The Bernard Cohn Omnibus An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other Essays : Colonialism and its forms of Knowledge the British in India : India the Social Anthropology of a Civilization

Insight Orientalist Oxford University Press Relations Classic Roots

Rootsrd Cohn, a strong votary of an interdisciplinary approach, brought together Anthropology and History in his research, subsequently widening the scope of this interaction. His contribution to understanding the Politics of Colonial Knowledge has been acknowledged by Historians and Anthropologists for over three decades. It was his conviction that it was difficult to Study colonialism in South Asia without a study of the accompanying Structural and Cultural changes. This volume brings together posthumously three classic collections of Professor Cohn's essays, which provide a comprehensive understanding of the working of colonialism in South Asia. A lucid foreword by Dipesh Chakrabarty pulls together various strands from the three collections while providing an Insight into Bernard Cohn the person.

An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays is a collection of some of Bernard Cohn's earliest essays. It lays the theoretical foundation for bringing to history the Anthropological tools which are so crucial to the study of colonial South Asia.

Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge examines the manipulations of Language and Law and marks a shift into areas where colonial impact was considered minimal. Cohn here studies the links between knowledge gathering, codification of law based on Orientalist formulations, and the task of governance through inferiorization of the colonized.

India : The Social Anthropology of a Civilization is a historically anchored analysis of Components of Indian civilization which have been of interest to anthropologists. It speaks of castes, religions, land relations, State formations, and the politics of the Indian subcontinent. Cohn's use of ‘civilization' as a focal concept also marks a break from the anthropological Tradition of focus on the village as an analytical unit.

Students and researchers will find this collection indispensable for studying aspects of South Asian history, society, and politics and their Roots in the colonial experience.

Bernard S. Conn, anthropologist, historian, and educator, was Professor Emeritus, Departments of Anthropology and History at the University of Chicago.

Dipesh Chakrabarty is Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of History and South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Jacket Photographs : Ajay Khullar

Foreword/Dipesh Chakrabarty

A. AN Anthropologist AMONG THE Historians AND OTHER Essays :
Introduction/Ranajit Guha
I. History and Anthropology :
1. An Anthropologist Among the Historians : A Field Study
2. History and Anthropology : The State of Play
3. Anthropology and History in the 1980s : Towards a Rapprochement

II. India as a Field of Study :
4. Networks and Centres in the Integration of Indian Civilization
5. The Pasts of an Indian Village
6. Regions Subjective and Objective : Their Relation to the Study of Modern Indian History and Society
7. Notes on the History of the Study of Indian Society and Culture
8. Is There a New Indian History? Society and Social Change under the Raj
9. African Models and Indian Histories
10. The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia

III. Untouchables :
11. The Changing Status of a Depressed Caste
12. The Changing Traditions of a Low Caste
13. Madhopur Revisited
14. Chamar Family in a North Indian Village : A Structural Contingent

IV. The British in Benares :
15. The Initial British Impact on India : A Case Study of the Benares Region
16. Structural Change in Indian Rural Society 1596-1885
17. The British in Benares : A Nineteenth Century Colonial Society
18. From Indian Status to British Contract
19. Political Systems in Eighteenth-Century India : The Benares Region
20. The Recruitment and Training of British Civil Servants in India
21. Some Notes on Law and Change in North India
22. Anthropological Notes on Law and Disputes in North India

V. Representations of Empire :
23. Representing Authority in Victorian India

B. COLONIALISM AND ITS FORMS OF Knowledge : THE BRITISH IN INDIA :
Foreword/Nicholas B. Dirks
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. The Command of Language and the Language of Command
3. Law and the Colonial State in India
4. The Transformation of Objects into Artifacts, Antiquities, and Art in Nineteenth-Century India
5. Cloth, Clothes, and Colonialism: India in the Nineteenth-Century

Notes
Index

C. INDIA : THE SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF A Civilization :
Foreword/Cyan Prakash
1. Approaches to the Study of Indian Civilization
2. India as a Geographic Entity
3. Cultural and Historical Geography
4. Demography, Economic Structures, and Language
5. The Shaping of the Civilization : Views of the Past
6. The Cultural and Structural History of India : Hindu Beginnings and Islamic Penetrations
7. The Mughal Period and European Conquest
8. Cultural and Structural History : Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
9. Urbanization, Education and Social and Cultural Change
10. Indian Social Structure and Culture : Introduction
11. Indian Social Structure and Culture : Caste
12. The Indian Village

Conclusion