Springer Exploring Indian Modernities: Ideas and Practices

This book analyses how multiple and hybrid ‘modernities’ have been shaped in colonial and postcolonial India from the lens of sociology and anthropology, literature, media and cultural studies, law and political economy. It discusses the ideas that shaped these modernities as well as the lived experience and practice of these modernities. The two broad foci in this book are: (a) The dynamism of modern institutions in India, delineating the specific ways in which ideas of modernity have come to define these institutions and how institutional innovations have shaped modernities; and (b) perspectives on everyday practices of modernities and the cultural constituents of being modern. This book provides an enriching read by bringing together original papers from diverse disciplines and from renowned as well as upcoming scholars. From the Back Cover This book is an ambitious attempt to bring together the diverse interpretations of the modern that have shaped the realities of Indian society. It undertakes not one, but multiple conceptual frameworks to explain the journey of the making and experiencing of the modern. It also points to the loopholes of the modern project and describes the innovations and adaptations and the intended and unintended makings of the modern. This volume takes on a multidisciplinary perspective and fosters an expansive focus as it brings together works from political science, international law and jurisprudence, sociology, anthropology, history, economics, visual studies, history of art, social geography, and the specific lens these fields use to unveil and analyse the ‘modern’ in Indian society. Divided into three parts: Imagining the modern, Experiencing the modern, and Narrating the modern, this book showcases the multiple ways of being modern, without necessarily expressing the modern as a rational, egalitarian and neat category. Instead, it highlights the ideas of progress and gain and also of nostalgia and loss that mark the practices of modern in India. Most importantly, it explains that there is not one imagining, practice, or vision of the modern for India, but that the modern is constantly constructed, practised, and lived in changing and contested spheres. Bringing together original papers from renowned as well as upcoming scholars, this book crosses the boundaries of the Indian subcontinent to support the development of a new social sciences scholarship both globalized in its vision and outreach and localized in its approach. About the Author Prof. Leïla Choukroune is Director of the Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), New Delhi India, the French National Research Centre (CNRS) Unit on South Asia. She is a visiting Professor at the World Trade Institute (Bern), the University Paris II Panthéon-Assas, the Trade Policy Training Centre in Africa (Arusha, Tanzania), the China-EU School of Law (Beijing), and the University of Geneva. When associate Professor of international economic law with the Faculty of Law of the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, she was Deputy Director of the Institute for Globalization and International Regulation (IGIR) and Director of the Advanced Master in international economic law. Her research focuses on the interactions between trade, investment and human rights and is applied to emerging countries, China and India in particular. She has published numerous scientific articles and authored several books including (with Sangeeta Khorana) Global Health and the Emerging World: An Integrated International Trade Approach, (Springer, forthcoming 2015). She is the Editor of the Springer book series International Law and the Global South and member of the Editorial Board of China Perspectives. Leïla Choukroune is regularly solicited as an independent expert on international economic law and business and human rights issues. She is an independent adviser to the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and a Member of