Autobiography of an Archive
A Scholar’s Passage to India
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Nicholas B Dirks
Permanent Black
400 pages,Rs. 895
Between 1970 and the end of the twentieth century, the disciplines of history and anthropology drew closer together, with historians paying more attention to social and cultural factors, and to the significance of everyday experience in the study of the past. In this collection of essays and lectures, that turn is reflected in a scholar’s intellectual journey through India. Dirks recounts his study of Indian history and society, and shares his personal experiences in the archives, revealing the limits of colonial knowledge and single-disciplinary perspective.
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