Amitav Ghosh among most compelling ethnographies

Via Antropologi.info, I learnt about this post by L L Wynn about some of the compelling ethnographies and ethnographic fiction; not surprisingly, Amitav Ghosh’s In an antique land figures prominently; I also noticed a couple of curiously named books about Tam-land:

Notes on Love in a Tamil Family (author?) … Fluid Selves: Being a Person the Tamil Way (author?)

in the list.

I do not know if anthropologists consider any of the following (largely anthropological pieces) as ethnographies; but, irrespective of the classification, they are a must-read (and, I enjoyed each of them a lot):

1. Dancing in Cambodia by Amitav Ghosh (In my opinion Ghosh’s finest piece, which does not get the attention it deserves);
2. Yuganta by Irawati Karve;
3. Remembered village by M N Srinivas;
4. Raga’n’Josh by Sheila Dhar;
5. Collected essays of A K Ramanujan (His Three Hundred Ramayanas (which was the centre of a needless controversy) is in fact one of the finest pieces that I have read; it is subtitled as Five examples and three thoughts on translation); there are also other interesting pieces (Is there an Indian way of thinking is one of them); and,
6. An anthropologist among the Marxists and other essays by Ramachandra Guha.

Have fun!

Tags: ethnography