Misreading the Bengal Delta

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Author :
Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295749628
Total Pages : 239 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (957 download)

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Book Synopsis Misreading the Bengal Delta by : Camelia Dewan

Download or read book Misreading the Bengal Delta written by Camelia Dewan and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2021-11-01 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unexpected story of climate change initiatives that threaten a complex waterscape Perilously close to sea level and vulnerable to floods, erosion, and cyclones, Bangladesh is one of the top recipients of development aid earmarked for climate change adaptation. Yet, to what extent do adaptation projects address local needs and concerns? Combining environmental history and ethnographic fieldwork with development professionals, rural farmers, and landless women, Misreading the Bengal Delta critiques development narratives of Bangladesh as a “climate change victim.” It examines how development actors repackage colonial-era modernizing projects, which have caused severe environmental effects, as climate-adaptation solutions. Seawalls meant to mitigate against cyclones and rising sea levels instead silt up waterways and induce drainage-related flooding. Other adaptation projects, from saline aquaculture to high-yield agriculture, threaten soil fertility, biodiversity, and livelihoods. Bangladesh’s environmental crisis goes beyond climate change, extending to coastal vulnerabilities that are entwined with underemployment, debt, and the lack of universal healthcare. This timely book analyzes how development actors create flawed causal narratives linking their interventions in the environment and society of the Global South to climate change. Ultimately, such misreadings risk exacerbating climatic threats and structural inequalities.

Misreading the Bengal Delta

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Author :
Publisher : Culture, Place, and Nature
ISBN 13 : 9780295749617
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (496 download)

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Book Synopsis Misreading the Bengal Delta by : Camelia Dewan

Download or read book Misreading the Bengal Delta written by Camelia Dewan and published by Culture, Place, and Nature. This book was released on 2021 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Key global players increasingly politicize discussion of climatic change. This is especially evident in regard to Bangladesh, much of which is perilously close to sea level and vulnerable to flooding, and which has long been the recipient of various development schemes for "poverty reduction" or "progress" to justify interventions in its environment and society. Some of these projects have resulted in severe, often unintended, environmental effects, such as silting of waterbodies that are surrounded by embankments; biodiversity loss and weakening of the sea walls (which protect against floods) resulting from tiger-prawn monoculture; and loss of soil fertility in intensive agriculture. Camelia Dewan utilizes ethnography and environmental history to highlight flawed assumptions of international development projects in Bangladesh, which often misread the coastal landscape by attributing causality solely to climate change. Examination of multiple and often conflicting perspectives-from poor rural coastal populations, middle-class elites, political actors, and NGO staff-shows how, since the colonial era, Bangladesh has endured intrusions, and how its current environmental crisis goes beyond global warming. This case study informs broader issues worldwide by documenting how the idea of climate change shapes development projects in the Global South, and the extent to which these endeavors correspond with the problems and concerns of populations they are intended to help. This provocative study will be welcomed by readers in the fields of environmental anthropology, human geography, and development studies"--

The Shattered Gourd

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Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 9780295802503
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (25 download)

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Book Synopsis The Shattered Gourd by : Okediji

Download or read book The Shattered Gourd written by Okediji and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2012-05 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Shattered Gourd uses the lens of visual art to examine connections between the United States and the Yoruba region of western Nigeria. In Yoruba legend, the sacred Calabash of Being contained the Water of Life; when the gourd was shattered, its fragments were scattered over the ground, death invaded the world, and imperfection crept into human affairs. In more modern times, the shattered gourd has symbolized the warfare and enslavement that culminated in the black diasporas. The "re-membering" of the gourd is represented by the survival of people of African origin all over the Americas, and, in this volume, by their rediscovery of African art forms on the diaspora soil of the United States. Twentieth-century African American artists employing Yoruba images in their work have gone from protest art to the exploration and celebration of the self and the community. But because the social, economic, and political context of African art forms differs markedly from that of American culture, critical contradictions between form and meaning often appear in African American works that use African forms. In this book -- the first to treat Yoruba forms while transcending the conventional emphasis on them as folk art, focusing instead on the high art tradition -- Moyo Okediji uses nearly four dozen works to illustrate a broad thematic treatment combined with a detailed approach to individual African and African American artists. Incorporating works by such artists as Meta Warrick Fuller, Hale Woodruff, Aaron Douglas, Elizabeth Catlett, Ademola Olugebefola, Paul Keene, Jeff Donaldson, Howardena Pindell, Muneer Bahauddeen, Michelle Turner, Michael Harris, Winnie Owens-Hart, and John Biggers, the author invites the reader to envision what he describes as "the immense possibilities of the future, as the twenty-first century embraces the twentieth in a primal dance of the diasporas," a future that heralds the advent of the global as a distinct movement in art, beyond postmodernism.

Threatening Dystopias

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Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501759175
Total Pages : 271 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Threatening Dystopias by : Kasia Paprocki

Download or read book Threatening Dystopias written by Kasia Paprocki and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-15 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bangladesh is currently ranked as one of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world. In Threatening Dystopias, Kasia Paprocki investigates the politics of climate change adaptation throughout the South Asian nation. Drawing on ethnographic and archival fieldwork, she engages with developers, policy makers, scientists, farmers, and rural migrants to show how Bangladeshi and global elites ignore the history of landscape transformation and its attendant political conflicts. Paprocki looks at how groups craft economic narratives and strategies that redistribute power and resources away from peasant communities. Although these groups claim that increased production of export commodities will reframe the threat of climate change into an opportunity for economic development and growth, the reality is not so simple. For the country's rural poor, these promises ring hollow. As development dispossesses the poor from agrarian livelihoods, outmigration from peasant communities leads to precarious existences in urban centers. And a vision of development in which urbanization and export-led growth are both desirable and inevitable is not one the land and its people can sustain. Threatening Dystopias shows how a powerful rural movement, although hampered by an all-consuming climate emergency, is seeking climate justice in Bangladesh.

The Gẹ̀lẹ̀dé Spectacle

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Author :
Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 9780295975993
Total Pages : 378 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (759 download)

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Book Synopsis The Gẹ̀lẹ̀dé Spectacle by : Babatunde Lawal

Download or read book The Gẹ̀lẹ̀dé Spectacle written by Babatunde Lawal and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This remarkable study explores the use of the visual and performing arts to promote nonviolence and social harmony in sub-Saharan Africa. It focuses on Gelede, a popular community festival of masquerade, dance, and song, held several times a year by the Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria and the Republic of Benin. Babatunde Lawal, an art historian and African scholar who has taught in Nigeria, Brazil, and the United States, is himself a Yoruba and has taken an active part in Gelede. He writes from the perspective of an informed participant/observer of his own culture. Lawal bases his book on extensive field research--observations and interviews--conducted over more than two decades as well as on numerous published and unpublished scholarly sources. He casts significant new light on many previously obscure aspects of Gelede, and he demonstrates a useful methodological approach to the study of non-Western art. The book systematically covers the major aspects of the Gelede spectacle, presenting its cultural background and historical origins as preface to a vivid and detailed description of an actual performance. This is followed by a discussion of the iconography and aesthetics of costume, and an examination of the sculpted images on the masks. The book concludes with a discussion of the moral and aesthetic philosophy of Gelede and its responsiveness to technological and social change. The Gelede Spectacle is illustrated in color and black-and-white with over 100 field and museum photographs, including a rare sequence on the dressing of a masquerader. It offers, in addition, more than 60 Gelede song texts, proverbs, and divination verses, each in the original Yoruba as well as in translation. Lawal's interpretations of these pieces indicate the rich complexities of metaphor and analogy inherent in the Yoruba language and art.

Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108681727
Total Pages : 485 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (86 download)

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Book Synopsis Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta by : Debjani Bhattacharyya

Download or read book Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta written by Debjani Bhattacharyya and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-24 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when a distant colonial power tries to tame an unfamiliar terrain in the world's largest tidal delta? This history of dramatic ecological changes in the Bengal Delta from 1760 to 1920 involves land, water and humans, tracing the stories and struggles that link them together. Pushing beyond narratives of environmental decline, Bhattacharyya argues that 'property-thinking', a governing tool critical in making land and water discrete categories of bureaucratic and legal management, was at the heart of colonial urbanization and the technologies behind the draining of Calcutta. The story of ecological change is narrated alongside emergent practices of land speculation and transformation in colonial law. Bhattacharyya demonstrates how this history continues to shape our built environments with devastating consequences, as shown in the Bay of Bengal's receding coastline.

The Bengal Delta

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Author :
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 0230289819
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (32 download)

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Book Synopsis The Bengal Delta by : I. Iqbal

Download or read book The Bengal Delta written by I. Iqbal and published by Springer. This book was released on 2010-10-20 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a focus on colonial Bengal, this book demonstrates how the dynamics of agrarian prosperity or decline, communal conflicts, poverty and famine can only be properly understood from an ecological perspective as well as discussions of state's coercion and popular resistance, market forces and dependency, or contested cultures and consciousness.

Wild Sardinia

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Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295989998
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (959 download)

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Book Synopsis Wild Sardinia by : Tracey Heatherington

Download or read book Wild Sardinia written by Tracey Heatherington and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shared concern for nature can be a way of transcending national, ethnic, religious, and cultural boundaries, yet conservation efforts often pit the interests of historically rooted or indigenous peoples against the state and international environmental organizations, eroding local autonomy while “saving” rural land for animals and tourists. Wild Sardinia’s examination of the cultural politics around nature conservation and the traditional Commons on an Italian island illustrates the complexities of environmental stewardship. Long known as the home of fiercely independent shepherds (often typecast as rustics, bandits, or eco-vandals), as well as wild mouflon sheep, magnificent eagles, and rare old oak forests, the town of Orgosolo has for several decades received notoriety through local opposition to Gennargentu National Park.

Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers

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Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295800259
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (958 download)

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Book Synopsis Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers by : Tim Forsyth

Download or read book Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers written by Tim Forsyth and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this far-reaching examination of environmental problems and politics in northern Thailand, Tim Forsyth and Andrew Walker analyze deforestation, water supply, soil erosion, use of agrochemicals, and biodiversity in order to challenge popularly held notions of environmental crisis. They argue that such crises have been used to support political objectives of state expansion and control in the uplands. They have also been used to justify the alternative directions advocated by an array of NGOs. In official and alternative discourses of economic development, the peoples living in Thailand's hill country are typically cast as either guardians or destroyers of forest resources, often depending on their ethnicity. Political and historical factors have created a simplistic, misleading, and often scientifically inaccurate environmental narrative: Hmong farmers, for example, are thought to exhibit environmentally destructive practices, whereas the Karen are seen as linked to and protective of their ancestral home. Forsyth and Walker reveal a much more complex relationship of hill farmers to the land, to other ethnic groups, and to the state. They conclude that current explanations fail to address the real causes of environmental problems and unnecessarily restrict the livelihoods of local people. The authors' critical assessment of simplistic environmental narratives, as well as their suggestions for finding solutions, will be valuable in international policy discussions about environmental issues in rapidly developing countries. Moreover, their redefinition of northern Thailand's environmental problems, and their analysis of how political influences have reinforced inappropriate policies, demonstrate new ways of analyzing how environmental science and knowledge are important arenas for political control. This book makes valuable contributions to Thai studies and more generally to the fields of environmental science, ecology, geography, anthropology, and political science, as well as to policy making and resource management in the developing world.

The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen

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Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295997850
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (959 download)

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Book Synopsis The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen by : Ramya Sreenivasan

Download or read book The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen written by Ramya Sreenivasan and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2015-08-03 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2009 Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize, sponsored by the Association for Asian Studies The medieval Rajput queen Padmini - believed to have been pursued by Alauddin Khalji, the Sultan of Delhi - has been the focus of numerous South Asian narratives, ranging from a Sufi mystical romance in the sixteenth century to nationalist histories in the late nineteenth century. The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen explores how early modern regional elites, caste groups, and mystical and monastic communities shaped their distinctive versions of the past through the repeated refashioning of the legend of Padmini. Ramya Sreenivasan investigates these legends and traces their subsequent appropriation by colonial administrators and nationalist intellectuals, for varying different political ends. Using Padmini as a means of illustrating the power of gender norms in constructing heroic memory, she shows how such narratives about virtuous women changed as they circulated across particular communities in South Asia between the sixteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book will interest historians of memory, gender, community, culture, and historywriting in South Asia. Illustrating how enduring legends emerged out of particular precolonial repositories of "tradition," the book also addresses the nature of colonial transitions and precolonial historical consciousness.

Yamuna Walk

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Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 204 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (318 download)

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Book Synopsis Yamuna Walk by : Atul Bhalla

Download or read book Yamuna Walk written by Atul Bhalla and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[Bhalla] documents a five-day trek along the [Yamuna] riverside, aiming to trace the relationship between the sacred Yamuna River and his home of New Delhi, India"--Dust jacket flap.

Liquid Empire

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691261237
Total Pages : 464 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis Liquid Empire by : Corey Ross

Download or read book Liquid Empire written by Corey Ross and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-07-09 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold new account of European imperialism told through the history of water In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a handful of powerful European states controlled more than a third of the land surface of the planet. These sprawling empires encompassed not only rainforests, deserts, and savannahs but also some of the world’s most magnificent rivers, lakes, marshes, and seas. Liquid Empire tells the story of how the waters of the colonial world shaped the history of imperialism, and how this imperial past still haunts us today. Spanning the major European empires of the period, Corey Ross describes how new ideas, technologies, and institutions transformed human engagements with water and how the natural world was reshaped in the process. Water was a realm of imperial power whose control and distribution were closely bound up with colonial hierarchies and inequalities—but this vital natural resource could never be fully tamed. Ross vividly portrays the efforts of officials, engineers, fisherfolk, and farmers to exploit water, and highlights its crucial role in the making and unmaking of the colonial order. Revealing how the legacies of empire have persisted long after colonialism ebbed away, Liquid Empire provides needed historical perspective on the crises engulfing the world’s waters, particularly in the Global South, where billions of people are faced with mounting water shortages, rising flood risks, and the relentless depletion of sea life.

Living with Disasters

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107107288
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Living with Disasters by : Amites Mukhopadhyay

Download or read book Living with Disasters written by Amites Mukhopadhyay and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-25 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ""Studies land erosion and the islanders' vulnerability and displacement in the disaster-prone Sundarbans in east India"--Provided by publisher"--

Ecological Nationalisms

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Publisher : Culture, Place, and Nature
ISBN 13 : 9780295993843
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (938 download)

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Book Synopsis Ecological Nationalisms by : Gunnel Cederlöf

Download or read book Ecological Nationalisms written by Gunnel Cederlöf and published by Culture, Place, and Nature. This book was released on 2014-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The analyses presented here consider how questions of national identity become entangled with environmental concerns in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and India and provide insight into the motivations of colonial and national governments in controlling or managing nature. Gunnel Cederlof is professor of history at Uppsala University, Sweden. K. Sivaramakrishnan is Dinakar Singh Professor of India and South Asian Studies, professor of anthropology, forestry, and environmental studies, and director of undergraduate studies at Yale University. Contributors include Kathleen D. Morrison, Urs Geiser, Vinita Damodaran, Antje Linkenbach, Bengt G. Karlsson, Claude A. Garcia, J.P. Pascal, G̦tz Hoeppe, Wolfgang Mey, Sarah Southwold-Llewellyn, and Nina Bhatt. "Informative and thought-provoking. . . . Ecological Nationalisms is a must-read for serious scholars of South Asia studies." -American Anthropologist

Adivasi Art and Activism

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Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295749725
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (957 download)

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Book Synopsis Adivasi Art and Activism by : Alice Tilche

Download or read book Adivasi Art and Activism written by Alice Tilche and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2022-02-19 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As India consolidates an aggressive model of economic development, indigenous tribal people known as adivasis continue to be overrepresented among the country’s poor. Adivasis make up more than eight hundred communities in India, with a total population of more than 100 million people who speak more than three hundred different languages. Although their historical presence is acknowledged by the state and they are lauded as a part of India’s ethnic identity today, their poverty has been compounded by the suppression of their cultural heritage and lifestyle. In Adivasi Art and Activism, Alice Tilche draws on anthropological fieldwork conducted in rural western India to chart changes in adivasi aesthetics, home life, attire, food, and ideas of religiosity that have emerged from negotiation with the homogenizing forces of Hinduization, development, and globalization in the twenty-first century. She documents curatorial projects located not only in museums and art institutions, but in the realms of the home, the body, and the landscape. Adivasi Art and Activism raises vital questions about preservation and curation of indigenous material and provides an astute critique of the aesthetics and politics of Hindu nationalism.

Global Political Ecology

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136904328
Total Pages : 655 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (369 download)

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Book Synopsis Global Political Ecology by : Richard Peet

Download or read book Global Political Ecology written by Richard Peet and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-12-17 with total page 655 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world is caught in the mesh of a series of environmental crises. So far attempts at resolving the deep basis of these have been superficial and disorganized. Global Political Ecology links the political economy of global capitalism with the political ecology of a series of environmental disasters and failed attempts at environmental policies. This critical volume draws together contributions from twenty-five leading intellectuals in the field. It begins with an introductory chapter that introduces the readers to political ecology and summarizes the books main findings. The following seven sections cover topics on the political ecology of war and the disaster state; fuelling capitalism: energy scarcity and abundance; global governance of health, bodies, and genomics; the contradictions of global food; capital’s marginal product: effluents, waste, and garbage; water as a commodity, a human right, and power; the functions and dysfunctions of the global green economy; political ecology of the global climate, and carbon emissions. This book contains accounts of the main currents of thought in each area that bring the topics completely up-to-date. The individual chapters contain a theoretical introduction linking in with the main themes of political ecology, as well as empirical information and case material. Global Political Ecology serves as a valuable reference for students interested in political ecology, environmental justice, and geography.

The Migrants Table

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Publisher : Temple University Press
ISBN 13 : 1592130968
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (921 download)

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Book Synopsis The Migrants Table by : Krishnendu Ray

Download or read book The Migrants Table written by Krishnendu Ray and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2004-09-16 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To most of us the food that we associate with home-our national and familial homes-is an essential part of our cultural heritage. In this book, Krishnendu Ray examines the changing food habits of Bengali immigrants to the United States as they deal with the tension between their nostalgia for home and their desire to escape from its confinements.