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"Drawing upon historical analysis, ethnographic research and analyses of popular culture, this book brings together two topics that have great bearing on contemporary Indian life but have rarely been discussed within the same analytical framework, namely the cultures of masculinity and those of the city. This book explores relationships between masculinity and urban life through an interdisciplinary and multi-sited approach. The contexts include elite nationalist imaginations of the city and modernity; the manner in which working class men negotiate the city as a site of desire and aspirations of social mobility; masculinity and religion; sexualised visions of the city in popular-culture texts - such as Hindi language pulp fiction - that circulate as quotidian fantasies of the city as a site of thrill, danger and the 'necessity' of men's control over women; and representations of the political leader as a global masculine type who will lead a previously emasculated nation to future economic and cultural glory"--
List of contents
List of Figures; Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction: Masculinity, Modernity, Urbanity; 2. Nationalism, Masculinity and the City; 3. Dislocated Masculinities and the Unofficial City; 4. Thrilling Affects: Sexuality, Masculinity, the City and 'Indian Traditions' in the Contemporary Hindi 'Detective' Novel; 5. Fragmentary Pleasures: Masculinity, Urban Spaces and the Commodity Politics of 'Religious Fundamentalists'; 6. Technotopias: Masculinity, Women, the City and the Post-national Condition; 7. Conclusion: Masculine Body Politics; Bibliography; Index.
About the author
Sanjay Srivastava is an anthropologist and British Academy Global Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at SOAS, University of London. He is also Visiting Research Professor in the Department of Sociology, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi-NCR.
