The intention of this work is to show that European expansion not only transformed the historical trajectory of non-European societies but also reconstituted the historical accounts of these societies before European intervention. It asserts that anthropology must pay more attention to history.

Europe and the People without History

Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Briggs, Asa and Peter Burke. 2005. A Social History of the Media from Gutenberg to the Internet. Cambridge: Polity Press. Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. 2006. \"Introduction: Did Somebody Say New Media?\" In Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Thomas Kennan eds., New Media/Old Media: A History and Theory Reader. New York: Routledge, pp. 1-11. Deibert, Ronald. 1997. Parchment, Printing and Hypermedia: Communication in World Order Transformation. New York: Columbia University Press. Elsaesser, Thomas. 2006. \"Early Film History and Multi-Media: An Archaeology of Possible Futures?\" In Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Thomas Kennan eds., New Media/Old Media: A History and Theory Reader. New York: Routledge, pp. 13-26. Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Luhman, Niklas. 2000. The Reality of the Mass Media. Cambridge: Polity Press. Mirzoeff, Nicholas. 2006. \"Network Subjects or, The Ghost is the Message.\" In Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Thomas Keenan eds., New Media/Old Media: A History and Theory Reader. New York: Routledge, pp. 335-345. Saenger, Paul. 1997. \"Introduction\" to Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 1-17. Thorburn, David and Henry Jenkins eds. 2003. Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition. Boston: MIT Press.

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (review)

The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism

Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. By Bruno Latour. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004; pp. x + 307. $55.00 cloth; $24.95 paper. The academic study of environmental ethics, particularly of "deep ecology," has generated extensive scholarly discussion in recent years. Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences Into Democracy, by French author Bruno Latour, brings a fascinating and bold new twist to contemporary discussions about the nature of "nature." Latour proposes a radical shift in current conceptions of "political ecology," arguing that mainstream environmental movements are doomed to fail so long as they envision political ecology as inextricably tied to the protection and management of nature through political methodologies and policies. Instead, political ecology should abandon socially constructed representations of nature as an uncontrollable monolith. The former perspective is dangerous, Latour argues, because it enables science to silence public deliberation about ecological issues and close off options to prevent pending environmental crises. The rhetoric of science, whose credibility emanates from the dual sources of indisputable expertise and dire warnings, paralyzes the polis. Unable to contest scientific fact, and faced with pending environmental cataclysm, public and political discussion centered on the inevitable question of "What next?" becomes stagnant and devoid of solutions. In the first chapter, Latour argues that "nature is the chief obstacle that has hampered the development of public discourse" (9). Nature, or at least the agreed-upon external reality that is often represented as nature, allows science to render the public sphere voiceless. Unqualified to objectively test and observe natural facts, the polis is relegated to the sidelines, and engages in endless quibbling about matters of value which are a rung lower on the hierarchy of social concerns. The hegemony of science and the god-like status of the scientist, who is the only legitimate liaison between the natural world and the public, render meaningful political discourse impotent. "[T]he Scientist can go back and forth from one world to the other no matter what: the passageway closed to all others is open to him alone" (11). Latour concludes this chapter by examining how Western societies, particularly the United States, use nature to order and organize political life. Uncontestable facts of nature, and rhetoric that represents nature as something to be controlled, protected, or managed, permeate everyday political discourse and decision-making to a degree not seen in other cultures. Having thrown off the yoke of nature, Latour sketches one precondition for a more communal and sustainable political ecology in chapter 2. Here, a critique of anthropocentrism is used to cast off false, socially constructed distinctions between human and nonhuman, including animals and inanimate objects like rocks and trees. Of particular interest to rhetorical scholars, Latour also criticizes at length the modernist belief that speech and the capacity for rational thought distinguish humans from nonhumans. Instead, he posits that political ecology must be recast as a collective of beings both human and nonhuman, both capable of speech and mute: "a slight displacement of our attention suffices to show that nonhumans, too, are implicated in a great number of speech impedimenta" (62-63). This rethinking of the public collective is necessary to prevent scientists from imposing the idea that they definitively represent and speak for nature (the mute objects that they seek so earnestly to protect). …

Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy

Preface vii Acknowledgments xi Chapter 1. What Is Language? 1 Chapter 2. Do Animals Have Language? 21 Chapter 3. In the Beginning Was the Gesture 41 Chapter 4. On Our Own Two Feet 66 Chapter 5. Becoming Human 82 Chapter 6. Signed Language 102 Chapter 7. It's All Talk 126 Chapter 8. Why Are We Lopsided? 159 Chapter 9. From Hand to Mouth 184 Chapter 10. Synopsis 213 References 221 Index 247

Gestural Gab@@@From Hand to Mouth: The Origins of Language

"The Wrestler's Body" tells the story of a way of life organized in terms of physical self-development. While Indian wrestlers are competitive athletes, they are also moral reformers whose conception of self and society is fundamentally somatic. Using the insights of anthropology, Joseph Alter writes an ethnography of the wrestler's physique that elucidates the somatic structure of the wrestler's identity and ideology. Young men in North India may choose to join an akhara, or gymnasium, where they subject themselves to a complex program of physical and moral fitness. Alter's first-hand description of each detail of the wrestler's regimen offers a unique perspective on South Asian culture and society. Wrestlers feel that moral reform of Indian national character is essential and advocate their way of life as an ideology of national health. Everyone is called on to become a wrestler and build collective strength through self-discipline.

The Wrestler's Body: Identity and Ideology in North India

No single person is more directly associated with India and India's struggle for independence than Mahatma Gandhi. His name has equally become synonymous with the highest principles of global equality, human dignity, and freedom. Joseph Alter argues, however, that Gandhi has not been completely understood by biographers and political scholars, and in Gandhi's Body he undertakes a reevaluation of the Mahatma's life and thought. In his revisionist and iconoclastic approach, Alter moves away from the usual focus on nonviolence, peace, and social reform and takes seriously what most scholars who have studied Gandhi tend to ignore: Gandhi's preoccupation with sex, his obsession with diet reform, and his vehement advocacy for naturopathy. Alter concludes that a distinction cannot be made between Gandhi's concern with health, faith in nonviolence, and his sociopolitical agenda. In this original and provocative study, Joseph Alter demonstrates that these seemingly idiosyncratic aspects of Gandhi's personal life are of central importance to understanding his politics-and not only Gandhi's politics but Indian nationalism in general. Using the Mahatma's own writings, Alter places Gandhi's bodily practices in the context of his philosophy; for example, he explores the relationship between Gandhi's fasting and his ideas about the metaphysics of emptiness and that between his celibacy and his beliefs about nonviolence. Alter also places Gandhi's ideas and practices in their national and transnational contexts. He discusses how and why nature cure became extremely popular in India during the early part of the twentieth century, tracing the influence of two German naturopaths on Gandhi's thinking and on the practice of yoga in India. More important, he argues that the reconstruction of yoga in terms of European naturopathy was brought about deliberately by a number of activists in India-of whom Gandhi was only the most visible-interested in creating a "scientific" health regimen, distinct from Western precedents, that would make the Indian people fit for self-rule. Gandhi's Body counters established arguments that Indian nationalism was either a completely indigenous Hindu-based movement or simply a derivative of Western ideals.

Gandhi's Body: Sex, Diet, and the Politics of Nationalism

List of Illustrations xi Preface xiii Acknowledgments xxi PART 1 INTRODUCTION AND ORIENTATION chapter 1 Historicizing Yoga: The Life and Times of Liberated Souls 3 CHAPTER 2 Yoga and the Supramental Being: Materialism, Metaphysics, and Social Reality 32 PART 2 YOGA'S MODERN HISTORY AND PRACTICE CHAPTER 3 Swami Kuvalayananda: Science, Yoga, and Global Modernity 73 CHAPTER 4 Birth of the Anti-Clinic: Naturopathic Yoga in a Post-Gandhian, Postcolonial State 109 CHAPTER 5 Dr. Karandikar, Dr. Pal, and the RSS: Purification, Subtle Gymnastics, and Man Making 142 PART 3 CONCLUSION 6 Auto-Urine Therapy--The Elixir of Life: Yoga, A yurveda, and Self-Perfection 181 CHAPTER 7 Mimetic Skepticism and Yoga: Moving beyond the Problem of Culture and Relativism 211 Notes 247 Glossary 273 References 283 Index 309

Yoga in Modern India: The Body between Science and Philosophy

List of Tables Acknowledgments Foreword by Joseph Alter 1. introduction 2. "now the fun of exercise can be realized": from calisthenics and gymnastics ticao to sports tiyu in the 1910s 3. "mind, muscle, and money": a physical culture for the 1920s 4. nationalism and power in the physical culture of the 1920s 5. "we can also be the controllers and oppressors": social bodies and national physiques 6. elite competitive sport in the 1930s 7. from martial arts to national skills: the construction of a modern indigenous physical culture, 1912--37 8. tiyu through wartime and "liberation" Glossary of Names Glossary of Terms Notes Bibliography Index

Marrow of the Nation: A History of Sport and Physical Culture in Republican China

It is well known that mahatma gandhi felt that sexuality and desire were intimately connected to social life and politics, and that self-control translated directly into power of various kinds, both public and private. Gandhi's enigmatic genius and his popular appeal among India's masses may be attributed, at least in part, to the degree he was able to embody a powerful ideal of sexual self-control that linked his sociopolitical projects to pervasive Hindu notions of renunciation (S. Rudolph 1967). Affecting the persona of a world-renouncer, Gandhi was able to mix political, religious, and moral power, thus translating personal self-control into radical social criticism and nationalist goals. Gandhi's mass appeal was partly effected on a visceral level at which many Hindu men were able to fully appreciate the logic of celibacy as a means to psychological security, self-improvement, and national reform. Although my concern in this paper is not directly with Gandhi's notion of self-control, it is against the larger backdrop of his political legacy that I situate this discussion of sexuality, gender, and nationalism in contemporary India.

Joseph S. Alter

Papers

The Wrestler's Body: Identity and Ideology in North India

Gandhi's Body: Sex, Diet, and the Politics of Nationalism

Yoga in Modern India: The Body between Science and Philosophy

Marrow of the Nation: A History of Sport and Physical Culture in Republican China

Celibacy, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Gender into Nationalism in North India