Crafting the Nation in Colonial India [Hardcover]

Drawing on a wide range of archival evidence, Abigail McGowan argues that crafts seized the political imagination in western India because they provided a means of debating the present and future of the country.Introduction Demanding Knowledge, Documenting the Body The Culture of Difference: From Colonial Knowledge to the Problem with Crafts Developing Traditions: Preservationist Design and the Independent Artisan The Cult of the Craftsman in the Spirit of Modernization: Rationalization, Efficiency and the Crafts Sector Conclusion: The Long Life of Difference: Gandhi and the Politics of Crafts after 1920

In this imaginative and empirically rich study, Abigail McGowan demonstrates convincingly that the Indian crafts became a critical ground on which both colonial and nationalist projects of power were constructed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book is a pioneering effort in establishing the relationship between colonial knowledge, state interventions into the economy, and visual/material cultures. - Douglas Haynes, Associate Professor of History, Dartmouth University

ABIGAIL MCGOWAN?is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Vermont, USA.