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Indigenous Societies in the Post-colonial World: Responses and Resilience Through Global Perspectives
by Bina Sengar A. Mia Elise AdjoumaniThis edited book provides perceptions on “indigeneity” through a global perspective. Emphasizing the contemporary and postcolonial debates on indigenous, it delves into diversity and dissonance within indigenous concepts. Through its chapters based on theoretical and empirical studies from Asian, African, and American perceptions of indigenous societies, it brings out complexity, resilience, and response of “indigenous” in the post-colonial global society. It especially looks at how these societies manage to move forward by going beyond the stigma of the colonial past. The chapters in the book are divided into three sections where they discuss indigenous cultures through interdisciplinary perspectives. The narrative approach of historical concepts and contemporary indigenous challenges within the book include anthropological, cultural, ecological, historical, literary, and legal studies. The contributions in the collection come from widely respected international scholars who are engaged in indigeneity and postcolonial questions. It allows the reader to (re)discover the theories and resilience of the indigenous societies that are historically marked and are reshaping the histories and contemporary narratives in the world. This book is of particular interest to scholars, students, policymakers, and people curious about the histories and the dynamic progress of the indigenous and indigenous societies of Africa, the Americas, and Asia.
Indigenous Statistics: A Quantitative Research Methodology
by Chris Andersen Maggie WalterIn the first book ever published on Indigenous quantitative methodologies, Maggie Walter and Chris Andersen open up a major new approach to research across the disciplines and applied fields. While qualitative methods have been rigorously critiqued and reformulated, the population statistics relied on by virtually all research on Indigenous peoples continue to be taken for granted as straightforward, transparent numbers. This book dismantles that persistent positivism with a forceful critique, then fills the void with a new paradigm for Indigenous quantitative methods, using concrete examples of research projects from First World Indigenous peoples in the United States, Australia, and Canada. Concise and accessible, it is an ideal supplementary text as well as a core component of the methodological toolkit for anyone conducting Indigenous research or using Indigenous population statistics.
Indigenous Statistics: From Data Deficits to Data Sovereignty
by Chris Andersen Maggie Walter Tahu Kukutai Chelsea GabelThis second edition of the groundbreaking Indigenous Statistics opens up a major new approach to research across the disciplines and applied fields. While qualitative methods have been rigorously critiqued and reformulated, the population statistics relied on by virtually all research on Indigenous Peoples continue to be taken for granted as straightforward, transparent numbers. Drawing on a diverse new author team, this book dismantles that persistent positivism with a forceful critique, then fills the void with a new paradigm for Indigenous quantitative methods using concrete examples of research projects from first world Indigenous Peoples in the United States, Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and Canada. Concise and accessible, it is an ideal supplementary text as well as a core component of the methodological toolkit for anyone conducting Indigenous research or using Indigenous population statistics. This is an essential text for students studying quantitative methods, statistics and research methods. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Licence (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
Indigenous Storytelling and Connections to the Land: More-Than-Human Worlds
by Francesca MussiThis book builds on the perspective that, for Indigenous peoples, relations to the land are familial, intimate, intergenerational, spiritual, instructive, and life nourishing, and it is these relations that Western societies sought to destroy as part of their colonial projects of territorial conquest and exploitation of resources. Positioning storytelling as a research methodology and a model of decolonial practice, this edited collection seeks to explore the following key questions: how does Indigenous storytelling contribute to understanding Indigenous identity and the crucial role of the land in Indigenous ways of life? How can Indigenous storytelling subvert colonial narratives of the land? How can Indigenous storytelling contribute to addressing colonial exploitations of the land and its resources? Can Indigenous storytelling become a rich mode for the investigation of current climate crises? And, finally, how does storytelling assist Indigenous peoples in restoring their intimate relations to the land and its natural gifts? Through critical analysis of a unique range of Indigenous storytelling practices, including fiction, performative art, new media platforms, archaeological findings and personal live-experienced stories, this collection aims to examine the interplay between colonialism and current environmental challenges, and to expose the impacts – past, present, and future – of Western worldviews on Indigenous connections to the land, whilst simultaneously bringing to the fore Indigenous ethos of care and land custodianship.
Indigenous Studies and Engaged Anthropology: The Collaborative Moment
by Paul SillitoeAdvancing the rising field of engaged or participatory anthropology that is emerging at the same time as increased opposition from Indigenous peoples to research, this book offers critical reflections on research approaches to-date. The engaged approach seeks to change the researcher-researched relationship fundamentally, to make methods more appropriate and beneficial to communities by involving them as participants in the entire process from choice of research topic onwards. The aim is not only to change power relationships, but also engage with non-academic audiences. The advancement of such an egalitarian and inclusive approach to research can provoke strong opposition. Some argue that it threatens academic rigour and worry about the undermining of disciplinary authority. Others point to the difficulties of establishing an appropriately non-ethnocentric moral stance and navigating the complex problems communities face. Drawing on the experiences of Indigenous scholars, anthropologists and development professionals acquainted with a range of cultures, this book furthers our understanding of pressing issues such as interpretation, transmission and ownership of Indigenous knowledge, and appropriate ways to represent and communicate it. All the contributors recognise the plurality of knowledge and incorporate perspectives that derive, at least in part, from other ways of being in the world.
Indigenous Tattoo Traditions: Humanity through Skin and Ink
by Lars KrutakA beautifully illustrated history of Indigenous tattooing practices around the worldTattooing within Indigenous communities is a time-honored practice that binds the tattoo recipient to a deeply felt collective history. More than mere decoration, tattoos embody cultural values, ancestral ties, and spiritual beliefs. Indigenous Tattoo Traditions captures ancient tribal tattooing practices and their contemporary resurgence, highlighting a beautiful aspect of humanity&’s shared cultural heritage.Transporting readers through history, Lars Krutak explores the art and customs of tattooing across numerous ancestral lands, including Africa, the Middle East, the Americas, the Arctic, Oceania, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Siberia. He illustrates how tattoos function as a form of writing that defines and structures community life, performing as rites of passage, symbols of rank, and signs of marital or religious devotion, among other facets of culture. We are introduced to the heavily tattooed Li women of China&’s Hainan Island with their elaborate facial and body tattoos, the bold indelible markings of Papua New Guinea's Indigenous peoples, and innovative cultural tattoo practitioners who are rebuilding a skin-marking legacy for future generations to come.With numerous images published for the first time and an illuminating foreword by cultural historian Sean Mallon, Indigenous Tattoo Traditions opens a window onto one of the world&’s most vibrant yet misunderstood mediums of human expression.
Indigenous Textual Cultures: Reading and Writing in the Age of Global Empire
by Tony Ballantyne, Lachy Paterson & Angela WanhallaAs modern European empires expanded, written language was critical to articulations of imperial authority and justifications of conquest. For imperial administrators and thinkers, the non-literacy of “native” societies demonstrated their primitiveness and inability to change. Yet as the contributors to Indigenous Textual Cultures make clear through cases from the Pacific Islands, Australasia, North America, and Africa, indigenous communities were highly adaptive and created novel, dynamic literary practices that preserved indigenous knowledge traditions. The contributors illustrate how modern literacy operated alongside orality rather than replacing it. Reconstructing multiple traditions of indigenous literacy and textual production, the contributors focus attention on the often hidden, forgotten, neglected, and marginalized cultural innovators who read, wrote, and used texts in endlessly creative ways. This volume demonstrates how the work of these innovators played pivotal roles in reimagining indigenous epistemologies, challenging colonial domination, and envisioning radical new futures.Contributors. Noelani Arista, Tony Ballantyne, Alban Bensa, Keith Thor Carlson, Evelyn Ellerman, Isabel Hofmeyr, Emma Hunter, Arini Loader, Adrian Muckle, Lachy Paterson, Laura Rademaker, Michael P. J. Reilly, Bruno Saura, Ivy T. Schweitzer, Angela Wanhalla
Indigenous Tourism
by Chris Ryan Michelle AickenIn a world characterized by an encroaching homogeneity induced by the growth of multi-national corporations and globalization, the causes of difference accrue new levels of importance. This is as true of tourism as in many other spheres of life – and one cause of differentiation for tourism promotion is the culture of Indigenous Peoples. This offers opportunities for cultural renaissance, income generation and enhanced political empowerment, but equally there are possible costs of creating commodities out of aspects of life that previously possessed spiritual meaning. This book examines these issues from many different perspectives; from those of product design and enhancement; of the aspirations of various minority groupings; and the patterns of displacements that occur – displacements that are not simply spatial but also social and cultural. How can these changes be managed? Case studies and analysis is offered, derived from many parts of the globe including North America, Asia and Australasia. The contributors themselves have, in many instances, worked closely with groups and organizations of Indigenous Peoples and attempt to give voice to their concerns. The book is divided into various themes, each with a separate introduction and commentary. The themes are Visitor Experiences, Who manages Indigenous Cultural Tourism Product, Events and Artifacts, Conceptualisation and Aspiration. In a short final section the silences are noted – each silence representing a potential challenge for future research to build upon the notions and lessons reported in the book. The book is edited by Professor Chris Ryan from New Zealand, and Michelle Aicken of Horwath Asia Pacific.
Indigenous Tourism Movements
by Alexis Celeste Bunten Nelson H.H. GraburnCultural tourism is frequently marketed as an economic panacea for communities whose traditional ways of life have been compromised by the dominant societies by which they have been colonized. Indigenous communities in particular are responding to these opportunities in innovative ways that set them apart from their non-Indigenous predecessors and competitors. Indigenous Tourism Movements explores Indigenous identity using “movement” as a metaphor, drawing on case studies from throughout the world including Botswana, Canada, Chile, Panama, Tanzania, and the United States. Editors Alexis C.Bunten and Nelson Graburn, along with a diverse group of contributors, frame tourism as a critical lens to explore the shifting identity politics of Indigeneity in relation to heritage, global policy, and development. They juxtapose diverse expressions of identity – from the commodification of Indigenous culture to the performance of heritage for tourists – to illuminate the complex local, national, and transnational connections these expressions produce. Indigenous Tourism Movements is a sophisticated, sensitive, and refreshingly frank examination of Indigeneity in the contemporary world.
Indigenous Visions: Rediscovering the World of Franz Boas (The Henry Roe Cloud Series on American Indians and Modernity)
by Ned Blackhawk Isaiah Lorado WilnerA compelling study that charts the influence of Indigenous thinkers on Franz Boas, the founder of modern anthropology In 1911, the publication of Franz Boas’s The Mind of Primitive Man challenged widely held claims about race and intelligence that justified violence and inequality. Now, a group of leading scholars examines how this groundbreaking work hinged on relationships with a global circle of Indigenous thinkers who used Boasian anthropology as a medium for their ideas. Contributors also examine how Boasian thought intersected with the work of major modernist figures, demonstrating how ideas of diversity and identity sprang from colonization and empire.
Indigenous Voices in Digital Spaces
by Cindy TekobbeIndigenous Voices in Digital Spaces applies Indigenous frameworks and epistemologies to online cultural movements through four case studies, including hashtags, memes, cryptocurrency, and digital artistry, and develops decolonizing practices for digital rhetoric, online identity work, and digital literacy practices. Tekobbe’s methods for analyzing and understanding Indigenous knowledges online center Indigenous storytelling and “thick” (broad, deep, and complex) Indigenous meaning-making. Employing this thickness to interpret Indigenous knowledge ways resists the settler-colonial logics that tend to flatten complex Indigenous concepts into one-note representations of racial stereotypes. Native Americans’ use of social media and digital platforms to support social movements uniquely constructs Indigenous identities as living, producing, and culture-making people, which confronts the commonplace, one-dimensional narrative that Indigenous North Americans either live in isolation or are people of history resigned to the long-forgotten past. Tekobbe’s methods are applicable to additional online research to break through Western paradigms of oppositional critique, the colonial power matrix embedded in hierarchical and taxonomical classification systems, and participant objectification. Indigenous Voices in Digital Spaces offers new methodological and epistemological opportunities to explore digital communities and technologies, problematizing conventional Western critique. This book is useful to instructors in Indigenous studies, internet studies, digital literacies, cultural studies, and communications, as well as Indigenous and internet studies researchers.
Indigenous Women And Feminism: Politics, Activism, Culture
by Jean Barman Shari M. Huhndorf Cheryl Suzack Jeanne PerreaultCan the specific concerns of Indigenous women be addressed by mainstream feminism? Indigenous Women and Feminism proposes that a dynamic new line of inquiry - Indigenous feminism - is necessary to truly engage with the crucial issues of cultural identity, nationalism, and decolonization particular to Indigenous contexts. Through the lenses of politics, activism, and culture, this wide-ranging collection crosses disciplinary, national, academic, and activist boundaries to explore deeply the unique political and social positions of Indigenous women. A vital and sophisticated discussion, these timely essays will change the way we think about modern feminism and Indigenous women.
Indigenous Women and Work: From Labor to Activism
by Carol WilliamsThe essays in Indigenous Women and Work create a transnational and comparative dialogue on the history of the productive and reproductive lives and circumstances of Indigenous women from the late nineteenth century to the present in the United States, Australia, New Zealand/Aotearoa, and Canada. Surveying the spectrum of Indigenous women's lives and circumstances as workers, both waged and unwaged, the contributors offer varied perspectives on the ways women's work has contributed to the survival of communities in the face of ongoing tensions between assimilation and colonization. They also interpret how individual nations have conceived of Indigenous women as workers and, in turn, convert these assumptions and definitions into policy and practice. The essays address the intersection of Indigenous, women's, and labor history, but will also be useful to contemporary policy makers, tribal activists, and Native American women's advocacy associations. Contributors are Tracey Banivanua Mar, Marlene Brant Castellano, Cathleen D. Cahill, Brenda J. Child, Sherry Farrell Racette, Chris Friday, Aroha Harris, Faye HeavyShield, Heather A. Howard, Margaret D. Jacobs, Alice Littlefield, Cybèle Locke, Mary Jane Logan McCallum, Kathy M'Closkey, Colleen O'Neill, Beth H. Piatote, Susan Roy, Lynette Russell, Joan Sangster, Ruth Taylor, and Carol Williams.
Indigenous Women's Writing and the Cultural Study of Law
by Cheryl SuzackIn Indigenous Women’s Writing and the Cultural Study of Law, Cheryl Suzack explores Indigenous women’s writing in the post-civil rights period through close-reading analysis of major texts by Leslie Marmon Silko, Beatrice Culleton Mosionier, Louise Erdrich, and Winona LaDuke. Working within a transnational framework that compares multiple tribal national contexts and U.S.-Canadian settler colonialism, Suzack sheds light on how these Indigenous writers use storytelling to engage in social justice activism by contesting discriminatory tribal membership codes, critiquing the dispossession of Indigenous women from their children, challenging dehumanizing blood quantum codes, and protesting colonial forms of land dispossession. Each chapter in this volume aligns a court case with a literary text to show how literature contributes to self-determination struggles. Situated at the intersections of critical race, Indigenous feminist, and social justice theories, Indigenous Women’s Writing and the Cultural Study of Law crafts an Indigenous-feminist literary model in order to demonstrate how Indigenous women respond to the narrow vision of law by recuperating other relationships–to themselves, the land, the community, and the settler-nation.
Indigenous Women, Work, and History: 1940-1980
by Mary Jane MccallumWhen dealing with Indigenous women’s history we are conditioned to think about women as private-sphere figures, circumscribed by the home, the reserve, and the community. Moreover, in many ways Indigenous men and women have been cast in static, pre-modern, and one-dimensional identities, and their twentieth century experiences reduced to a singular story of decline and loss. In Indigenous Women, Work, and History, historian Mary Jane Logan McCallum rejects both of these long-standing conventions by presenting case studies of Indigenous domestic servants, hairdressers, community health representatives, and nurses working in “modern Native ways” between 1940 and 1980. Based on a range of sources, including the records of the Departments of Indian Affairs and National Health and Welfare, interviews, and print and audio-visual media, McCallum shows how state-run education and placement programs were part of Canada’s larger vision of assimilation and extinguishment of treaty obligations. Conversely, she also shows how Indigenous women link these same programs to their social and cultural responsibilities of community building and state resistance. By placing the history of these modern workers within a broader historical context of Aboriginal education and health, federal labour programs, post-war Aboriginal economic and political developments, and Aboriginal professional organizations, McCallum challenges us to think about Indigenous women’s history in entirely new ways.
Indigenous Women’s Movements in Latin America
by Stéphanie Rousseau Anahi Morales HudonThis book presents a comparative analysis of the organizing trajectories of indigenous women's movements in Peru, Mexico, and Bolivia. The authors' innovative research reveals how the articulation of gender and ethnicity is central to shape indigenous women's discourses. It explores the political contexts and internal dynamics of indigenous movements, to show that they created different opportunities for women to organize and voice specific demands. This, in turn, led to various forms of organizational autonomy for women involved in indigenous movements. The trajectories vary from the creation of autonomous spaces within mixed-gender organizations to the creation of independent organizations. Another pattern is that of women's organizations maintaining an affiliation to a male-dominated mixed-gender organization, or what the authors call "gender parallelism". This book illustrates how, in the last two decades, indigenous women have challenged various forms of exclusion through different strategies, transforming indigenous movements' organizations and collective identities.
Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis, & Inuit Issues in Canada
by Chelsea VowelDelgamuukw. Sixties Scoop. Bill C-31. Blood quantum. Appropriation. Two-Spirit. Tsilhqot&’in. Status. TRC. RCAP. FNPOA. Pass and permit. Numbered Treaties. Terra nullius. The Great Peace… Are you familiar with the terms listed above? In Indigenous Writes, Chelsea Vowel, legal scholar, teacher, and intellectual, opens an important dialogue about these (and more) concepts and the wider social beliefs associated with the relationship between Indigenous Peoples and Canada. In 31 essays, Chelsea explores the Indigenous experience from the time of contact to the present, through five categories—Terminology of Relationships; Culture and Identity; Myth-Busting; State Violence; and Land, Learning, Law, and Treaties. She answers the questions that many people have on these topics to spark further conversations at home, in the classroom, and in the larger community. Indigenous Writes is one title in The Debwe Series.
Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis, & Inuit Issues in Canada
by Chelsea VowelDelgamuukw. Sixties Scoop. Bill C-31. Blood quantum. Appropriation. Two-Spirit. Tsilhqot&’in. Status. TRC. RCAP. FNPOA. Pass and permit. Numbered Treaties. Terra nullius. The Great Peace… Are you familiar with the terms listed above? In Indigenous Writes, Chelsea Vowel, legal scholar, teacher, and intellectual, opens an important dialogue about these (and more) concepts and the wider social beliefs associated with the relationship between Indigenous Peoples and Canada. In 31 essays, Chelsea explores the Indigenous experience from the time of contact to the present, through five categories—Terminology of Relationships; Culture and Identity; Myth-Busting; State Violence; and Land, Learning, Law, and Treaties. She answers the questions that many people have on these topics to spark further conversations at home, in the classroom, and in the larger community. Indigenous Writes is one title in The Debwe Series.
Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis, & Inuit Issues in Canada
by Chelsea VowelDelgamuukw. Sixties Scoop. Bill C-31. Blood quantum. Appropriation. Two-Spirit. Tsilhqot’in. Status. TRC. RCAP. FNPOA. Pass and permit. Numbered Treaties. Terra nullius. The Great Peace… Are you familiar with the terms listed above? In Indigenous Writes, Chelsea Vowel, legal scholar, teacher, and intellectual, opens an important dialogue about these (and more) concepts and the wider social beliefs associated with the relationship between Indigenous Peoples and Canada. In 31 essays, Chelsea explores the Indigenous experience from the time of contact to the present, through five categories—Terminology of Relationships; Culture and Identity; Myth-Busting; State Violence; and Land, Learning, Law, and Treaties. She answers the questions that many people have on these topics to spark further conversations at home, in the classroom, and in the larger community. Indigenous Writes is one title in The Debwe Series.
Indigenous Youth in Brazilian Amazonia: Changing Lived Worlds
by Pirjo Kristiina VirtanenHow do Amazonian native young people perceive, question, and negotiate the new kinds of social and cultural situations in which they find themselves? Virtanen looks at how current power relations constituted by ethnic recognition, new social contacts, and cooperation with different institutions have shaped the current native youth in Amazonia.
Indigenous and Ethnic Empowerment: Parity, Equity and Strategy
by Alf H. WalleIndigenous, ethnic and rural peoples throughout the world struggle to effectively deal with the challenges triggered by outside economic and social intervention. This book presents business methods in a manner that reflects the needs, desires and priorities of indigenous peoples and provides the tools communities need to envision and deal with the full impact of social and economic intervention. In particular, the book helps local leaders and their advocates to better understand the full implications of the choices before them and develop skills to articulate and deal with local goals, needs, and priorities. The book is distinctive because it helps people embrace opportunities and change on their own terms. As a result, leaders and their advocates will be better able to evaluate and respond to opportunities in an informed and systematic manner. Various business disciplines (such as accounting, finance, human resource management, organizational theory, and marketing) are discussed in ways that help the reader to envision both mainstream perspectives and the distinctive issues faced by ethnic enclaves.
Indigenous, Traditional, and Folk Sports: Contesting Modernities (Routledge Research in Sport, Culture and Society)
by Alan Bairner Mariann VacziThis is the first book to focus on indigenous, traditional, and folk sports and sporting cultures. It examines the significance of sporting cultures that have survived the emergence and diffusion of western sports and have carved out a unique position not only in spite of modernity but also in response to it. Presenting case studies from around the world, including from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, this book draws on multidisciplinary work from sociology, anthropology, history, cultural studies, and political science, exploring key themes in the social sciences including nationalism, identity, decolonisation, and gender. From Turkish oil wrestling, kabaddi in South Asia, Iroquois lacrosse, to wushu and sumo in East Asia and various European traditional sports, these sporting practices continue to capture the indigenous imagination on the margins of the western hegemonic sport complex. Situated in the fissures between the local, the national, and the global; between the archaic and the modern; and between ritual and record, they inhabit a liminal space of transformation as they assume new cultural and political meanings, offering important perspectives on the complexities and contradictions of modernity. The volume’s decolonial perspective lies in its promotion of indigenous and subaltern worldviews through their traditional movement cultures on the margins of the western hegemonic sport complex. This is a fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in sport, nationalism, Indigenous studies, heritage and folklore studies, anthropology, social and cultural history, or globalisation.
Indigo in the Arab World
by Jenny Balfour-PaulThe role indigo has played elsewhere has been fairly well documented, but in the case of the Arab world, little or no thorough investigation has been previously undertaken. Sets out to provide comprehensive coverage of the subject from its earliest history to the present day.
Indigo: Arm Wrestling, Snake Saving, and Some Things In Between
by Padgett PowellThe first collection of nonfiction by "one of the few truly important American writers of our time" (Sam Lipsyte). <p><p> Gathering pieces written during the past three decades, Indigo ranges widely in subject matter and tone, opening with “Cleve Dean,” which takes Padgett Powell to Sweden for the World Armwrestling Federation Championships, through to its closing title piece, which charts Powell’s lifelong fascination with the endangered indigo snake, “a thinking snake,” and his obsession with seeing one in the wild. “Some things in between” include an autobiographical piece about growing up in the segregated and newly integrated South and tributes to writers Powell has known, among them Donald Barthelme, who “changed the aesthetic of short fiction in America for the second half of the twentieth century,” and Peter Taylor, who briefly lived in Gainesville, Florida, where Powell taught for thirty-five years. <p><p> There are also homages to other admired writers: Flannery O’Connor, “the goddesshead”; Denis Johnson, with his “hard honest comedy”; and William Trevor, whose Collected Stories provides “the most literary bang for the buck in the English world.” <p><p> A throughline in many of the pieces is the American South—the college teacher who introduced Powell to Faulkner; the city of New Orleans, which “can render the improbable possible”; and the seductions of gumbo, sometimes cooked with squirrel meat. Also here is an elegy for Spode, Powell’s beloved pit bull: “I had a dog not afraid, it gave me great cheer and blustery vicarious happiness.” <p><p> In addressing the craft of fiction, Powell ventures that “writing is controlled whimsy.” His idiosyncratic playfulness brings this collection to vivid life, while his boundless curiosity and respect for the truth keep it on course. As Pete Dexter writes in his foreword to Indigo, “He is still the best, even if not the best-known, writer of his generation.”
Indira Gandhi's India
by Henry C. HartIndia, credited with the best institutionalized democracy of the Third World, changed in 1975, apparently overnight and at the decision of one individual, to a quasi-dictatorship. A transformation so remarkable prompted eight scholars of Indian politics to reexamine the sectors of the system they know well, seeking explanations. They reappraise the carry-over of colonial institutions and procedures, the distribution of power in the ruling party, business influence, the roles of the divided Communist parties, the position of the administrative corps and of the army, and unrest among the rural poor at its most volatile, in the state of Bihar. An introduction shows just what Mrs. Gandhi changed, the situation that triggered her action, and the justification she advances. A concluding chapter tests the facts of the Indian transformation against four major theories of political change in the developing world: projection into politics of personality conflicts of the leader, agrarian class conflict, social mobilization, and cultural assimilation and institutionalization.