Communication, Culture and Confrontation
- Bernard Bel - French National Centre for Scientific Research
- Jan Brouwer - Centre for Advanced Research on Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Mysore
- Biswajit Das - Centre for Culture, Media and Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi
- Vibodh Parthasarathi - Centre for Culture, Media & Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi
- Guy Poitevin - Late of Centre for Cooperative Research in Social Sciences, Pune
Positioned at the interface of culture and communication studies, the discourse in the book engages with multiple voices, bringing together academic scholars and grassroot social animators. Exploring seven different popular cultural forms, such as rituals, songs, narratives, calendar art, pamphlets, and so on, through 18 case studies, it goes on to suggest a complex model of communication. In this framework, cultures cannot be viewed as items exchanged in the hegemonic space of global communication. Cultural configurations display themselves as 'evolutive' forms of social communication that weave human beings into collectives and bind these collectives with one another—all permeated with the power parameter. Cultures 'perform' viable collectives when they come to be apprehended in a field of contending forces: a milieu of exchange, encounter, confrontation and possibly conflict.
This volume will be invaluable for students of communication, culture studies, sociology and journalism.
| Introduction: Remoulding the 'Cultural' as the 'Contentious' | Bernard Bel, Jan Brouwer, Biswajit Das, Vibodh Parthasarathi, Guy Poitevin |
| From the Popular to the People | Guy Poitevin |
| Interventionist Tendencies in Popular Culture | Vibodh Parthasarathi |
| The Indian Legal System: A Unique Combination of Traditions, Practices and Modern Values | Karine Bates |
| Terrains of Rejuvenation |
| The Donkey: A Mirror of Self-identification | Guy Poitevin |
| Memory and Social Protest | Badri Narayan |
| Say It in Singing! Prosodic Patterns and Rhetorics in the Performance of Grindmill Songs | Bernard Bel, Geneviève Caelen-Haumont and Hema Rairkar |
| Assets of Dissent |
| Grindmill Songs: A Reference of Autonomous Self-insight | Hema Rairkar |
| From Grindmill Songs to Cultural Action | Tara Ubhe |
| A Reactivated Performance Capacity | Kusum Sonavne |
| Scenarios of Stress |
| Folk Arts and Folk Artists: Myths and Realities | P J Amala Dos |
| Scenarios of Appropriation |
| Resisting Colonial Modernity | Premchand's Rangabhoomi and Shashi Bhushan Upadhyay |
| Street Theatre in Maharashtra | Hema Rairkar |
| Action Theatre in Belgium | Paul Biot |
| Intruding Orders |
| Ephemera, Communication and the Quest for Power: Hindutva in Uttar Pradesh | Jayati Chaturvedi and Gyaneshwar Chaturvedi |
| The Ritual Management of Desire in Indian Bazaar Art | Kajri Jain |
| Contending Idioms |
| On the Way to Pandhari | Jitendra Maid and Guy Poitevin |
| The Famous Invincible Darkies | Denis-Constant Martin |
| Epilogue Editors |
The volume which assembles a wide range of scholarly works that posit problematic yet convincing arguments towards a complete understanding of the concepts of culture, communication, and conflicts would be a useful resource for students and scholars of contemporary politics, media and society.
This well-researched third volume in the series coming after the first two whose focus has been on the media, techniques and relations of communication is a good reference book for not only students pursuing disciplines of sociology, communication arts and culture but also to the faculty involved in teaching these subjects.
