Crafting the Nation in Colonial India

Drawing on a wide range of archival evidence, Abigail McGowan argues that crafts seized the political imagination in western India because they provided a means of debating the present and future of the country.

"In this imaginative and empirically rich study, Abigail McGowan demonstrates convincingly that the Indian crafts became a critical ground on which both colonial and nationalist projects of power were constructed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book is a pioneering effort in establishing the relationship between colonial knowledge, state interventions into the economy, and visual/material cultures." - Douglas Haynes, Associate Professor of History, Dartmouth University

Auteur

ABIGAIL MCGOWAN is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Vermont, USA.

Contenu
Introduction Demanding Knowledge, Documenting the Body The Culture of Difference: From Colonial Knowledge to the Problem with Crafts Developing Traditions: Preservationist Design and the Independent Artisan The Cult of the Craftsman in the Spirit of Modernization: Rationalization, Efficiency and the Crafts Sector Conclusion: The Long Life of Difference: Gandhi and the Politics of Crafts after 1920