Ronald Inden

Bio: Ronald Inden is an academic researcher from University of Chicago. The author has contributed to research in topics: Bengali & Kinship. The author has an hindex of 8, co-authored 13 publications receiving 575 citations.

Orientalist Constructions of India

Abstract: Now it is the interest of Spirit that external conditions should become internal ones; that the natural and the spiritual world should be recognized in the subjective aspect belonging to intelligence; by which process the unity of subjectivity and (positive) Being generally—or the Idealism of Existence—is established. This Idealism, then, is found in India, but only as an Idealism of imagination, without distinct conceptions;—one which does indeed free existence from Beginning and Matter (liberates it from temporal limitations and gross materiality), but changes everything into the merely Imaginative; for although the latter appears interwoven with definite conceptions and Thought presents itself as an occasional concomitant, this happens only through accidental combination. Since, however, it is the abstract and absolute Thought itself that enters into these dreams as their material, we may say that Absolute Being is presented here as in the ecstatic state of a dreaming condition (Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 139).

Querying the Medieval: Texts and the History of Practices in South Asia

Abstract: Indologist Ronald Inden has in the past raised questions about the images of a "traditional" or "medieval" India deployed by colonial scholars and rulers - "Orientalists" - and has also argued that a history of "early medieval" India very different from both the colonial and nationalist accounts could be written. This volume is designed as an important first step towards that goal. The authors look closely at three genres of texts that have been crucial to the representations of precolonial India. All three essays challenge not only colonialist scholarship but the attempts by religious nationalists to identify Hinduism as the essence of national identity in Idia and Buddhism as the essence of nationality in Sri Lanka.

Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for "Indian" Pasts?

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Putting Hierarchy in Its Place

Abstract: On the face of it, an exploration of the idea of the "native" in anthropological discourse may not appear to have much to do with the genealogy of the idea of hierarchy. But I wish to argue that hierarchy is one of an anthology of images in and through which anthropologists have frozen the contribution of specific cultures to our understanding of the human condition. Such metonymic freezing has its roots in a deeper assumption of anthropological thought regarding the boundedness of cultural units and the confinement of the varieties of human consciousness within these boundaries. The idea of the "native" is the principal expression of this assumption, and thus the genealogy of hierarchy needs to be seen as one local instance of the dynamics of the construction of natives. Although the term native has a respectable antiquity in Western thought and has often been used in positive and self-referential ways, it has gradually become the technical preserve of anthropologists. Although some other words taken from the vocabulary of missionaries, explorers, and colonial administrators have been expunged from anthropological usage, the term native has retained its currency, serving as a respectable substitute for terms like primitive, about which we now feel some embarrassment. Yet the term native, whether we speak of "native categories," or "native belief-systems" or "native agriculture," conceals certain ambiguities. We sense this ambiguity, for example, in the restricted use of the adjective nativistic, which is typically used not only for one sort of revivalism, but for revivalism among certain kinds of population. Who is a "native" (henceforth without quotation marks) in the anthropological usage? The quick answer to this question is that the native is a person who is born in (and thus belongs to) the place the anthropologist is observing or writing about. This sense of the word native is fairly narrowly, and neutrally, tied to its Latin etymology. But do we use the term native uniformly to refer to people who are born in certain places and, thus, belong to them? We do not. We have tended

is homo hierarchicus

Abstract: Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way. E. VALENTINE DANIEL. The Untouchable as Himself: Ideology, Identity and Pragmatism among the Lucknow Chamars. RAVINDRA S. KHARE. The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism. ASHIS NANDY.

Radical American Environmentalism and Wilderness Perservation: A Third World Critique

Abstract: This chapter presents a Third World critique of the trend in American environmentalism known as deep ecology, analyzing each of deep ecology’s central tenets. These are the distinction between anthropocentrism and biocentrism, the focus on wilderness preservation, the invocation of Eastern traditions, and the belief that it represents the most radical trend within environmentalism. The chapter argues that the anthropocentrism/biocentrism distinction is of little use in understanding the dynamics of environmental degredation, that the implementation of the wilderness agenda is causing serious deprivation in the Third World. It outlines the environmental movement in India, a country with an ecological diversity comparable to the US, but with a radically dissimilar cultural and social history. The chapter concludes that despite its claims to universality, deep ecology is firmly rooted in American environmental and cultural history and is inappropriate when applied to the Third World.

Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India

Abstract: Part I. The State and the Poor: 1. Seeing the state 2. Technologies of rule and the war on poverty Part II. The Everyday State and Society: 3. Meeting the state 4. Participation 5. Governance 6. Political society Part III. The Poor and the State: 7. Protesting the state 8. Postcolonialism, development studies and spaces of empowerment 9. Postscript: development ethics and the ethics of critique.