Materiality and Visuality in North East India: An Interdisciplinary Perspective

✍ Scribed by Tiplut Nongbri, Rashi Bhargava

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2021
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 240
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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 a more 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 of Contents

Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Contents
Editors and Contributors
Abbreviations
List of Figures
Part I Objects, Images and Meanings: Methodological Interventions
1 Negotiating the Visibility of ‘Habitus’ of ‘the Nagas’ and their Photographers
Introduction
Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Habitus’ and ‘Hexis’
The Nagas and Their Photographers
Visual Sources of the Nineteenth Century
Imagery After the Turn of the Century
Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf
Hans-Eberhard Kauffmann
Photography After World War II and in the New Millenium
Conclusion
References
2 ‘We Were the Others’: Visuality in Colonial Writings
Anecdote from the ‘Others’
Construction of the ‘Other’
Colonial Writings and the Nagas
Photo Analysis and Photo-Elicitation
The ‘Other’ Needs to Be Objectified in Order to Construct the ‘Self’
Interpretations and Contextualisation
When the ‘Others’ Spoke Up
Final Word: Reflexivity
References
3 Conversation Pieces: How Digital Technologies might Reinvigorate and reveal the Social Lives of Objects
Introduction
Source Communities
Who Owns Naga Heritage?
Combined/Collaborative Methodologies
Exhibition
How Did We Get Here?
The Body and Agent of Human Experience
Conclusion
References
Part II Material and Visual as Vehicles of Power and Hegemony: Adaptations and Negotiations
4 Mai-Baaps and Minis: Spatiality, Visuality and Materiality in Assam’s Tea Gardens
Introduction
Constructing the ‘Garden’
Understanding the Gendered Plantation
Plantation: Time, Work and Representation
Beyond the Plantations: Representation of Minis in Advertisements
Conclusion
References
5 Mapping Power and Domination: Studying State Making in Arunachal Pradesh through Old Official Photographs
Introduction
The Coming of the State
Performing the State
People and State: Re-Reading the Official Photographs
Conclusion
References
6 Hau Laa and Hymn: Musicking Dynamics of the Hau-Tangkhuls
Introduction
Contextualising the Introduction of Hymn
Conceptualising Hau Laa
Orality and Hau Laa
Hymn: A New Way of Imagining and Musicking
(Re) Purposing of Music
Conclusion
References
7 Sartorial Matters: A Brief History of Attire in Mizoram
Sainghinga and Attire
A Brief History of Attire and Photographic Representation of the Mizos
Debates on Attire
Conclusion
References
8 Representing Tea, Creating Consumers: Tea Advertising in Late Colonial India
Tea Advertising in the Early Decades of the Twentieth Century
Peddling Tea in Wartime
Tea, the Guarantor of Welfare and Productivity
Conclusion
References
Part III Imagination, Imagery and Identity: Representations and Subversions
9 Food is Not Just ‘Food’: Analysing Gender in the Assamese Foodscape
Introduction
Thinking ‘Assameseness’
The Gendered Foodscape
The ‘Others’ in the Foodscape
Fractured Concluding Remarks
References
10 Tilted Views and C Sailo: A Study of Satire in Contemporary Indie Comics
Introduction
Critical Art
Style Reconsidered
References
11 Reimagining the Pastoral: Metaphors and Meanings of the Everyday in Assam and India’s Northeast
Introduction
Collective Representations and Popular Imaginations: Bihu as Cultural Motif
Historical Construction of North East’s Discursive Reality: Marginality to Subalterneity
Crossing Bridges: New Imageries and Meanings
References
12 Weaving Resistance and Identity: Politics of Contemporary Textile Practice of the Tangkhuls
Introduction
Tangkhul Textile Practice and the Church
The Role of Women Organisations in Naga Textile Practices
The Tangkhul Shanao Long and the Politics of Contemporary Kashan
Conclusion
References
Glossary
493293_1_En_BookFrontmatter_OnlinePDF.pdf
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
Contents
Editors and Contributors
Abbreviations
List of Figures