This book examines the emergence of professional advertising in western India during the interwar period. It explores the ways in which global manufacturers advanced a ‘brand-name capitalism’ among the Indian middle class by promoting the sale of global commodities during the 1920s and 1930s, a time when advertising was first introduced in India as a profession and underwent critical transformations. Analysing the cultural strategies, both verbal and visual, used by foreign businesses in their advertisements to capture urban consumers, Haynes argues that the promoters of various commodities crystalized their campaigns around principles of modern conjugality. He also highlights the limitations of brand-name capitalism during this period, examining both its inability to cultivate markets in the countryside or among the urban poor, and its failure to secure middle-class customers. With numerous examples of illustrated advertisements taken from Indian newspapers, the book discusses campaigns for male sex tonics and women’s medicines, hot drinks such as Ovaltine and Horlicks, soaps such as Lifebuoy, Lux and Sunlight, cooking mediums such as Dalda and electrical household technologies. By examining the formation of ‘brand-name capitalism’ and two key structures that accompanied it- the advertising agency and the field of professional advertising- this book sheds new light on the global consumer economy in interwar India, and places developments in South Asia into a larger global history of consumer capitalism.

Sex has no history, but sexual science does. Starting in the late nineteenth century, people all over the world suddenly began to insist that understandings of sex be based on science. As Japanese and Indian sexologists influenced their German and American counterparts, and vice versa, sexuality, modernity, and imaginings of exotified "Others" became intimately linked. The first anthology to provide a worldwide perspective on the birth and development of the field, A Global History of Sexual Science contends that actors outside of Europe-in Asia, Latin America, and Africa-became important interlocutors in debates on prostitution, birth control, and transvestism. Ideas circulated through intellectual exchange, travel, and internationally produced and disseminated publications. Twenty scholars tackle specific issues, including the female orgasm and the criminalization of male homosexuality, to demonstrate how concepts and ideas introduced by sexual scientists gained currency throughout the modern world.

Sex has no history, but sexual science does. Starting in the late nineteenth century, people all over the world suddenly began to insist that understandings of sex be based on science. As Japanese and Indian sexologists influenced their German and American counterparts, and vice versa, sexuality, modernity, and imaginings of exotified "Others" became intimately linked. The first anthology to provide a worldwide perspective on the birth and development of the field, A Global History of Sexual Science contends that actors outside of Europe-in Asia, Latin America, and Africa-became important interlocutors in debates on prostitution, birth control, and transvestism. Ideas circulated through intellectual exchange, travel, and internationally produced and disseminated publications. Twenty scholars tackle specific issues, including the female orgasm and the criminalization of male homosexuality, to demonstrate how concepts and ideas introduced by sexual scientists gained currency throughout the modern world.

Riots, rebellions, and revolutions have always captured our attention. But moments of upheaval do not contrast as strongly with "normal" times as many social historians, sociologists, and political scientists have assumed. Offering examples from South Asia, these essays examine subtle forms of the "everyday resistance" and varieties of the everyday use of power that mark the patterns of ordinary life in the region. These essays are part of a larger effort to understand the history of subordination in India. They focus on peasants and urban laborers, courtesans and merchants, sometimes employing unconventional sources and methods. By depicting a rich variety of non-confrontational forms of resistance and contestatory behaviors, the authors challenge our usual assumptions about the overt nature of resistance to dominant powerholders. Taken together, the essays suggest that we must consider a much wider range of socio-cultural practices if we wish to understand how the world of dominated groups is constrained, modified, and conditioned by power relations. Identifying the "everydayness" of resistance in social life thus reveals a social structure formed from a constellation of contradictory and contestatory processes, rather than a seamless, functional whole. At the same time, struggle is portrayed as something that is constantly being conditioned by the structures of social and political power. As the editors note, "neither domination nor resistance is autonomous; the two are entangled together so that it becomes difficult to analyze one without discussing the effects of the other".

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.

This book charts the history of artisan production and marketing in the Bombay Presidency from 1870 to 1960. While the textile mills of western India's biggest cities have been the subject of many rich studies, the role of artisan producers located in the region's small towns have been virtually ignored. Based upon extensive archival research as well as numerous interviews with participants in the handloom and powerloom industries, this book explores the role of weavers, merchants, consumers and laborers in the making of what the author calls 'small-town capitalism'. By focusing on the politics of negotiation and resistance in local workshops, the book challenges conventional narratives of industrial change. The book provides the first in-depth work on the origins of powerloom manufacture in South Asia. It affords unique insights into the social and economic experience of small-town artisans as well as the informal economy of late colonial and early post-independence India.

This book charts the history of artisan production and marketing in the Bombay Presidency from 1870 to 1960. While the textile mills of western India's biggest cities have been the subject of many rich studies, the role of artisan producers located in the region's small towns have been virtually ignored. Based upon extensive archival research as well as numerous interviews with participants in the handloom and powerloom industries, this book explores the role of weavers, merchants, consumers, and laborers in the making of what the author calls "small-town capitalism." By focusing on the politics of negotiation and resistance in local workshops, the book challenges conventional narratives of industrial change. The book provides the first in-depth work on the origins of powerloom manufacture in South Asia. It affords unique insights into the social and economic experience of small-town artisans as well as the informal economy of late colonial and early post-independence India.

This book explores the rhetoric and ritual of Indian elites undercolonialism, focusing on the city of Surat in the Bombay Presidency. It particularly examines how local elites appropriated and modified the liberal representative discourse of Britain and thus fashioned a "public' culture that excluded the city's underclasses. Departing from traditional explanations that have seen this process as resulting from English education or radical transformations in society, Haynes emphasizes the importance of the unequal power relationship between the British and those Indians who struggled for political influence and justice within the colonial framework. A major contribution of the book is Haynes' analysis of the emergence and ultimate failure of Ghandian cultural meanings in Indian politics after 1923.
The book addresses issues of importance to historians and anthropologists of India, to political scientists seeking to understand the origins of democracy in the "Third World," and general readers interested in comprehending processes of cultural change in colonial contexts.