Chatterjee, Margins of Citizenship: Muslim Experiences in Urban India. New Delhi: Routledge, 2017, 192 pp., ₹695 (Paperback). ISBN: 9781138038264 (hardback).","PeriodicalId":158055,"journal":{"name":"Society and Culture in South Asia","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116501139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay, Streets in Motion: The Making of Infrastructure, Property, and Political Culture in Twentieth-Century Calcutta","authors":"Ujaan Ghosh","doi":"10.1177/23938617221145808","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23938617221145808","url":null,"abstract":"Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay, Streets in Motion: The Making of Infrastructure, Property, and Political Culture in Twentieth-Century Calcutta. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022, 305 pp., ₹896.95, ISBN: 978-1-009-10011-3.","PeriodicalId":158055,"journal":{"name":"Society and Culture in South Asia","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131448919","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}