Work, Word and the World: Essays on Habitat, Culture and Environment

(Hardback)

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Word, Work and the World begins with the assumption that people are interested in the world around them. The book is written with the intent of drawing in lay and specialised readers into the interdisciplinary world of Sociology/Social Anthropology. The methods of both, since the 1960s, has been seen as combined for the reasons that the dichotomy of tribal/ peasant in relation to urban conglomerations is thought to be immensely interesting to the reading public. Migration for work is so significant, whether within the country or outside, that the dilemmas and concerns of the diaspora are always interesting data. Put simply, the book tries to bring forward the living practices of communities which are interlocked in time and space, where work and their cultures become intermeshed in different ways. Of course cyberspace becomes the common denominator in understanding that people are interested in one another, families and friends become interactive over spans of time which allow a certain intimacy of acknowledgement. Economic practices are also embedded in the hinterland of communication. As the world becomes increasingly vulnerable to climate change, organic farming, the search for water, the protection of lands and people from floods, are all real indexes of how urgent the task of recording peoples life worlds has become. Narrative production, and its interpretation draws us into the complexities of the ethnographic present, which as a type of documentation provides resource materials to historians. Since the world is now so encompassable, the book explores how human being remember the past, while creating new niches for the survival of their families and communities. Hybridization of cultures also involves familiarity with world literature, because people enjoy the expanse of imagination into which they are released by reading time honoured texts, whether of the ancient past, or of contemporary time. The time of legend, of fable, of coercive patterns of existence arising out of natural or political calamities, makes them ever more respectful of traditions and the hope for survival. Out of war and loss arise both science and poetry, not necessarily opposed to one another. This book tries to bring to the reader the pleasures of many cultures in conversation with one another, where dissonances may be accommodated.

Reviews

Susan Visvanathans book of essays ranges widely between activist projects blossoming in stark environments, ancient sacred texts, contemporary world literature, alternative education, Covid-19 and more. Her generous gaze, erudition and her insights delight and enlighten. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Word, Work and the World. This is a remarkable example of transdisciplinary scholarship by a social scientist and a novelist who knows how to re-energise the fertility of modernity and the tradition framework. It is also innovative in utilizing her personal history as data, refreshinglyas well as deeply informativelybreaking with the long-held convention of bracketing the scientists own life from the research topic. A greatly rewarding read. -- Professor Emerita Frederique Apffel-Marglin , Department of Anthropology Smith College, Northampton MA, Founder & Director Sachamama Center for Biocultural Regeneration
I find these essays in the collection, Work, Word and the World extremely profound. Susan Visvanathan and I were both in Cyprus in 2018, reading our papers at a conference organised to honour Stephanos Stephinides, the well-known Cypriot poet. Susan Visvanathan paired Stephanos with Ari Sitas, another poet from Cyprus and I paired Stephanos with our Nissim Ezekiel. Reading her essays now, I realise what a profound scholar with varied intellectual interests I had the good fortune to come across. From the initial unforgettable essays on foregrounding water debates, dams, and forest produce to later essays on King Solomons Song of Songs, this volume is a treat. -- Keki Daruwalla, poet and literary critic
The book is a most worthwhile read for those who have an interest in connecting the larger historical shifts with an analysis of social and cultural aspects. It is a highly valuable addition to the relevant sociological literature and as an educator, I will be searching for opportunities to discuss it with masters and PhD students as an example of ways of researching transformative processes in a global framework. -- Professor Michalis Kontopodis, Chair in Global Childhood & Youth Studies, University of Leeds
What an exciting collection of writings and subjects. Among other important subjects, Susan Visvanathan also offers insight into exciting questions related to education. She writes about education not just as an important social issue, but also reflects on its personal aspects, writing about the subject as one of the pillars of our everyday lives. Placing human encounters and everyday events at the centre of her writings and reflecting on them with great wisdom allows us, readers, to engage with the topics raised in this exciting book on a personal level as well. -- Adam Bethlenfalvy, Drama and Theatre Education Practitioner, InSite Drama and Lecturer at Karoli Gaspar University, Budapest
Alternative visions of education exist and are kept alive in unsuspected corners of the earth. Susan Visvanathan describes the fascinating work being done in the hills of Tiruvannamalai in South India and Leh, Ladakh on the North-West Frontier of India. Her gift lies in her trusting the vivid detail of observation to allow the story to tell itselfwhile her rumination on education accompanies and enlightens ours. All those who work with young children will relate to the educators whose creative efforts she describes, and all those interested in anthropological narratives of childhood will delight in the vignettes she offers us. She reminds us through the particular to see what is universal in childhood, and that is a precious thing. -- Paul Pillai, Co-founder and Director of The Montessori Place, Sussex
I enjoyed reading Word, Work and the World. A lot of it resonates with the background against which interventions from INTACH are made. Preservation of the past for the future requires a strong interdisciplinary understanding and approach. We often deal with disasters arising from working in silos mindset. Susan Visvanathans new book is seminal to understand the coalescing of histories, traditions, culture and nature in the continued evolution of communities. A must-read for those at the policy level of modernisation and development to appreciate and adopt an interdisciplinary and inclusive approach for preventing inimical development to societal and human interests. -- Manisha Singh, Director, Cultural Affairs, INTACH, Delhi
The seemingly effortless prose of the novelist Susan Visvanathan shows us how she can move from the particulars of energy, water and village life to the major issues of work, faith and memorywhile always seeing the general in the former and the specific in the latter. These rare talents are the route to, as she herself puts it: an understanding of reality as the people experience it. This is the work of a scholar at the very top of her game. -- Martin C. Henson, Professor Emeritus and Former Dean for International Affairs, University of Essex, England

Author Bio

Susan Visvanathan is the author of Christians of Kerala (1993), Friendship, Interiority and Mysticism (2007) and The Children of Nature (2010). She has published essays in various journals, the earliest of which was Reconstructions of the Past among the Syrian Christians of Kerala in Contributions to Indian Sociology (1986). Prof. Visvanathan was Chairperson of Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University (20092011) and Teacher-in-Charge of Department of Sociology, Hindu College (19921997). She has taught Sociology for thirty-eight years, of which twenty-five years were spent at Jawaharlal Nehru University, where she had the privilege of working with doctoral students. She retired from Jawaharlal Nehru University, on 9 March 2022. Susan Visvanathan has edited Structure and Transformation (2001), Chronology and Event (edited with Vineeta Menon) (2019), Art, Politics, Symbols and Religion (2019), Structure, Innovation and Adaptation (2019). She collaborated with the art historian, Geeti Sen, and edited two volumes of the India International Quarterly titled Kerala (1995) and Women and the Family (1997). Susan Visvanathan is a well-known writer of literary fiction who has been included in Bruce Kings Rewriting India: Eight Writers (2014). Her first novella, a collection of integrated short stories, titled Something Barely Remembered (2000) was published by Flamingo and India Ink, and was one of the 6 nominees for the Commonwealth Award, UK. It is now a text book for English Literature students in the 200 colleges of the Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala. Prof. Visvanathan was Visiting Professor to the Maison des Sciences de lhomme, Paris (2004) and to Universite Paris 13 (2011). She was Charles Wallace Fellow at Ethnomusicology and Anthropology Department in Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1997. Prof. Visvanathan was Professional Excellence Award Fellow at Budapest, Central European University in 2018.