Main entry:

Singh, Bhrigupati, author.

Title & Author:

Poverty and the quest for life : spiritual and material striving in rural India / Bhrigupati Singh.

Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2015.

Description:

xiii, 335 pages : illustrations, map ; 23 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 311-329) and index.
First impressions, and further -- The headless horseman of central India : sovereignty at varying thresholds of life -- Mitra-Varuna : state power and powerlessness -- The coarse and the fine : contours of a slow-moving crisis -- Contracts, bonds, and bonded labor -- Erotics and agonistics : intensities deeper than deep play -- Divine migrations : neighborliness between humans, animals, and gods -- The waxing and waning life of Kalli -- Bansi mahatmaya (the greatness of Bansi), an erotic ascetic -- Departure, and marriages and deaths -- The quality of life : a daemonic view.

Summary:

Singh organizes his study around two themes: power and ethics, through which he explores a complex terrain of material and spiritual forces. Authority remains contested, whether in divine or human forms; the state is both despised and desired; high and low castes negotiate new ways of living together, in conflict but also cooperation; new gods move across rival social groups; animals and plants leave their tracks on human subjectivity and religiosity; and the potential for vitality persists even as natural resources steadily disappear. Studying this milieu, Singh offers new ways of thinking beyond the religion-secularism and nature-culture dichotomies, juxtaposing questions about quality of life with political theologies of sovereignty, neighborliness, and ethics, in the process painting a rich portrait of perseverance and fragility in contemporary rural India.
The Indian subdistrict of Shahabad, located in the dwindling forests of the southeastern tip of Rajasthan, is an area of extreme poverty. Beset by droughts and food shortages in recent years, it is the home of the Sahariyas, former bonded laborers, officially classified as Rajasthan's only "primitive tribe." From afar, we might consider this the bleakest of the bleak, but in Poverty and the Quest for Life, Bhrigupati Singh asks us to reconsider just what quality of life means. He shows how the Sahariyas conceive of aspiration, advancement, and vitality in both material and spiritual terms, and how such bridging can engender new possibilities of life.

ISBN:

9780226194400 (hardcover ; alkaline paper)
022619440X (hardcover ; alkaline paper)
9780226194547 (paperback ; alkaline paper)
022619454X (paperback ; alkaline paper)
(e-book)
9780226194684

Subject:

Rural poor India Rajasthan.
Ethnology India Rajasthan.
Pauvres en milieu rural Inde Rājasthān.
Ethnologie Inde Rājasthān.
Ethnology.
Manners and customs.
Rural poor.
Social conditions
Landbevölkerung
Armut
Soziale Situation
Rajasthan (India) Social conditions.
Rajasthan (India) Social life and customs.
Rājasthān (Inde) Conditions sociales.
Rājasthān (Inde) Mœurs et coutumes.
India Rajasthan.
Rajasthan

Holdings:

Location: Library main 289983
Call No.: BIB 232712
Status: Available