[Review of: (2009) Crooked Stalks: Cultivating Virtue in South India. By Anand Pandian]

TY - JOUR

T1 - [Review of: (2009) Crooked Stalks: Cultivating Virtue in South India. By Anand Pandian]

AU - Jalais, A.

N1 - Reporting year: 2011

PY - 2011

Y1 - 2011

N2 - It is 800 words. Here is the first paragraph: Anand Pandian’s beautifully written ‘Crooked Stalks’ is animated by a deep engagement with the moral life of an erstwhile classified, condemned and policed ‘Criminal Tribe’: the Piramalai Kallars of the Cumbum valley of south India. Their defiance in the face of a long history of discrimination, and the tough choices they make as they negotiate their journey into modernity, makes for a very moving read. Skillfully weaving together ethnographic exchanges, archival explorations, references to Tamil prose, poetry, and cinema, the author embarks on a deeper, more unsettling issue, that of colonial and post-colonial obsessions with the constructs of ‘savagery’ and ‘civility’.

AB - It is 800 words. Here is the first paragraph: Anand Pandian’s beautifully written ‘Crooked Stalks’ is animated by a deep engagement with the moral life of an erstwhile classified, condemned and policed ‘Criminal Tribe’: the Piramalai Kallars of the Cumbum valley of south India. Their defiance in the face of a long history of discrimination, and the tough choices they make as they negotiate their journey into modernity, makes for a very moving read. Skillfully weaving together ethnographic exchanges, archival explorations, references to Tamil prose, poetry, and cinema, the author embarks on a deeper, more unsettling issue, that of colonial and post-colonial obsessions with the constructs of ‘savagery’ and ‘civility’.

M3 - Book/Film/Article review

SN - 1715-3379

JO - Pacific Affairs

JF - Pacific Affairs

ER -