Rethinking Markets in Modern India
Embedded Exchange and Contested Jurisdiction

Using historical and ethnographic analyses, this book shows how Indian markets are embedded in society and politically contested.

Ajay Gandhi (Edited by), Barbara Harriss-White (Edited by), Douglas E. Haynes (Edited by), Sebastian Schwecke (Edited by)

9781108486781, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 October 2020

300 pages
16 x 23.5 x 3 cm, 0.71 kg

'Markets are more than acts of buying and selling. Markets are also a cluster of relations and practices, some legal and some not. Gathering together a set of rich case-studies, Rethinking Markets offers unique insights into what these relations and practices were and how they shaped modern India.' Tirthankar Roy, London School of Economics

To people operating in India's economy, actually existing markets are remarkably different from how planners and academics conceive them. From the outside, they appear as demarcated arenas of exchange bound by state-imposed rules. As historical and social realities, however, markets are dynamic, adaptative, and ambiguous spaces. This book delves into this intricate context, exploring Indian markets through the competition and collaboration of those who frame and participate in markets. Anchored in vivid case studies – from colonial property and advertising milieus to today's bazaar and criminal economies – this volume underlines the friction and interdependence between commerce, society, and state. Contributors from history, anthropology, political economy, and development studies synthesize existing scholarly approaches, add new perspectives on Indian capitalism's evolution, and reveal the transactional specificities that underlie the real-world functioning of markets.

1. Markets in Modern India: Embedded, Contested, Pliable Sebastian Schwecke and Ajay Gandhi
2. Banking in the Bazaar: The Nattukottai Chettiars David Rudner
3. Space in Motion: An Uneven Narrative of Urban Private Property in Bombay Nikhil Rao
4. Magic of Business: Occult Forces in the Bazaar Economy Projit Bihari Mukharji
5. Vernacular Capitalism, Advertising, and the Bazaar in Early Twentieth-century Western India Douglas E. Haynes
6. The Artifice of Trust: Reputational and Procedural Registers of Trust in North Indian 'Informal' Finance Sebastian Schwecke
7. Mandi Acts and Market Lore: Regulatory Life in India's Agricultural Markets Mekhala Krishnamurthy
8. The Market and the Sovereign: Politics, Performance, and Impasses of Cross-LOC trade Aditi Saraf
9. Brandism vs. Bazaarism: Mediating Divinity in Banaras Andy Rotman
10. Fighting Specters and Fostering Relations: An Ethnography of Black Money in India Ajay Gandhi
11. Market Making in Punjab Lotteries: Regulation and Mutual Dependence Matthew Hull
12. Liquid Assets: Transactional Grammars of Alcohol in Jharkhand Roger Begrich
13. Building on Sand? Criminal Markets and Politics in Tamil Nadu Barbara Harriss-White and J. Jeyaranjan
Index.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], Political economy [KCP], Development economics & emerging economies [KCM], Economics [KC], Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC]