Ricerc@Sapienza

Monika Browarczyk’s book directly confronts the long-standing assumption in Western scholarship which regarded autobiographical writings to be the product of the historical legacy and cultural specificity of the West and considered individualism and notions of the Self as an exclusively Western attribute. By focusing on women’s writings, it further demolishes the myth of autobiographies as principally male-oriented narratives of bourgeois culture.

Taking a long-term view spanning the early 19th century and the 1950s, the paper explores some of the changes affecting the landscape of the plateau zone between the plains of North India and deltaic Bengal since the 19th century. In particular, it analyses the manner in which the spread of rice cultivation and the reduced forest cover, the construction of railways and multi-purpose river valley projects refashioned the natural landscape and brought about changes in the means of livelihood among the people of the region, and eventually led to the phenomenon of widespread hunger.

Dietro ogni demarcazione tra puro e impuro si cela un primordiale tentativo di classificare l’universo. Classificare non è mai un atto neutrale, motivato da un puro desiderio di conoscenza, ma un atto simbolico nel quale prende forma un progetto culturale o egemonico. Una classificazione basilare è quella che oppone ciò che appartiene al nostro mondo - l’hortus conclusus nel quale ci sentiamo relativamente sicuri - e il resto, l’immenso mondo estraneo che circonda e potenzialmente minaccia il nostro piccolo mondo da ogni parte.

A critical assessment of this study in Indo-Christian intercultural exchange.

The interplay between local and imperial perceptions was a driving force behind the gradual evolution of the Indian empire. An important contribution to the full understanding of this process may come from enquiries into the nature of the British administrative policies, along with their inspiring ideologies and notions, in connection with the tribal community of the Hos of Singhbhum, a district in the erstwhile Chotanagpur Division of Bengal Presidency.The changing notions of rule and subjecthood naturally had a distinct impact upon the adivasi people.

How, where, and when do subjects and citizens come into being to make demands and reassert themselves in the formation of modern India? This is the key question for the essays in this book. In unique ways, the authors enquire into the formation of subjects and citizens within the frame of law and negotiation for rights, from the perspective of practice. The question is simple in the abstract. Rights are prescribed by law.

Il testo raccoglie una sintesi delle riflessioni condotte nel corso di una serie di viaggi di studio nel territorio indiano, compiuti all’interno di un accordo di collaborazione culturale e scientifica con l’Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology di Kolkata.

This study thus aims at throwing light to alternative notions of India’s cultural, social and economic renaissance which were circulated during the final decades of the colonial period and in various ways contributed to the vision of India that would come into being after independence. It focuses on Bengal’s response to Gandhi which was significantly conditioned both by certain regional cultural traits, as well as the colonial constraints faced by Bengali urban elites as they approached the ‘rural question’ as part of their own idea of ‘nation in the making’.

La Prefazione sottolinea come il lavoro di Giuseppe Spagnulo si collochi all’avanguardia di una nuova frontiera di conoscenza nella storia dei rapporti fra Europa e Asia, e porta in primo piano ciò che l’Asia Meridionale ha significato per un Paese come l’Italia in un lungo arco di tempo di oltre tre decenni, iniziato nell’immediato secondo dopoguerra.

The long period of colonial subjection with its adverse effect on India’s economy made development one of the most urgent tasks. While the federal states were to a large extent enabled to devise and implement autonomous development policies, the centre also took up various initiatives aimed at optimising the use of resources in the localities. One of these initiatives, whose gradual evolution spanned over more than fifty years, is the establishment of village and district boards resulting in the so-called Panchayati Raj, i.e.