Gods in the Bazaar: The Economies of Indian Calendar Art

'Kajri Jain examines the power that calendar art wields in Indian mass culture, arguing that its meanings derive as much from the production and circulation of the images as from their visual features. She draws on interviews with artists, printers, publishers, and consumers as well as analyses of the prints themselves to trace the economies—of art, commerce, religion, and desire—within which calendar images and ideas about them are formulated. For Jain, an analysis of the bazaar, or vernacular commercial arena, is crucial to understanding not only calendar art but also India’s postcolonial modernity and the ways that its mass culture has developed in close connection with a religiously inflected nationalism.' (excerpt from back cover)

Access level

Onsite

author

Kajri JAIN

publisher

Duke University Press (Durham, United States)

Location code

REF.JAK4

Language

English

Keyword

visual culture, popular culture, India

Publication/Creation date

2007

No of pages

434

ISBN / ISSN

9780822339267

No of copies

Content type

monograph

Chapter headings

Introduction: Calendar Art as Object of Knowledge

Part 1. Genealogy

1. Vernacularizing Capitalism: Sivakasi and Its Circuits

2. When the Gods Go to Market

3. Naturalizing the Popular

Part 2. Economy

4. The Sacred Icon in the Age of the Work of Art and Mechanical Reproduction

5. The Circulation of Images and the Embodiment of Value

Part 3. Efficacy

6. The Efficacious Image and the Sacralization of Modernity

7. Flexing the Canon

Conclusion

Gods in the Bazaar: The Economies of Indian Calendar Art

Citation

Rights statement

In Copyright

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