Stages of Capital: Law, Culture, and Market Governance in Late Colonial India by

Description: Stages of Capital by Ritu Birla An argument that contemporary Indias market society, and its concepts of the market and the public, emerged from commercial laws implemented by the British between 1870 and 1930. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description In Stages of Capital, Ritu Birla brings research on nonwestern capitalisms into conversation with postcolonial studies to illuminate the historical roots of Indias market society. Between 1870 and 1930, the British regime in India implemented a barrage of commercial and contract laws directed at the "free" circulation of capital, including measures regulating companies, income tax, charitable gifting, and pension funds, and procedures distinguishing gambling from speculation and futures trading. Birla argues that this understudied legal infrastructure institutionalized a new object of sovereign management, the market, and along with it, a colonial concept of the public. In jurisprudence, case law, and statutes, colonial market governance enforced an abstract vision of modern society as a public of exchanging, contracting actors free from the anachronistic constraints of indigenous culture.Birla reveals how the categories of public and private infiltrated colonial commercial law, establishing distinct worlds for economic and cultural practice. This bifurcation was especially apparent in legal dilemmas concerning indigenous or "vernacular" capitalists, crucial engines of credit and production that operated through networks of extended kinship. Focusing on the story of the Marwaris, a powerful business group renowned as a key sector of Indias capitalist class, Birla demonstrates how colonial law governed vernacular capitalists as rarefied cultural actors, so rendering them illegitimate as economic agents. Birlas innovative attention to the negotiations between vernacular and colonial systems of valuation illustrates how kinship-based commercial groups asserted their legitimacy by challenging and inhabiting the public/private mapping. Highlighting the cultural politics of market governance, Stages of Capital is an unprecedented history of colonial commercial law, its legal fictions, and the formation of the modern economic subject in India. Notes Argues that contemporary Indias market society, and its concepts of the market and the public, emerged from commercial laws implemented by the British between 1870 and 1930 Back Cover "This remarkable book shows that the history of colonial capitalisms need not, and cannot, be divorced from subtle changes in ideas of legal subjectivity, gender, and corporate risk taking as subjects of archivally based cultural analysis. Ritu Birlas story of the transformation of the Marwari business clans of northern and eastern India into giants of contemporary capitalism is both impeccably scholarly and resolutely post-Orientalist. This book is a must for all those who sense that the mammoth global meltdown of this decade is powered by myriad regional and cultural capitalist trajectories."-Arjun Appadurai, Goddard Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University Author Biography Ritu Birla is Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto. Table of Contents Acknowledgments ixIntroduction 1Part 1. A Non-Negotiable Sovereignty? 1. The Proper Swindle: Commercial and Financial Legislation of the 1880s 332. Capitalisms Idolatry: The Law of Charitable Trusts, Mortmain, and the Firm as Family, c. 1870-1920 673. For General Public Utility: Sovereignty, Philanthropy, and Market Governance, 1890-1920 103Part 2. Negotiating Subjects 4. Hedging Bets: Speculation, Gambling, and Market Ethics, 1890-1930 1435. Economic Agents, Cultural Subjects: Gender, the Joint Family, and the Making of Capitalist Subjects, 1900-1940 199Conclusion: Colonial Modernity and the Social Worlds of Capital 232Notes 239References 307Index 329 Review "Stages of Capital is a triumph of learned and nuanced interdisciplinarity. Stage as temporal metaphor undoes the great narrative of universal capital. Stage as spatial metaphor illuminates the culture of market governance and community in the colonial theatre of South Asia. Richly theoretical, provocatively empirical--an indispensable book." Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor, Columbia University "Deeply rooted in pre-colonial pasts and yet somehow fully modern, family firms have remained an important but understudied feature of Indian capitalism. Ritu Birlas book breaks new ground by analyzing the legal and institutional debates that attended manoeuvres by the British to manage and transform this institution into the modern capitalist enterprise. A sophisticated and original study of some critical cultural issues in the history of Indian economy, this book will interest all students of modern India." Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the College, University of Chicago "This remarkable book shows that the history of colonial capitalisms need not, and cannot, be divorced from subtle changes in ideas of legal subjectivity, gender, and corporate risk-taking as subjects of archivally-based cultural analysis. Ritu Birlas story of the transformation of the Marwari business clans of northern and eastern India into giants of contemporary capitalism is both impeccably scholarly and resolutely post-Orientalist. This book is a must for all those who sense that the mammoth global meltdown of this decade is powered by myriad regional and cultural capitalist trajectories."--Arjun Appadurai, Goddard Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University "important for putting together non-Western capitalism and postcolonial studies." John Chalcraft, London School of Economics Promotional Argues that contemporary Indias market society, and its concepts of the market and the public, emerged from commercial laws implemented by the British between 1870 and 1930 Review Quote "This remarkable book shows that the history of colonial capitalisms need not, and cannot, be divorced from subtle changes in ideas of legal subjectivity, gender, and corporate risk taking as subjects of archivally based cultural analysis. Ritu Birlas story of the transformation of the Marwari business clans of northern and eastern India into giants of contemporary capitalism is both impeccably scholarly and resolutely post-Orientalist. This book is a must for all those who sense that the mammoth global meltdown of this decade is powered by myriad regional and cultural capitalist trajectories."- Arjun Appadurai , Goddard Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University Promotional "Headline" Argues that contemporary Indias market society, and its concepts of the market and the public, emerged from commercial laws implemented by the British between 1870 and 1930 Details ISBN0822342685 Author Ritu Birla Pages 360 Language English ISBN-10 0822342685 ISBN-13 9780822342687 Media Book Format Paperback Year 2009 Imprint Duke University Press Subtitle Law, Culture, and Market Governance in Late Colonial India Place of Publication North Carolina Country of Publication United States Birth 1965 Short Title STAGES OF CAPITAL Publisher Duke University Press UK Release Date 2009-01-14 AU Release Date 2009-01-14 NZ Release Date 2009-01-14 US Release Date 2009-01-14 Publication Date 2009-01-14 DEWEY 330.954035 Audience Professional & Vocational We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. 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