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  1. Home
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  3. Bonded Histories
  • Cited by 181
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
September 2009
Print publication year:
1990
Online ISBN:
9780511470721
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511470721
Subjects:
Area Studies, South Asian History, Asian Studies, History, Regional History after 1500
Series:
Cambridge South Asian Studies (44)
Information

Book description

To the modern world, the notions that freedom is an innate condition of human beings and that money possesses the power to bind people appear as natural facts. Bonded Histories traces the historical processes by which these notions became established as dominant discourses in India during colonial rule and continued into post-colonial India. Gyan Prakash locates the formulation of these discourses in the history of bonded labour in southern Bihar. He focuses on the emergence and subsequent transformation of the relationship of reciprocal power and dependence between landlords and labourers. The author explores the way in which these transformations were connected with broader shifts in the political economy of this part of the subcontinent; with the changing structures of agricultural production, land tenure and revenue demand; with local social hierarchies and the ideology of castes; and with Hindu cosmologies, spirit cults and their articulation in ritual practices.

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