Colonial And Post Colonial Geographies Of India

This collection of original essays by scholars of geography from India, Western Europe, and the USA provides important insights into the way contemporary geographers are engaging with India. The earlier narrow colonial focus that saw India as a country of resources and "peoples" (tribes and castes) has now been discarded for a broader view located in mainstream intellectual frameworks and informed by a public policy perspective. This volume highlights how contemporary geographers see and write on topics such as the state, nation, community, environment, and division of labor, while keeping in mind issues of spatiality and territoriality.

Postcolonialism and geography are intimately linked through the spatiality of colonial discourse as well as the material effects of colonialism and decolonization.Geographical ideas about space, place, landscape, and location have helped to articulate different experiences of colonialism both in the past and present and the "here" and "there". At the same time, while spatial images such as mobility, margins and exile abound in postcolonial writings, more material geographies have often been overlooked.Postcolonial Geographies presents the first sustained geographical analysis of postcolonialism. Exploring and developing the connections between postcolonialism and geography, the essays in this book—ranging across Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa, and North America—investigate the geographies of postcolonialism and chart the contours of a postcolonial geography. Contributors:Morag Bell, Claire Dwyer, Haydie Gooder, Jane M. Jacobs, M. Satish Kumar, Alan Lester, Mark McGuinness, Karen M. Morin, Richard Phillips, Marcus Power, Jenny Robinson, James D. Sidaway, John Wylie>

Postcolonialism is a book that examines the influence of postcolonial theory in critical geographical thought and scholarship. Aimed at advanced-level students and researchers, the book is a lively, stimulating and relevant introduction to ‘postcolonial geography’ that elaborates on the critical interventions in social, cultural and political life this important subfield is poised to make. The book is structured around three intersecting parts – Spaces, 'Identity'/hybridity, Knowledge – that broadly follow the trajectory of postcolonial studies since the late 1970s. It comprises ten main chapters, each of which is situated at the intersections of postcolonialism and critical human geography. In doing so, Postcolonialism develops three key arguments. First, that postcolonialism is best conceived as an intellectually creative and practical set of methodologies or approaches for critically engaging existing manifestations of power and exclusion in everyday life and in taken-as-given spaces. Second, that postcolonialism is, at its core, concerned with the politics of representation, both in terms of how people and space are represented, but also the politics surrounding who is able to represent themselves and on what/whose terms. Third, the book argues that postcolonialism itself is an inherently geographical intellectual enterprise, despite its origins in literary theory. In developing these arguments and addressing a series of relevant and international case studies and examples throughout, Postcolonialism not only demonstrates the importance of postcolonial theory to the contemporary critical geographical imagination. It also argues that geographers have much to offer to continued theorizations and workings of postcolonial theory, politics and intellectual debates going forward. This is a book that brings critical analyses of the continued and omnipresent legacies of colonialism and imperialism to the heart of human geography, but also one that returns an avowedly critical geographical disposition to the core of interdisciplinary postcolonial studies.

India has often been at the centre of debates on and definitions of the postcolonial condition. Offering a challenging new direction for the field, this Critical Reader confronts how theory in the Indian context is responding in vital terms to our understanding of that condition today. The Indian Postcolonial: A Critical Reader is made up of four sections looking in turn at: visual cultures translating cultural traditions the ethical text global/cosmopolitan worlds. Each section is prefaced with a short introduction by the editors that locate these interdisciplinary articles within the contemporary national and international context. Showcasing the diversity and vitality of current debate, this volume collects the work of both established figures and a new generation of cultural critics. Challenging and unsettling many basic premises of postcolonial studies, this volume is the ideal Reader for students and scholars of the Indian Postcolonial.

Extensively revised, the second edition of Geographies of Postcolonialism introduces the principal themes and theories related to postcolonialism. Written from a geographical perspective, the text includes extended explanations of the cultural and material spaces of the colonial and postcolonial power and representation. Exploring postcolonialism through the geographies of imagination, knowledge and power, the text analyses the history of western representations of the "Other" and engages with the important conceptual contributions of postcolonial theory. Comprehensive, accessible and illustrated with learning features throughout, Geographies of Postcolonialism will be the key resource for students interested in the geographical and spatial dimensions of colonialism and postcolonialism. Jo Sharp is Professor of Geography at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.

When did categories such as a national space and economy acquire self-evident meaning and a global reach? Why do nationalist movements demand a territorial fix between a particular space, economy, culture, and people? Producing India mounts a formidable challenge to the entrenched practice of methodological nationalism that has accorded an exaggerated privilege to the nation-state as a dominant unit of historical and political analysis. Manu Goswami locates the origins and contradictions of Indian nationalism in the convergence of the lived experience of colonial space, the expansive logic of capital, and interstate dynamics. Building on and critically extending subaltern and postcolonial perspectives, her study shows how nineteenth-century conceptions of India as a bounded national space and economy bequeathed an enduring tension between a universalistic political economy of nationhood and a nativist project that continues to haunt the present moment. Elegantly conceived and judiciously argued, Producing India will be invaluable to students of history, political economy, geography, and Asian studies.

A fresh approach to scholarship on the diverse nature of Indian anticolonial processes. Brings together a varied selection of literature to explore Indian anticolonialism in new ways Offers a different perspective to geographers seeking to understand political resistance to colonialism Addresses contemporary studies that argue nationalism was joined by other political processes, such as revolutionary and anarchist ideologies, to shape the Indian independence movement Includes a focus on a specific anticolonial group, the “Pondicherry Gang,” and investigates their significant impact which went beyond South India Helps readers understand the diverse nature of anticolonialism, which in turn prompts thinking about the various geographies produced through anticolonial activity

"Drawing on a course road tested for over a decade, Sharp has delivered an invaluable aid for teaching students about the complex political, cultural and spatial logics of colonialism and post-colonialism. Difficult theoretical jargon is demystified and the generous use of illustrations and quotes from both academic and popular sources means students can work with manageable measures of primary material. This book has succeeded in delivering a meaningful conversation between political economic accounts of development and cultural accounts of identity. It is a must-have for anyone studying colonialism and post-colonialism." - Jane M Jacobs, Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh Geographies of Post-Colonialism introduces the principal themes and theories relating to postcolonialism. Written from a geographical perspective, the text includes extended explanations of the cultural and material aspects of the subject. Exploring post-colonialism through the geographies of imagination, knowledge and power, the text is split into three comprehensive sections: Colonialisms discusses Western representations of the ′Other′ and the relationship between this and the European self-image. Neo-colonialisms discusses the continuing legacies of colonial ways of knowing through an examination of global culture, tourism and popular culture. Post-colonialisms discusses the core arguments about post-colonialism and culture with a focus on ′hybridity′. Comprehensive and accessible, illustrated with learning features throughout, Geographies of Post-Colonialism will be the key resource for students in human geography and development studies.

Round Table Conference Geographies explores a major international conference in 1930s London which determined India's constitutional future in the British Empire. Pre-dating the decolonising conferences of the 1950s–60s, the Round Table Conference laid the blueprint for India's future federal constitution. Despite this the conference is unanimously read as a failure, for not having comprehensively reconciled the competing demands of liberal and Indian National Congress politicians, of Hindus and Muslims, and of British versus Princely India. This book argues that the conference's three sessions were vital sites of Indian and imperial politics that demand serious attention. It explores the spatial politics of the conference in terms of its imaginary geographies, infrastructures, host city, and how the conference was contested and represented. The book concludes by asking who gained through representing the conference as a failure and explores it, instead, as a teeming political, social and material space.