Continuity in mind: imagination and migration in India and the Gulf

In the context of migration between Uttar Pradesh, other areas of India and the Gulf, this article explores the role of the imagination in shaping subjective experiences of male Muslim migrants from a woodworking industry in the North Indian city of Saharanpur. Through attending to the dreams, aspirations and hopes of labour migrants the article argues that bridging the material and the imagined is critical to understanding, not just patterns of migration, but also the subjective experiences of migrants themselves. Through a descriptive ethnographic account, involving journeys with woodworkers over one and a half years, the article explores the ways in which migration, its effects and connections are shaped by the imagination, yet are also simultaneously active in shaping the imagination, a process which is self-perpetuating. Emerging from this, the article gives attention to continuity at the material, personal and more emotive level. This runs counter to many accounts which situate migration as rupturing or change driving within both the social and the subjective. These continuities play out in complex ways providing comfort and familiarity but also enabling the imaginations of migrants to be subverted, co-opted, influenced and structured to meet the demands of labour markets both domestically and abroad

'Comfort' & 'discomfort': A Brechtian intervention in teaching space & practice

This paper disrupts notions of ‘comfort’ as always being a desirable product when attending to spatial contexts and teaching practice. The paper draws on a long theatrical tradition stemming from the work of Bertolt Brecht which, among other things, seeks to stimulate critical thought not by making the audience comfortable but by creating a sense of ‘discomfort’ through alienation and other techniques. I bring this together with work on ‘critical pedagogy’, which attends to occasions when ‘discomfort’ provides a powerful teaching tool and with anthropological ideas that seek to draw more embodied engagements with ethnography into classroom and lecture contexts. The paper takes a reflexive approach to these interventions, evaluating not only the successes but also problems and challenges that the use of ‘discomfort’ raises.  The article engages with material on critical pedagogy and teaching practice

Conflicting Memories on the River of Death : The Chickamauga Battlefield and the Spanish-American War, 1863-1933

Battles for Rememberance of Lives Lost I have visited the Chickamauga National Military Park many times and my wife enjoyed childhood family outings there, but neither of we two historians had ever heard of the battlefield’s role in the Spanish-American War. One of this book’s main accompl...

'Lean on me': Sifarish, mediation & the digitisation of state bureaucracies in India

Through an ethnographic focus on Muslim neighbourhoods in a North Indian city, this article traces the effects of increasing digitisation of Public Distribution Systems (PDS) and ID provision in India by examining the implications for relations between the state, low-level political actors and local populaces. The article explores the practice of sifarish (leaning on someone to get something done) which, it is argued, cannot be seen within simplistic rubrics of ‘corruption’ but instead comprises a socially embedded ethical continuum. With one of the stated aims of digitisation being the displacing of informal mediation, the ethnographic material illuminates the efforts of low-level political actors to navigate emerging digital infrastructures. Digitisation, however, does not end mediation and carries with it ideological, political and economic interests. This, the article argues, enables state/people spaces of mediation to be commodified and marketized and further cements processes of marginalisation experienced by India’s Muslim minority

Networks, labour and migration among Indian Muslim artisans

Networks, Labour and Migration among Indian Muslim Artisans provides an ethnography of life, work and migration in a North Indian Muslim-dominated woodworking industry. It traces artisanal connections within the local context, during migration within India, and to the Gulf, examining how woodworkers utilise local and transnational networks, based on identity, religiosity, and affective circulations, to access resources, support and forms of mutuality. However, the book also illustrates how liberalisation, intensifying forms of marginalisation and incorporation into global production networks have led to spatial pressures, fragmentation of artisanal labour, and forms of enclavement that persist despite geographical mobility and connectedness. By working across the dialectic of marginality and connectedness, Thomas Chambers thinks through these complexities and dualities by providing an ethnographic account that shares everyday life with artisans and others in the industry. Descriptive detail is intersected with spatial scales of ‘local’, ‘national’ and ‘international’, with the demands of supply chains and labour markets within India and abroad, with structural conditions, and with forms of change and continuity. Empirically, then, the book provides a detailed account of a specific locale, but also contributes to broader theoretical debates centring on theorisations of margins, borders, connections, networks, embeddedness, neoliberalism, subjectivities, and economic or social flux

Family variables which are associated with achievement of community tenure by persons released from psychiatric hospitalization

The pattern of frequent discharges and readmissions which characterizes most psychiatric hospitalization in this country today was described, and it was argued that the costs of this “revolving door” outweigh such benefits as might be derived from it. An alternative stepwise progression model of aftercare was proposed. This model identified community tenure as the most appropriate goal for initial aftercare efforts. Attempts to identify correlates of the establishment of community tenure by mental hospital releasees were reviewed. It was found that the ex-patient\u27s ability to remain in the community is not highly correlated with the extent to which he manifests deviant behavior. This finding was interpreted as an indication that environmental factors may play significant part in ex-patients’ avoidance of rehospitalization. Data were presented which indicated that a clear majority of mental hospital releasees take up residency immediately with family members. It was hypothesized, then, that measurable family variables are correlated with the ability of the ex-patient to achieve community tenure. An attempt was made to examine this hypothesis in the light of relevant research. Studies of the issue which contained substantive empirical support were categorized into four topic areas: family tolerance of the ex-patient\u27s symptomatic behavior, kin role which the family affords to the ex-patient, familial expectations of the ex-patient\u27s performance, and family attitudes and personality characteristics. After reviewing the studies of authors who attempted to assess the degree of correlation between the capacity of the ex-patient’s family to tolerate symptomatic behavior on the part of the ex-patient and the ex-patient’s ability to avoid rehospitalization, it was concluded that the linear correlation between the two variables which would be predicted logically may not exist. A review of studies of the relationship between the kin role which the ex-patient\u27s family affords to him and the ex-patient\u27s ability to achieve community tenure yielded a tentative conclusion that returning to the social biological role of “child” (son or daughter) as opposed to the kin role of spouse was positively correlated with remaining in the community. After examining studies which attempted to explore the relationship between familial expectations of instrumental performance on the part of the ex-patient and the ability of the ex-patient to avoid rehospitalization, it was concluded that little support was provided for the hypothesis that the two variables are related. A survey of attempts to identify family attitude and personality characteristic correlates of ex-patient achievement of community tenure resulted in arrival at the conclusion that such efforts, as a whole, have met with little success, although significant correlations between two general family attitudes toward mental illness and ex-patient avoidance of rehospitalization were found. Considering the findings which were reviewed as a whole, it was concluded that little support was provided for the hypothesis that measurable family variables are correlated with the ability of the ex-patient to achieve community tenure. The rather limited aftercare practice applications which could be drawn from the few correlations that have been discovered were described, and implications of the over-all finding for future research were discussed

Fashionable dis-ease: Promoting health and leisure at Saratoga Springs, New York and the Virginia Springs, 1790-1860

Throughout the early years of the American republic and the first half of the nineteenth century, people journeyed from across the nation and Europe to the bubbling mineral springs of upstate New York and western Virginia in search of a medical cure and pleasant company. Promoters lauded the springs for their restorative powers, fashionable clientele, and picturesque scenery. These dubious attributes combined with the profit motive to create one of the earliest and most successful components of the American tourism and leisure industry. Marketing and producing the mineral waters, as well as the spa experience itself, involved innovation, business acumen, and substantial amounts of capital. Proprietors of these health resorts stood at the forefront of American social and commercial change.;Just as the business of the spas changed, so too did its social setting. While at the springs visitors formed a distinctive culture. They performed complicated rituals of health and leisure that created, reinforced, and projected the aspirations of the national elite. In the process, they exposed the excesses of American culture. With contemporary society divided by the forces of economic and social change, the refined world of the springs seemed a refuge from daily pressures and anxieties. Yet few found peace there. Visitors to the spas negotiated gender roles and social position in an effort to separate the genteel from the crude, and sift the natural elite from social pretenders. at the spas, Americans wrestled with basic tensions between mobility and stability, morality and behavior, gender and social roles, and wealth and status that divided American culture in the first century after independence. Saratoga Springs, New York and the Virginia springs resembled each other more than they differed. Even on the eve of the Civil War, filling hotels and convincing people to drink the waters followed a similar pattern in both North and South. But sectional rivalries strained the easy-going sociability of life at the springs. Attempts to coalesce a national aristocracy in this climate of social change and anxiety proved futile, especially with the advent of sectional conflict in the late 1850s