This series foregrounds scholarly work that critically and imaginatively explores these vast and deep transformations and the complex historical conditions that made them possible. The series is focused on contemporary issues and distinctly modern and colonial investigations grounded in strong empirical, ethnographic, and archival work.
Speaking to multiple audiences in the social sciences disciplines, including Anthropology, History, Sociology, Political Science, Cultural Studies, and South Asian studies (among others), books in this series go beyond well-established theoretical and political paradigms. They critically explore questions arising from enduring public and political conflict—the legitimacy of democratic politics, questions of caste and social hierarchy, gender and public morality, the transformation of domestic life, informal economies, ideas of culpability and punishment, cultural-religious difference, and the demotic meanings of the secular—just to name a few.
Moreover, South Asia in Motion, publishes works that address larger analytical questions from the vantage point of one or several of the region’s rich vernacular public cultures, works that bring the texture and nuance of vibrant public and academic debates across the region to bear on how national and global issues are framed and understood. These three qualities, an interdisciplinary approach, a focus on issues of longstanding contestation, and attention to larger frameworks, are hallmarks of the series.