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Reworking Culture

Relatedness, Rites, and Resources in Garo Hills, North East India

Erik de Maaker author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:OUP India

Published:22nd Feb '22

Should be back in stock very soon

Reworking Culture cover

Reworking Culture: Relatedness, Rites, and Resources in Garo Hills, North-East India provides intimate insights into the lives of hill farmers and the challenges they face in day-to-day life. Focussing on the reinterpretation of traditions, or customs, the book critiques the all too often taken for granted assumption that upland societies are characterised by cultural homogeneity and strong internal cohesion. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, the book focuses on a rural area in which land continues to constitute the most important resource that people have access to, and that has a substantial number of followers of traditional Garo community religion. In doing so, the book explores the creation and continuing reinterpretation of the multiple relationships through which people are connected to one another, as well as to their environment. These relationships are embedded in normative frameworks that are demanding, yet leave room for ambiguity and negotiation. Far from being immutable, these need to be constantly expressed, (re-)interpreted and enacted. Reworking Culture shows how what people perceive as tradition, is continuously revised and reworked in response to new economic and political opportunities, as well as to changes in the ontological landscape.

Reworking Culture is a refreshing addition to the ever-growing literature on studies of Northeast India. It represents an important departure from existing studies in many ways....Reworking Culture is a study of the Garos of Northeast India. Yet its scope goes far beyond. (...) Anyone interested in the study of tribes and ethnographic fieldwork will find this book enriching. It offers many insights that an exemplary and sustained ethnographer can generate where others might fail. * Virginius Xaxa, Visiting Professor, Institute for Human Development, New Delhi, India *

ISBN: 9788194831693

Dimensions: 222mm x 147mm x 21mm

Weight: 466g

328 pages