Ronald Inden
Encyclopedia
Ronald Inden is an American Indologist, and professor emeritus in the Departments of History and of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago
and is a major scholar in South Asian and post-colonial studies. Inden has been a lifelong resident of Hyde Park
, the Chicago community which contains the University.
, then the University of Chicago itself
Although his early work focused on Bengali history and culture
and was fairly conventional in scope and methods, beginning in the 1980s his scholarship became increasingly theoretical, wide-ranging, iconoclastic and ambitious.
Inspired by Edward Said
's Orientalism
, he began to critically investigate how social scientific knowledge was shaped by the colonial conditions of its production. Imagining India was a critical survey of the field of Indology
and argued that most scholarship consistently failed to treat Indians as rational subjects and knowing actors who were intelligently involved in the creation of their social worlds. "The immense learning and analytical sharpness of the book is evident from the very first chapter" Post-Orientalist Strategies explored ways of knowing India that are not so limited by colonialism and its legacies.
R. G. Collingwood
's works, including An Essay on Philosophical Method and The Idea of History, were especially influential in Inden's thought during this period. He took Collingwood's notion of a "scale of forms" and used it to develop an approach opposed to a "hierarchy of essences". In general, in Inden's work the past two decades, the focus has been on the limitations of what he calls essentializing or substantializing discourses which understand agents as more or less reflections of a single, internally consistent idea. He argues that Indology returns to a small number of relatively fixed themes to make sense out of India. India, in this Indological version, is feminine, jungle-like, religious, caste-riven, village-based, irrational and, fundamentally, the opposite of the West. Inden, on the contrary, emphasizes that there's an irreducible tension in scholarship and that India and the West need to be understood as both "opposites" and "distincts" and that they have "differences in quality" as well as "differences in kind". Essentializing forms of knowledge emphasize only the differences in quality and the extent to which the West and India are opposites.
Inden's more recent research takes up the ways that national and ethnic identities in 20th century India were articulated with references to changes in local and global ruling class relations.
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
and is a major scholar in South Asian and post-colonial studies. Inden has been a lifelong resident of Hyde Park
Hyde Park, Chicago
Hyde Park, located on the South Side of the City of Chicago, in Cook County, Illinois, United States and seven miles south of the Chicago Loop, is a Chicago neighborhood and one of 77 Chicago community areas. It is home to the University of Chicago, the Hyde Park Art Center, the Museum of Science...
, the Chicago community which contains the University.
Education
He was educated at the Lab SchoolUniversity of Chicago Laboratory Schools
The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools is a private, co-educational day school in Chicago, Illinois. It is affiliated with the University of Chicago...
, then the University of Chicago itself
Career
Inden has spent the bulk of his professional career at University of Chicago.Although his early work focused on Bengali history and culture
Bengali people
The Bengali people are an ethnic community native to the historic region of Bengal in South Asia. They speak Bengali , which is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the Magadhi Prakrit and Sanskrit languages. In their native language, they are referred to as বাঙালী...
and was fairly conventional in scope and methods, beginning in the 1980s his scholarship became increasingly theoretical, wide-ranging, iconoclastic and ambitious.
Inspired by Edward Said
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
's Orientalism
Orientalism (book)
Orientalism is a book published in 1978 by Edward Said that has been highly influential and controversial in postcolonial studies and other fields. In the book, Said effectively redefined the term "Orientalism" to mean a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the...
, he began to critically investigate how social scientific knowledge was shaped by the colonial conditions of its production. Imagining India was a critical survey of the field of Indology
Indology
Indology is the academic study of the history and cultures, languages, and literature of the Indian subcontinent , and as such is a subset of Asian studies....
and argued that most scholarship consistently failed to treat Indians as rational subjects and knowing actors who were intelligently involved in the creation of their social worlds. "The immense learning and analytical sharpness of the book is evident from the very first chapter" Post-Orientalist Strategies explored ways of knowing India that are not so limited by colonialism and its legacies.
R. G. Collingwood
R. G. Collingwood
Robin George Collingwood was a British philosopher and historian. He was born at Cartmel, Grange-over-Sands in Lancashire, the son of the academic W. G. Collingwood, and was educated at Rugby School and at University College, Oxford, where he read Greats...
's works, including An Essay on Philosophical Method and The Idea of History, were especially influential in Inden's thought during this period. He took Collingwood's notion of a "scale of forms" and used it to develop an approach opposed to a "hierarchy of essences". In general, in Inden's work the past two decades, the focus has been on the limitations of what he calls essentializing or substantializing discourses which understand agents as more or less reflections of a single, internally consistent idea. He argues that Indology returns to a small number of relatively fixed themes to make sense out of India. India, in this Indological version, is feminine, jungle-like, religious, caste-riven, village-based, irrational and, fundamentally, the opposite of the West. Inden, on the contrary, emphasizes that there's an irreducible tension in scholarship and that India and the West need to be understood as both "opposites" and "distincts" and that they have "differences in quality" as well as "differences in kind". Essentializing forms of knowledge emphasize only the differences in quality and the extent to which the West and India are opposites.
Inden's more recent research takes up the ways that national and ethnic identities in 20th century India were articulated with references to changes in local and global ruling class relations.
Publications
- Post-Orientalist Strategies
- Imagining India. Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1990;
- Marriage and Rank in Bengali Culture: A History of Caste and Clan in Middle Period Bengal. University of California Press, 1975.
- "Transcending Identities in Modern India's World," in Politics and the Ends of Identity, ed. Kathryn Dean. London, Ashgate, 1997, 64-102.
- "Embodying God: From Imperial Progresses to National Progress in India," Economy and Society, 24.2 (May 1995), 245-78.
- "Changes in the Vedic Priesthood," Ritual, State and History in South Asia: Essays in honour of J. C. Heesterman, ed. A. W. van den Hoek, D. H. A. Kolff, & M. S. Oort. Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1992, pp. 556–77.
- "Tradition Against Itself," American Ethnologist, XIII.4 (November 1986), 762-75.
- "Orientalist Constructions of India," Modern Asian Studies, XX.3 (1986), 401-46.
Reviews of Imagining India
- Mani, Lata. The Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 50, No. 2 (May, 1991), pp. 435–436
- Mines, Mattison. American Ethnologist Vol. 20, No. 2 (May, 1993), pp. 415–416
- Prakash, Gyan. The American Historical Review Vol. 97, No. 2 (Apr., 1992), pp. 601–602
- Raheja, Gloria Goodwin. American Anthropologist New Series, Vol. 94, No. 1 (Mar., 1992), pp. 235–236