In the Forest

Vishvajit Pandya earned his Doctorate in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1987. Since 1983 he has been involved with ethnographic research on the Andaman Islands. He has held teaching positions in the United States, New Zealand and India.

• Chapter 1. IntroductionPart 2 Part I. VisualityChapter 3 Chapter 2. The Past Imagined In the Dugong ElegiesChapter 4 Chapter 3. The Documentation of the Adamanese: From Photography to EthnographyPart 5 Part II. MaterialityChapter 6 Chapter 4. Things in Time: Carriers of Continuity and ChangeChapter 7 Chapter 5. Materiality MappedPart 8 Part III. HistoryChapter 9 Chapter 6. Signifying Practices: The "violent" OtherChapter 10 Chapter 7. Images and Imaginations: Modernist EncountersPart 11 Part IV. Conclusion and BeyondChapter 12 Chapter 8. Towards a Political Economy of Visualized MaterialChapter 13 Chapter 9. The Spectre of "hostility"-The Sentinelese Between Text and Image

This extraordinary book brings long years of ethnographic engagement with the Ongee and the Jarawa, otherwise known as the Andaman Islanders, to render an intimate history of their contact with traders, colonialists, global tourists and the developmental state. Vishvajit Pandya displays a superb command over theory, history and ethnography that makes this one of the most important books to engage with the question of how ideas of wildness and civilization have been shaped through sensory experiences of vision, touch, smell and sound. The history of intimacy is rendered with consummate skill, making this a book that will be treasured by specialist and non-specialist alike.