(Source: Oxford University Press)
Oxford
University Press has recently published a new book containing several essays on
diverse aspects of Indian legal history.
ABOUT
This volume
reflects a recent transformation of the concerns of social scientists regarding
the legal history of South Asia. While, earlier, historians looked at the
results rather than the performance of law, the concerns later shifted to
unravelling the socioeconomic and political contexts that shaped law-making and
its practice. Iterations of Law advances these new perspectives on legal
history from South Asia. Going beyond an area studies rubric to critically
engage with recent work in colonial and transnational legal history, the essays
in this volume utilize both archival and everyday records to interrogate the
relationship between the discipline of history and the institution of law.
The contributors to this volume include both young and established scholars who address the enacted and performative aspects of law that illuminate how rights are inscribed into a hierarchical order, a process that is often elided and fragmented by jurisdictional contexts. Their essays focus on complex moments in the life of the law when rights or claims simultaneously inaugurate a new economy of power and authority. Through these chapters, it becomes possible to interrogate the framing of legal regimes 'from below' and treat the law as a process that entails constant exchange, conflict, and adjustment between the rulers and the governed.
The contributors to this volume include both young and established scholars who address the enacted and performative aspects of law that illuminate how rights are inscribed into a hierarchical order, a process that is often elided and fragmented by jurisdictional contexts. Their essays focus on complex moments in the life of the law when rights or claims simultaneously inaugurate a new economy of power and authority. Through these chapters, it becomes possible to interrogate the framing of legal regimes 'from below' and treat the law as a process that entails constant exchange, conflict, and adjustment between the rulers and the governed.
ABOUT THE EDITORS
Aparna
Balachandran teaches at the Department of History, University of Delhi, India.
She has contributed to journals on religious identity and history of communities
as well as on colonial law.
Rashmi Pant is
Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, and teaches at the
Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi, India. She has contributed
articles to journals on the history of caste formation in colonial India.
Bhavani Raman
teaches at the Department of History, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
She is the author of Document Raj: Writing and Scribes in Early Colonial South
India (2012).
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Iterations of Law: Legal History from India - Aparna Balachandran, Rashmi Pant,
and Bhavani Raman
1. The Life of
Law in Modern India: A Present History of the Matha Court - Janaki Nair
2. Speaking in
Multiple Registers: Property and the Narrative of Care - Rashmi Pant
3. Violence and
the Languages of Law - Neeladri Bhattacharya
4. Law in Times
of Counterinsurgency - Bhavani Raman
5. Petition
Town: Law, Custom, and Urban Space in Early Colonial South India - Aparna
Balachandran
6. 'To Mount or
Not to Mount?' Court Records and Law-Making in Early Modern Rajasthan - Nandita
Sahai
7. Power,
Petitions, and the 'Povo' in Early English Bombay- Philip Stern
8. Of Truth and
Taxes: A Material History of Early Stamp't Paper- Shrimoyee Ghosh
9. Public
Finance and Personal Law in Late-Colonial India- Eleanor Newbigin
Bibliography
Notes on Editors
and Contributors
Index
More information
on the publisher’s
website
No comments:
Post a Comment