Unfamiliar Relations
Subtitle: Family and History in South Asia
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: May 2004
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 302
ISBN-13: 9780813533803
Subjects: Family & relationships; Social History; c 1600 to c 1700; c 1700 to c 1800; c 1800 to c 1900; History - General History; History: World; Indian sub-continent; South East Asia; Social conditions; Asia - General; World - Colonial Studies; History; Family; Households; South Asia
Description: "In her introduction, Indrani Chatterjee argues that the recent wealth of scholarship on ethnicity, sexuality, gender, imperialism, and patriarchy in South Asia during the colonial period often overlooks careful historical analysis of the highly contested concept of family. Together, the essays in this book demolish "family" as an abstract concept in South Asian colonial history, demonstrating its exceedingly different meanings across temporal and geographical space." "The scholarship in this volume reveals a far more complex set of dynamics than a simple binary between indigenous and colonial forms and structures. It approaches this study from the pre-colonial period on, rather than backwards as has been the case with previous scholarship. Topics include a British colonial officer who married a Mughal noblewoman and converted to Islam around the turn of the nineteenth century, the role gossip and taboo play in the formation of Indian family history, and an analysis of social relations in the penal colony on the Andaman Islands."--Jacket.