Tribe and State in Asia, Past and Present (Asia Shorts)

Guha, Sumit

ISBN 10: 0924304952 / ISBN 13: 9780924304958

Published by Association for Asian Studies, 2021

pp. 156. Seller Inventory # 385065596

Synopsis:

'Tribe' is one of the oldest words in Western languages. It has now globalized. Discourses in and on Asia frequently employ the label 'tribe' as a loan-word or in an Asian-language equivalent. This may be positive, used to market crafts and fabrics; it may be neutral, used in legal and administrative practice and in conflict zones, or it may be a pragmatic descriptor of a social organization and military capacity. The name has persisted through fifty years of academic denunciation of its emptiness. This book analyzes how the word 'tribe' has morphed and spread through the centuries. It goes behind the label to bring out the social, military and environmental settings that gave it its various meanings. Sumit Guha thus offers non-specialist readers an overview of 17 million sq. miles through two thousand years to the present.

About the Author: SUMIT GUHA is Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial Professor in History at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Beyond Caste: Identity and Power in South Asia, Past and Present and Environment and Ethnicity in India, 1200-1991.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Tribe and State in Asia, Past and Present (...
Publisher: Association for Asian Studies
Publication Date: 2021
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: New