Tiplut Nongbri & Rashi Bhargava 
Materiality and Visuality in North East India [PDF ebook] 
An Interdisciplinary Perspective

This edited book set in the context of North East India explores issues concerning symbols, meanings, representations, and social implications of materiality and visuality, as well as the dynamics of power, social reproduction, ideological dominance and knowledge production, from an interdisciplinary perspective. It seeks to answer the question of why some things matter more than others or what happens when certain things are made more visible than others. The book provides valuable insights into the process of identity construction through the use of cultural sources, both material and visual. Following on the debates/discussions on material and visual culture in the 1970s and 1980s, the book argues that instead of viewing objects as mere representation(s), one should see them as active agents in creating perceptions, bodily practices, discourses and perceptions of our social world. Each chapter in the book unravels and engages with these pertinent issues in order to arrive at amore comprehensive understanding of the status quo. The book is of interest to scholars of ethnicity, identity construction, politics and state, cultural studies, media studies, visual, social and cultural anthropology and sociology, as well as lay readers who want to learn more about the region.

Table des matières

Negotiating the Visibility of ‘Habitus’ of ‘the Nagas’ and their Photographers.- ‘We were the Others’: Visuality in Colonial Writings.- Conversation Pieces: How Digital Technologies might Reinvigorate and Reveal the Social Lives of Objects.- Mai-baaps and Minis: Spatiality, Visuality and Materiality in Assam’s Tea Gardens.- Mapping Power and Domination: Studying State Making in Arunachal Pradesh through Old Official Photographs.- Hau Laa and Hymn: Musicking dynamics of the Hau-Tangkhuls.- Sartorial Matters: A Brief History of Attire in Mizoram.- Representing Tea, Creating Consumers: Tea Advertising in Late Colonial India.- Food is not just ‘food’: Analyzing Gender in the Assamese Foodscape.- Tilted Views and C Sailo: A Study of Satire in Contemporary Indie Comics.- Reimagining the Pastoral: Metaphors and Meanings of the Everyday in Assam and India’s Northeast.- Weaving Identity and Resistance: Politics of Contemporary Textile Practices of the Tangkhuls.

A propos de l’auteur

Tiplut Nongbri is currently Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew Chair Professor at the Centre for North East Study and Policy Research, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She had taught Sociology at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, JNU. She was the founding director of the North East India Studies Programme, JNU. She has published widely. Her research interests include family and kinship, studies of tribes and marginal groups, environmental sociology and development issues. 





Rashi Bhargava is currently Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology, Maitreyi College, University of Delhi, New Delhi (India). She has a Doctorate in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research interests consist broadly of politics, ethnicity, identity construction and civil society in the region of North East India. She is also interested in issues of methodology and theory. In the past, she has taught at the Department of Sociology, Hindu College and Kamala Nehru College of University of Delhi.