To Be Cared For: The Power of Conversion and Foreignness of Belonging in an Indian Slum by Nathaniel Roberts, New Delhi: Navayana Press, 2016; pp 306, ₹495.
Ethnographic accounts have provided vivid accounts of the colonial encounter, and encounters with industrial capitalism. This article argues that space be seen as an encounter of time(s). It concurs with Doreen Massey’s thesis of space as a combination of trajectories and a place as a socio-historical event. A major force that shapes the contours and trajectories of space is capital. This is a preliminary attempt to process theoretically the entanglements of time and space, based on ethnographic research in Howrah. Structures of globally dispersed systems of capital shape a particular slice of landscape on the west bank of a river a little north of the Bay of Bengal.
The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and His Empire of Truth New Delhi: Permanent Black (in association with Ashoka University), 2015; pp 320, ₹795.
Paper Tiger: Law, Bureaucracy and the Developmental State in Himalayan India by Nayanika Mathur, New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2016; pp xxii+192, price not indicated.
