Camera Indica is an exploration of the changing role of photographic portraiture in India over the last 150 years. It is the first anthropological study of photographic practice in the everyday lived reality of Indian society and combines historical and ethnographic perspectives.Christopher Pinney looks at key ‘moments’ in Indian photography and considers the ways in which photographic portraiture reflects changing political interests, a decreasing desire to fix identity, and a bro...

Moving the critical debate about photography away from its current Euro-American center of gravity, Photography’s Other Histories breaks with the notion that photographic history is best seen as the explosion of a Western technology advanced by the work of singular individuals. This collection presents a radically different account, describing photography as a globally disseminated and locally appropriated medium. Essays firmly grounded in photographic practice—in the actual makin...

The anthropology of art is currently at a crossroads. Although well versed in the meaning of art in small-scale tribal societies, anthropologists are still wrestling with the question of how to interpret art in a complex, post-colonial environment. Alfred Gell recently confronted this problem in his posthumous book Art and Agency. The central thesis of his study was that art objects could be seen, not as bearers of meaning or aesthetic value, but as forms mediating social action. At a stro...

Mirages have long astonished travellers and beguiled thirsty desert voyagers. Chinese and Japanese poetry and images depicted mirages as the exhalations of clam-monsters. Indian sources related them to the ‘thirst of gazelles’, a metaphor for the futility of desire. From the late eighteenth century to the present, mirages became a symbol of ‘Oriental despotism’, a malign, but also enchanted, emblem. But the mirage motif is rarely simply condemnatory. More commonly it conveys a sense of esc...

A founder of the Deep Ecology Movement, Arne Naess' has produced articles on environmentalism that have provided unmatched inspiration for ecologists, philosophers, and activists worldwide. This collection amasses a definitive group of Naess' most important works in which he calls for nonviolent, cooperative action to protect the Earth. Rich with observations, insights, and anecdotes, Naess' writings draw from Eastern religious practices, Gandhian nonviolent direct action, and Spinozan uni...

This beautiful collection of travel wisdom is the perfect gift for any Theroux fan, and will equally delight seasoned travelers, young adventurers, and everyone in between.Few have traveled more than Paul Theroux, and fewer have crafted the original, perceptive, and entertaining body of work that he has. The Tao of Travel is a departure for him: it's a gift book, a gorgeously illustrated and pithy distillation of quotes about the pleasures and perils of tr...

Things make us just as much as we make things. And yet, unlike the study of languages or places, there is no discipline devoted to the study of material things. This book shows why it is time to acknowledge and confront this neglect and how much we can learn from focusing our attention on stuff.The book opens with a critique of the concept of superficiality as applied to clothing. It presents the theories that are required to understand the way we are created by material as well as...

Informing the designs of architects as diverse as Peter Zumthor, Steven Holl, Hans Scharoun and Colin St. John Wilson, the work of Martin Heidegger has proved of great interest to architects and architectural theorists.The first introduction to Heidegger’s philosophy written specifically for architects and students of architecture introduces key themes in his thinking, which has proved highly influential among architects as well as architectural historians and theorists. This guide...

“A delightful compendium of the kind of facts you immediately want to share with anyone you encounter . . . . Simon Winchester has firmly earned his place in history . . . as a promulgator of knowledge of every variety, perhaps the last of the famous explorers who crisscrossed the now-vanished British Empire and reported what they found to an astonished world.” — New York TimesFrom the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient m...

Artistic representations of landscape are studied widely in areas ranging from art history to geography to sociology, yet there has been little consensus about how to understand the relationship between landscape and art. This book brings together more than fifty scholars from these multiple disciplines to establish new ways of thinking about landscape in art.

The Handbook of Contemporary Animism brings together an international team of scholars to examine the full range of animist worldviews and practices. The volume opens with an examination of recent approaches to animism. This is followed by evaluations of ethnographic, cognitive, literary, performative, and material culture approaches, as well as advances in activist and indigenous thinking about animism. This handbook will be invaluable to students and scholars of Religion, Sociol...

A historically informed and informing study guide to of Scott's four great novels of British India - The Jewel in the Crown, The Day of the Scorpion, The Towers of Silence, A Division of the Spoils - and of the popular coda, Staying On. The book covers Paul Scott's Life and works, the British Raj, imperial decay, civil and military India, the Indian independence movement, the birth of India and Pakistan, Ghandi, Jinnah, Congress and the Muslim League, the characters of the novel, especiall...