The Conditions of Listening: Essays on Religion, History and Politics in South Asia

Abstract

This collection of essays by the late Richard Burghart, makes an important contribution to the study of religion, politics, and society in South Asia through a combination of ethnographic finesse, meticulous historical research, and the sustained working out of an original theoretical position. This volume contains a selection of his best articles on the structure of Hindu society, the Ramanadi ascetics of north India and Nepal, and the changing form of the Nepalese state. These essays also reflect the varying interests of Richard Burghart in terms of medical sociology, linguistics, and historical practices. Together these essays reveal how he developed arguments about historical agency and cultural idioms and especially his central concern with the problem of translation within and between cultures, which makes his work significant for all anthropologists. The editors, C.J. Fuller and Jonathan Spencer have put together these essays along with an introduction which gives the reader a guide and a coherent theoretical framework for Burghart's oeuvre. This book will be of particular interest to those studying religion, history, and politics of South Asia.

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