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Intersections of Contemporary Art, Anthropology and Art History in South Asia

Decoding Visual Worlds

Palgrave Macmillan
  • Locates artistic practice in relation to anthropology and sociology, with a particular focus on contemporary South Asia
  • Argues for the key role of artists and curators within the formation of social groups and cultural identity
  • Confronts the disciplinary limits of anthropology, sociology, art history, and art criticism

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Table of contents (11 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xvii
  2. Back Matter

    Pages 297-302

About this book

Taking South Asia as its focus, this wide-ranging collection probes the general reluctance of the cultural anthropology to engage with contemporary visual art and artists, including painting, sculpture, performance art and installation. Through case studies engaged equally in anthropology and visual studies, contributors examine art and artistic production in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal to bring the social and political complexities of artistic practice to the fore. Demonstrating the potential of the visual as a means to understand a society, its values, and its politics, this volume ranges across discourses of anthropology, sociology, biography, memory, art history, and contemporary practices of visual art. Ultimately, Intersections of Contemporary Art, Anthropology and Art History in South Asia simultaneously expands and challenges the disciplinary foci of two fields: it demonstrates to art criticism and art history the necessity of anthropological and sociological methodologies and theories, while at the same time challenging the “iconophobia” of social sciences.


Editors and Affiliations

  • South Asian University, New Delhi, India

    Sasanka Perera, Dev Nath Pathak

About the editors

Sasanka Perera is Professor of Sociology at South Asian University, New Delhi, India. He is the author of, among other publications, Artists Remember; Artists Narrate:  Memory and Representation inn Contemporary Sri Lankan Visual Arts (2011), Violence and The Burden of Memory: Remembrance and Erasure in Sinhala Consciousness (2015) and Warzone Tourism in Sri Lanka: Tales from Darker Places in Paradise (2016).

Dev Nath Pathak is Assistant Professor of Sociology at South Asian University, New Delhi, India. He is the author of Living and Dying: Meanings in Maithili Folklore (2018), the editor of Another South Asia! (2017), the co-editor, with Sasanka Perera, of Culture and Politics in South Asia: Performative Communication (2017) and he also co-edited, with Ravi Kumar and Sasanka Perera, Sociology and Social Anthropology in South Asia: Histories and Practices (2018).


Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Intersections of Contemporary Art, Anthropology and Art History in South Asia

  • Book Subtitle: Decoding Visual Worlds

  • Editors: Sasanka Perera, Dev Nath Pathak

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05852-4

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-05851-7Published: 06 March 2019

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-05852-4Published: 23 February 2019

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XVII, 302

  • Number of Illustrations: 25 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Social Anthropology, Sociology of Culture, Political Sociology, Asian Culture, Fine Arts

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access