From early times, theatre in India has addressed social issues. Folk-theatre publicly admonishes evil-doers, and in the 19th century it raised popular consciousness against British rule. As the independence movement grew, many plays risked censorship. Founded in 1941, the Indian People's Theatre Association developed rural audiences, while the street theatre movement evolved from the explosion of radical political theatre in the late 1940s, dramatising capitalist and caste exploitation. The Indian government has used plays for public education on themes like birth control and the use of fertilisers.

Voice to the Voiceless: The Power of People's Theatre in India

Srampickal, Jacob

Hurst & Co Ltd

This volume examines the "Amazons", whose existence has been verified via documents and eye-witness accounts from battles for the West African kingdom of Dahomey in the 18th and 19th centuries. Originally palace guards, the Amazons had evolved by the 1760s into professional troops armed mainly with muskets, machetes and clubs. Theoretically wives of the king and quartered in his palaces, they were actually sworn to celibacy on pain of death. In compensation they enjoyed a semi-sacred status and numerous privileges, including the right to own slaves. By the 1840s their numbers had grown to 6000. The Amazons served under female officers and had their own bands, flags and insignia: they outdrilled, outshot and outfought men, became frontline shock troops and fought with ferocity and fearlessness till the kingdom's final defeat by France in 1892. This text is based on years of detailed archival research and includes more than 20 line drawings and photographs.

Amazons of Black Sparta: The Women Warriors of Dahomey

History

Alpern, Stanley B.

Africa

The subject of this particular book is of great interest today for three major reasons: first, the six republics of Central Asia, strongly shaped by Turkic languages (Tajik is a variety of Persian, but Turkic influence is still there). and Islam, are relatively unknown; secondly, their respective language policies, which they say are central for development and modernisation, may show us much about the creative potential of choices of language anywhere in the world as well as problems connected with implementation; third, these two scholars and their local assistants harvested much previously unpublished empirical data which they have presented to readers in a clear framework. The conclusion very well relates language policies in these states to broad issues of nation-building-, language planning, multilingualism, and other concepts.

Politics of Language in the Ex-Soviet Muslim States: Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazahhstan, Kyrgystan, Turmenistan, Tajikistan

Politics & Social Sciences

Landau, Jacob M.

Kellner-Heinkele, Barbara

Social Sciences

<p>Focusing on India's "Emergency" of 1975-7, when democracy was temporarily suspended in favour of an authoritarian regime, this book explores the avenues through which this event is remembered and forgotten. Based on fieldwork and archival analysis, "Unsettling Memories" traces the experiences and perceptions of those men and women who were the targets of the infamous slum clearance and sterilisation campaign which converged to disrupt life in the nation's capital Delhi. Interweaving personal and official memories with a re-reading of resistance literature, Emergency propaganda and government files, and the author offers a complex narrative of the Emergency. This book should be of interest to anthropologists, historians and political scientists as well as anyone concerned with everyday violence, the ethnography of events and life among India's urban poor.</p>

Unsettling Memories: Narratives of the 'Emergency' in Delhi

Tarlo, Emma

Asia

The Role of Religion in African Civil Wars

This work analyzes the part played by religion - be it Christianity, Islam or traditional beliefs - in the civil wars and insurgent conflicts that have scarred Africa. Topics include the role of religious institutions in these conflicts and religion's role in legitimizing violence and war.

Sociology

The Hashemite Kingdom of Arabia was forged in the crucible of the Arab Revolt in 1916, during World War I. Its leader, Sharif Husayn ibn 'Ali, struggled to put together a tribal confedereacy. This study examines Husayn's efforts at state formations, efforts that eventually failed.

The Rise and Fall of the Hashemite Kingdom of Arabia

Teitelbaum, Joshua

Middle East

This work focuses on how the large, amorphous and impersonal Indian State affects the everyday lives of its citizens. It argues that state and society merge in the daily lives of most Indians, and the boundary between them is blurred and negotiable according to social context and position. The contibutors adopt the postion, contary to that of many others, that most Indians are able actively to comprehend and use the institutions of the state for their own purposes, rather than being merely its passive victims. Each chapter is based on empirical research and collectively they cover a wide range of anthropological and sociological material on modern India, from Delhi and Uttar Pradesh in the north, Maharashtra in the west, West Bengal in the esat, and Tamil Nadu and Kerala in the south. The book examines issues such as riot control, the Emergency, corruption irrigation, rural activism and education.

The Everday State and Society in Modern India

The author of this text argues that the West's major depictions of India as the civilization of caste, villages, spiritualism and divine kings - and as a land dominated by imagination rather than reason - have had the effect of depriving Indians of their capacity to rule their own world.

Imagining India [Nov 28, 2000] Inden, Ronald B.

Ronald B. Inden

World

Andrei Lankov traces the formation of the North Korean state and the early years of Kim Il Sung's rule, when the future 'Great Leader' and his entourage were consolidating their power base. Surveying the situation in North Korea after 1945, Lankov explores the internal composition of the ruling elite, the role of the Soviets, and the uneasy relations between various political groups. He also focuses on how in 1956 Kim Il Sung defeated the only known attempt to oust him and thereby established personal rule beyond either Soviet or Chinese control.

From Stalin to Kim: The Formation of North Korea 1945-1960

Lankov, Andrei

<p>A Dictionary of Albanion Religion, Mythology and Folk Culture makes available for the first time a wealth of knowledge about Albanian popular belief and folk customs. Alphabetical entries shed light on blood feuding; figures of Albanian mythology; religious beliefs, communities, and sects; calendar feasts and rituals; and popular superstitions, as well as birth, marriage, and funeral customs, and sexual mores.</p>

The Dictionary of Albanian Religion, Mythology and Folk Culture

Elsie, Robert

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