South Indian Town Research Articles

Remoteness and Development: Transnational Constructions of Heritage in a Former Danish Trading Colony in South India

The South Indian town of Tranquebar, a Danish trading colony in the period 1620–1845, has been declared a heritage town by the government of Tamil Nadu, due to the well‐preserved Indo‐Danish townscape and its tourism potential. Both Indian and Danish stakeholders are working for the preservation of the town as an expression of cultural heritage and for its development as a tourist destination. Analyzing how perceptions of development and history are at stake in this transnational process of post‐colonial heritage‐making, I argue that a widely shared conception of Tranquebar as an underdeveloped “remote area” is central to the construction of Tranquebar as a heritage town. Drawing on Edwin Ardener’s theoretical conception of remoteness as an aspect of not only physical space but conceptual space, the article explores the ways in which conceptions of remoteness and (under)development tie in with narrations of history in this former colony.

Poetics of Conduct: Oral Narrative and Moral Being in a South Indian Town by Leela Prasad

American EthnologistVolume 36, Issue 4 p. 806-807 Poetics of Conduct: Oral Narrative and Moral Being in a South Indian Town by Leela Prasad NICOLA TANNENBAUM, NICOLA TANNENBAUM Lehigh UniversitySearch for more papers by this author NICOLA TANNENBAUM, NICOLA TANNENBAUM Lehigh UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 06 November 2009 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1425.2009.01211_7.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume36, Issue4November 2009Pages 806-807 RelatedInformation

Poetics of Conduct: Oral Narrative and Moral Being in a South Indian TownBy Leela Prasad. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Pp. ix+291. $26.50.

<i>Poetics of Conduct: Oral Narrative and Moral Being in a South Indian Town</i>By Leela Prasad. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Pp. ix+291. $26.50.

Prasad, Leela: Poetics of Conduct: Oral Narrative and Moral Being in a South Indian Town, 2007

Prasad, Leela: Poetics of Conduct: Oral Narrative and Moral Being in a South Indian Town, 2007

Poetics of Conduct: Oral Narrative and Moral Being in a South Indian Town. By Leela Prasad. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. xv, 291 pp. $75.50 (cloth); $25.50 (paper).

Poetics of Conduct: Oral Narrative and Moral Being in a South Indian Town. By Leela Prasad. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. xv, 291 pp. $75.50 (cloth); $25.50 (paper).

A Pilot Survey of Sexual Functioning and Preferences in a Sample of English-Speaking Adults from a Small South Indian Town

There is a dearth of recent information on sexual functioning and preferences from an Indian population. To study sexual functioning and preferences in a sample of English-speaking adults in a small town in South India. Responses were obtained through a postal questionnaire method and were analyzed. Study document included an explanation of the study, sociodemographic details, a sexual functioning questionnaire, a semistructured sexual preference questionnaire, and meanings of terms used in the questionnaires. Frequency of various sexual functions, difficulties, and preferences over a period of 1 month. Sixty-one subjects out of 200 English-speaking persons from a south Indian town returned the questionnaire. Common sexual difficulties included decreased interest in sex (16.4%), arousal difficulties (21.3%), orgasmic difficulties in females (28.6%), and premature ejaculation in males (15.2%). Masturbation was considered wrong by 18% of respondents; with almost 40% of females and 6% of males reported to have never masturbated. There were many differences in the sexual functioning of married compared to unmarried persons and other sociodemographic groups. Practice of various sexual preferences was reported: voyeurism (41.0%), fetishism (18.0%), frotteurism (11.5%), homosexuality (11.5%), telephone scatology (9.8%), and incest (8.2%) being more common. In a small minority, telephone scatology (3.3%), voyeurism (1.6%), and fetishism (1.6%) were reported to be the only method of sexual gratification. Sexual difficulties were similar to other reports in different cultures. Varieties of preferences were practiced, and there were variations among different sociodemographic groups.

Poetics of Conduct: Oral Narrative and Moral Being in a South Indian Town – By Leela Prasad

Poetics of Conduct: Oral Narrative and Moral Being in a South Indian Town – By Leela Prasad

Rethinking the Ethnographic Local

This article reviews four recent books on workers in the global economy. Taking a range of approaches, these monographs draw on qualitative data to describe workplaces and workers in a variety of economic, cultural, and political contexts. Wilson’s analysis of “intimate economies” in Bangkok brings together economic processes with the multiple social identities of worker-consumers. Adler and Adler offer a deeply grounded portrait of diverse types of workers in Hawaiian resort hotels, who make meaningful selfhoods in an environment of transience and unstable temporalities. Chari brings the politics of production together with history, culture, and identity discourses to explain the particularities of garment manufacture in one South Indian town. Esbenshade evaluates the myriad efforts to monitor garment production worldwide, highlighting the tensions between private models, which are largely ineffective except in the area of public relations for manufacturers, and an independent model that aims to promote worker empowerment.

OPL040 A cross-sectional, door-to-door epidemiological study of the prevalence of stroke in socio-economically and racially varied populations in Pondicherry, a coastal South Indian town

OPL040 A cross-sectional, door-to-door epidemiological study of the prevalence of stroke in socio-economically and racially varied populations in Pondicherry, a coastal South Indian town

Water contamination in urban south India: household storage practices and their implications for water safety and enteric infections

Water contamination, at source and during household storage, is a major cause of enterically transmitted infections in developing countries. This study assessed contamination of the municipal water in a south Indian town, which obtains its water intermittently from a surface lake and by pumping subsurface water from a dry river bed, and monitored microbial contamination during household storage. All samples of the 'treated' municipal water were contaminated when freshly pumped, and on household storage, 25/37 (67%) showed increased contamination during storage periods from 1 to 9 days. Household storage in brass, but not in containers of other materials significantly decreased contamination of water (p = 0.04). This was confirmed in the laboratory by testing water seeded with 10(3) to 10(5) Escherichia coli per 100 ml stored in containers of different materials (p < 0.01). Despite the requirements for provision of safe drinking water in municipal areas, in practice the water supplied in Vellore is contaminated and current household storage practices increase the level of contamination in at least two-thirds of households. The implementation of locally appropriate point-of-use disinfection and safe household storage practices in developing countries is an urgent need to ensure a safe, reliable year-round supply in areas where clean water is not available.

How Efficiently is Capital Allocated? Evidence from the Knitted Garment Industry in Tirupur

This paper studies the effect of community identity on investment behaviour in the knitted garment industry in the South Indian town of Tirupur. We document very large and systematic differences in both levels of capital stock and the capital intensity of production in firms owned by people from two different community groups. We argue that the differences in investment cannot be explained by productivity differences alone. We suggest that the most likely explanation is that the two communities differ in their access to capital.

Religion and social psychology perspectives: A study of an old age group in the South Indian town of Tirupati

While examining the socio-psychological problems of the retirees, the paper not only specifies the problems but also shows the approaches of the retirees to those problems. The discussion centers round the problems of social isolation and loneliness, perception on special position given to the retirees as aged persons, lack of companionship due to demise of spouse / friend / child / grand-child, ambitions of the retirees in terms of children's’ welfare, religious interest, physical and mental well being, creative and intellectual activities, economic matters, perception on urbanisation, type of the family, relations with kith and kin, generation gap, and management of the family.

Networks, Migration And Investment: Insiders And Outsiders In Tirupur's Production Cluster

This paper studies the effects of social network based lending. This is a pervasive phenomenon in most of the developing world. Access to such network capital has an obvious influence on investment. It also influences the pattern of migration since, ceteris paribus, migrants would prefer to be in locations where they have access to their community's lending network. We show that under reasonable conditions such lending will generate a rather specific pattern of migration and investment. In particular migrants to locations where they do not have access to their community's lending networks will tend to have higher ability than the traditional residents of that location, but will invest less relative to their ability. Under some conditions this generates the possibility that migrants have higher ability but invest less in absolute terms than the local people do. We test this implication using data from the knitted garment industry in the South Indian town of Tirupur. Comparing the growth rate of output (which, we argue, proxies well for ability) with investment between garment firms owned by migrants to Tirupur and local people, we find that local people have slower output growth but invest substantially more at all levels of experience. We also find a positive correlation between investment and growth within any single community; consistent with the view that capital access does not vary within each group.

Asking for and giving baki: Neo-bondage, or the interplay of bondage and resistance in the Tamilnadu power-loom industry

This paper on labour relations in the power-loom industry of the south Indian town Kumarapalayam (Salem district, Tamilnadu) explores the dynamics of this practice of 'ask ing for and giving baki', employers' advances to their labourers, which has now become a widespread custom within this capitalist, industrial and urban setting. The introduction of this practice is related to the manufacturer-employers' search for a stable, skilled and disciplined workforce, the entry of a non-traditional weaving caste (Vellalar Gounder) into this industry, and the exclusion of particular groups on the basis of caste, gender and skill. The effects of giving advances on labour relations and labour turnover, however, reveal the problematic nature of this practice. Although employers have undoubtedly attempted to reintroduce through debt a form of labour attachment within this small-scale power-loom industry, the effectiveness of this strategy is highly paradoxical as labourers continuously escape bonds by moving to other employers, factories and even towns. It is suggested that a study of the dynamics and dialectics of imposing bonds and escaping ties may further our understanding of how labour bondage and its contestation take shape in an urban, industrial context.

Of networks and markets: The rise and rise of a South Indian town, the example of Tiruppur's cotton knitwear industry

Tiruppur town is the center of a tightly clustered range of activities related to the cotton knitwear industry. The successful and dramatic expansion which has taken place over the last 15 years has meant many more jobs, limited technological improvement, improved quality in yarn and fabric and an increasingly diverse range of garments. For the larger firms in the industry, access to export markets has been the driving force to improving their competitiveness. Wages remain low and working conditions poor, however, perhaps partly because capital concentration has not, on the whole, been accompanied by centralized, vertically integrated production. Nevertheless, clustering and dense interfirm networks provide advantages for firms of all sizes since process specialization is spatially divisible.

Blue Mountains: The Ethnography and Biogeography of a South Indian Region. Edited by Paul Hockings. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989. xiv, 406 pp. Rs. 350.00.

The first general survey in 80 years of the geography and anthropology of the Nilgiris district of south India, this book makes a unique contribution to the growing literature on this region. The contributors, from a variety of disciplines, offer fourteen original studies including the first overview of Nilgir languages, the most recent account of the Kotas, the first archaeological survey of the region since 1873, a detailed biogeographical overview in an anthropological account of south India, and the first sociolinguistic study of a south Indian town.

Doctors dispensing medications: Contemporary India and 19th century England

In developing countries the widespread use of medications in ways that are unsafe and inappropriate is a threat to health and a waste of scarce resources. It is possible that doctors contribute to the problem when, as in rural India, the doctor earns a living by selling medications rather than by charging a consultation fee and writing a prescription; the incentive is to medicate irrespective of the diagnosis. In this article, doctor-patient roles and paying for the doctor's services in a South Indian town are described. Similarities between the town and 19th century England in regard to doctor-patient roles are noted and analyzed.

‘Generative’ or ‘parasitic’ urbanism? Some observations from the recent history of a South Indian market town

Using data from sample surveys in a South Indian market town in 1973 and 1982–3, the paper examines the different views ofMellor andLipton on the relations of small towns and their hinterlands, in the context of a growing agricultural economy. It is shown that the pattern of demand which has been generated by the ‘green revolution’ has not encouraged decentralised production, as in Mellor's model. It does appear, however, that a net transfer of resources from the countryside to the town, such as Lipton ‘s model postulates, has been taking place, though the authors remain sceptical about this model as an explanation.