Narratives of Environmental Challenges in Brazil and India: Losing Nature, edited by Zelia Bora and Murali Sivaramakrishnan, contextualizes the two subcontinents of India and Brazil and closely examines environmental issues from within and without. This collection focuses largely on the fate of forests and water in these two geographical terrains. This book explores narratives that reflect transformations: hitherto unprecedented demographic expansions, exploitation of natural resources, pollution and depletion of river and fresh water sources, uncontrollable demands on the energy front, waste and garbage disposal, drastic reduction of biodiversity. All of these are factors to research when one considers "losing nature." In philosophical as well as theoretical terms the question of what is nature, what is gained and lost in human-nature interaction, what is the essential "balance" of nature, are all important queries on a similar scale. Societal reality in present day Brazil and India is reconstructed and deconstructed at will by the powerful influence of the past alongside that of globalization and technocratic market structures. The volume contemplates the representation and interrogation of environmental issues in both subcontinents, Brazil and India.

This book presents an incisive analysis of social formations in present-day Tamil Nadu and Kerala from pre-historic times to early medieval period. It examines the transformation from agro-pastoral to agrarian social formation by exploring areas like economy, technology, and historical processes of state formation. The volume specially focuses on the transition from clan and lineage to hereditary occupations of caste, and the social implications of the spread of writing. It also discusses the structural and institutional features of the new social formation. The Introduction provides a conceptual backdrop to the term 'social formation' and reviews the major debates surrounding social change in south India. This book will be of considerable interest to students, scholars, and teachers of ancient and medieval history, archaeology, and sociology, particularly those concerned with south India.