Consumable Texts in Contemporary India: Uncultured Books and Bibliographical Sociology

by S. Gupta

Overview

Through what he terms "bibliographical sociology", Suman Gupta explores the presence of English-language publications in the contemporary Indian context – their productions, circulations and readerships – to understand current social trends.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781349504183
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	01/01/2015
Series:	New Directions in Book History
Edition description:	1st ed. 2015
Pages:	204
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Suman Gupta is Professor of Literature and Cultural History at the Open University UK. He is the author of eleven previous books and editor of seven, including The Theory and Reality of Democracy, Social Constructionist Identity Politics and Literary Studies, Globalization and Literature, Imagining Iraq and Contemporary Literature: The Basics.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 1. Keywords and Preliminaries 2. Indian Commercial Fiction in English 3. Indian Vernacular Pulp Fiction in English Translation 4. On the Indian Readers of Hitler's Mein Kampf 5. Framing Group Discussion Guidebooks 6. Low-End Group Discussion Guidebooks and Kunjis 7. Approaching Public Sector 'Value Education' Publications 8. Mapping Public Sector 'Value Education' Publications 9. Rules of Bibliographical Sociology's Method Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

Gupta displays an easy familiarity with an admirable range of both, the academic and the non-academic—as well as cultured and uncultured—literatures and discourses, and not only applies them to a range of topics and issues that are unexpected (to say the least), but with remarkably accurate, insightful and incisive results. The analyses are subtle, sophisticated and frighteningly persuasive in their implications for the sheer reach and impact of such uncultured books, and the political and ideological effects they are likely to have.” (P K Vijayan, Economic Political Weekly, Vol. 51 (36), September 3, 2016)

From the Publisher