This book examines the middle classes — who they are and what they do — and their influence in shaping contemporary cultural politics in India. Describing the historical emergence of these classes, from the colonial period to contemporary times, it shows how the middle classes have changed, with older groups shifting out and new entrants taking place, thereby transforming the character and meanings of the category. The essays in this volume observe multiple sites of social action (workplaces and homes, schools and streets, cinema and sex surveys, temples and tourist hotels) to delineate the lives of the middle classes and show how middle-class definitions and desires articulate hegemonic notions of the normal and the normative.

Using in-depth interviews, this book explores women employed in the Indian IT industry and highlights the gender specific and culturally specific consequences of reflexive modernity in neo-liberal India.

Helps in advancing our interdisciplinary, critical understanding of the linkages between social relations, political power, and historical development. This title contains a section on the politics of the 'new middle class' in the global south and post-socialist societies.

How is it possible to think new thoughts? What is creativity and can science explain it? And just how did Coleridge dream up the creatures of The Ancient Mariner? When The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms was first published, Margaret A. Boden's bold and provocative exploration of creativity broke new ground. Boden uses examples such as jazz improvisation, chess, story writing, physics, and the music of Mozart, together with computing models from the field of artificial intelligence to uncover the nature of human creativity in the arts. The second edition of The Creative Mind has been updated to include recent developments in artificial intelligence, with a new preface, introduction and conclusion by the author. It is an essential work for anyone interested in the creativity of the human mind.

"Enquires into the ways in which food and its production and consumption are enmeshed in aspects of human existence and society, taking India and its interaction with food as its focal point"--

At the start of the twenty-first century challenges to the global hegemony of U.S. culture are more apparent than ever. Two of the contenders vying for the hearts, minds, bandwidths, and pocketbooks of the world’s consumers of culture (principally, popular culture) are India and South Korea. “Bollywood” and “Hallyu” are increasingly competing with “Hollywood”—either replacing it or filling a void in places where it never held sway. This critical multidisciplinary anthology places the mediascapes of India (the site of Bollywood), South Korea (fountainhead of Hallyu, aka the Korean Wave), and the United States (the site of Hollywood) in comparative dialogue to explore the transnational flows of technology, capital, and labor. It asks what sorts of political and economic shifts have occurred to make India and South Korea important alternative nodes of techno-cultural production, consumption, and contestation. By adopting comparative perspectives and mobile methodologies and linking popular culture to the industries that produce it as well as the industries it supports, Pop Empires connects films, music, television serials, stardom, and fandom to nation-building, diasporic identity formation, and transnational capital and labor. Additionally, via the juxtaposition of Bollywood and Hallyu, as not only synecdoches of national affiliation but also discursive case studies, the contributors examine how popular culture intersects with race, gender, and empire in relation to the global movement of peoples, goods, and ideas.

This book analyses India’s middle class by recognising the diversity within the class, the people, their practices, and the production of spaces. It explores the economic and social lives of the new middle class, expanding the areas of inquiry beyond consumption in post-liberalisation India and its intersectionalities with gender, caste, religion, migration, and other socioeconomic markers in various cities across the country. The book interrogates the meanings and perceptions of social mobility, growth, consumerism, technology, social identity, and development and examines how they can be emancipatory or subjugating in different contexts. It engages with the new entrants in the middle class, particularly from the marginalised sections, their struggles, insecurities, anxieties, agency, and experiences. The personal, emotive, and psychic dimensions of social mobility have been dealt with in the larger context of socioeconomic settings. The book crosses disciplinary and spatial boundaries and uses a variety of methodologies to provide perspectives on several unexplored or underexplored areas of India’s new middle class. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of sociology, economics, development studies, public policy, social work, and South Asian studies.

"Riveting stuff. Through the prism of his experience of the military elite, Fiennes presents a dazzling history of the world's best fighting units to amaze and enthral the reader." Damien Lewis, Bestselling author of Zero Six Bravo Inspired by the heroic war time escapades of his father, as well as drawing on his own experiences in the special forces, acclaimed adventurer Sir Ranulph Fiennes thrillingly explores the history of elite military units, from ancient Sparta to the War on Terror. The best of the best, these elite units have frequently been immortalised on the big screen, and in computer games, for their daring deeds. Whether it be fighting on the battlefield, storming forts and castles, rescuing hostages, high stakes reconnaissance missions or the dramatic assassination of enemy leaders, these are the men who are relied upon to undertake dangerous missions of the highest stakes. While celebrating the heroics of groups such as the SAS and Navy Seals, Sir Ranulph also reveals the true stories of infamous organisations such as The Assassins and Templar Knights. Uncovering their origins, and examining their weapons and tactics, Sir Ranulph showcases these units most famous missions, and reveals the men behind them. Showing incredible courage, often in the face of impossible odds, these units have also changed the course of history along the way. Sir Ranulph discusses the reasons behind their success and failures, with many notorious conflicts often being decided by these elite units facing off against each other, with the victor not only evolving warfare, but also consigning their opponent to history. While these units traditionally prefer to operate in the shadows, Sir Ranulph brings their remarkable histories to the fore, told with his trademark ability to weave a story which has seen him become one of Britain’s most beloved bestselling authors.

What urban food networks reveal about middle class livability in times of transformation In recent years, the concept of “livability” has captured the global imagination, influencing discussions about the implications of climate change on human life and inspiring rankings of “most livable cities” in popular publications. But what really makes for a livable life, and for whom? Cultivating Livability takes Bengaluru, India, as a case study—a city that is alternately described as India’s most and least livable megacity, where rapid transformation is undergirded by inequalities evident in the food networks connecting peri-urban farmers and the middle-class public. Anthropologist Camille Frazier probes the meaning of “livability” in Bengaluru through ethnographic work among producers and consumers, corporate intermediaries and urban information technology professionals. Examining the varying efforts to reconfigure processes of food production, distribution, retail, and consumption, she reveals how these intersections are often rooted in and exacerbate ongoing forms of disenfranchisement that privilege some lives at the expense of others.

An ethnography analyzing Indias class of transnational information technology professionals and their influential ideas about what it means to be Indian.