Telling Lives in India: Biography, Autobiography, and Life History

Front Cover
David Arnold, Stuart Blackburn
Indiana University Press, Dec 30, 2004 - Social Science - 336 pages

"This book serves as a window into the rich and revealing lives and self-representations of the particular individuals who have produced the life histories. In so doing, it makes very important broader points about the use of life histories in social science research in general and in the study of South Asian social-cultural life in particular." -- Sarah Lamb

Life histories have a wide, if not universal, appeal. But what does it mean to narrate the story of a life, whether one's own or someone else's, orally or in writing? Which lives are worth telling, and who is authorized to tell them? The essays in this volume consider these questions through close examination of a wide range of biographies, autobiographies, diaries, and oral stories from India. Their subjects range from literary authors to housewives, politicians to folk heroes, and include young and old, women and men, the illiterate and the learned.

Contributors are David Arnold, Stuart Blackburn, Sudipta Kaviraj, Barbara D. Metcalf, Kirin Narayan, Francesca Orsini, Jonathan P. Parry, Jean-Luc Racine, Josiane Racine, David Shulman, and Sylvia Vatuk.

 

Contents

Section 1
7
Section 2
9
Section 3
10
Section 4
11
Section 5
25
Section 6
104
Section 7
105
Section 8
115
Section 17
196
Section 18
199
Section 19
202
Section 20
216
Section 21
221
Section 22
223
Section 23
226
Section 24
230

Section 9
129
Section 10
143
Section 11
151
Section 12
156
Section 13
162
Section 14
174
Section 15
180
Section 16
186
Section 25
231
Section 26
251
Section 27
277
Section 28
280
Section 29
298
Section 30
299
Section 31
318
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

References to this book

About the author (2004)

David Arnold is Professor of South Asian History at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.

Stuart Blackburn is Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.

Bibliographic information