The Potter’s Wheel in the Chilean Central Valley: A Long-Term and Contextual Perspective on Technological Change

In this article the social and technological dynamics detected in the transition from hand-made pottery to wheel-thrown ware in a modern context is considered. The many different sources supplemented by fieldwork provide a long-term perspective and a depiction of its present consequences. It is specifically explained, how an indigenous, hand-made, domestic and female pottery-production system has turned into an essentially male, wheel-thrown and workshop activity. After a series of significant events, the Indian village of Pomaire gained a reputation as a potter’s village. The several changes underwent by its population as regards to pottery production makes it an interesting example to analyse the origin and development of a process of technological change which ended up with the displacement of women from pottery-making and the introduction of the means for mechanised production during the 1980s. Thus, the social and technical transformations which have taken place since colonial times (beginning of the 16th century), for the potters of Pomaire are explained, enlarged on their history in order to contribute to a general reflection.

Reseña de “Precarious Labour and Informal Economy. Work, Anarchy, and Society in an Indian Village”, de Smita Yadav

La etnografía de Smita Yadav nos cuenta la historia de los Gond, una tribu indígena de la India que ha sido desplazada tras la creación de una reserva para tigres y cuyas familias se están ganando la vida en la economía informal, obviando la ayuda o la presencia del estado. La autora examina en detalle la historia oral y las instituciones sociales de los hogares Gond, poniéndolas en relación con las estrategias de subsistencia y las formas flexibles de trabajo que han surgido como respuesta a sus necesidades actuales.

Sufferings and Starvation in Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve

Kamala Markandaya is one of the best known contemporary Indian novelists. Her novels are remarkable for their range of experience. Her first novel Nectar in a Sieve is set in a village and it examines the hard agricultural life of the south Indian village where industry and modern technology played havoc. Kamala Markandaya occupies a very important position among the women novelist who have made substantial contribution to Indian fiction after the Second World War. Markandaya had not always lived abroad. She was born as Kamala Purnaiya in 1924 in Mysore and she was also a journalist. At some point, she decided to spend 18 months in a village “out of curiosity”. This inspired the setting of her first novel, centred on Rukmani and her husband Nathan. Nectar in a Sieve is remarkable for its portrayal of rustics who live in fear, hunger and despair. It is of the dark future; fear of the sharpness of hunger; fear of blackness of death. Almost all the characters in this novel lead miserable life and most of them fail to survive. There are at least a couple of them who were not successfully struggle and have the concept of survival. This novel tells the story of landless peasants of India who face starvation, oppression, breakup of family, home and death. Yet they retain their compassion, love, the strength to face their life and take delight in the little pleasures of the daily existence.

Book review: K. L. Sharma, Caste, Social Inequality and Mobility in Rural India: Reconceptualising the Indian Village

K. L. Sharma, Caste, Social Inequality and Mobility in Rural India: Reconceptualising the Indian Village. Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2019, 379 pp., ₹1,195, ISBN 978-93-532-8201-1.

DEATH RITUALS AND CHANGE AMONG HINDU NADARS IN A SOUTH INDIAN VILLAGE

This article examines changes in the death rituals performed among Hindu Nadars in a South Indian village. It emphasises the importance of understanding ritual changes within their specific micro-level local contextual framework, including changing social structures at household and village level. This empirical evidence showcases how changing rituals connected to death reflect various adaptations through imitation, substitution and alteration of specific ritual elements and performants. It also identifies emerging class distinctions among Nadars and their connection with changes in rituals associated with death. This analysis of the changes depicts how Nadars use ritual actions in pragmatic ways, symbolically expressing and realising their aspirations for status enhancement through such ritual performances.