Contentious Connections - Social Imagination in Globalizing South Asia

Combining history, cultural studies, sociology, international politics, and anthropology, this multidisciplinary volume analyzes transnational connections in India and South Asia. The articles explore how politics, gender, religious discourses, regional concepts, and public culture are being re-imagined amidst translocal connections. In theoretical terms, the volume contributes to understandings of the relationship between culture, globalization and social imagination by posing following questions: What is the nature of relationships between local worlds and global flows both historically and in contemporary South Asia? What role does the state play amidst global flows? How do power issues and local hierarchies contribute to social imaginaries? And how do translocal flows influence opportunities for individual agency? The volume introduces articles dealing with various aspects and arenas of globalization in South Asia: the economy and the media landscape in India (Derne), cinema (Kumar), global brands (Majumder), religious music and South Asian Islam (Viitamaeki), foreign politics (Grekova-Stefanova), politics and gender (Roy), political uses of mobile telephony (Tenhunen), Indian diaspora (Svensson), migration in colonial India (Adapa), and the position of history in classical India (Karttunen).