| Description |
xv, 305 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Contents |
1. Search and Research -- 2. The Akhara: Where Earth Is Turned Into Gold -- 3. Gurus and Chelas: The Alchemy of Discipleship -- 4. The Patron and the Wrestler -- 5. The Discipline of the Wrestler's Body -- 6. Nag Panchami: Snakes, Sex, and Semen -- 7. Wrestling Tournaments and the Body's Recreation -- 8. Hanuman: Shakti, Bhakti, and Brahmacharya -- 9. The Sannyasi and the Wrestler -- 10. Utopian Somatics and Nationalist Discourse -- 11. The Individual Re-Formed -- Appendix: The Nature of Wrestling Nationalism |
| Summary |
This book tells the story of a way of life organized in terms of physical self-development. While Indian wrestlers are competitive athletes, they are also moral reformers whose conception of self and society is fundamentally somatic. Using the insights of anthropology, Joseph Alter writes an ethnography of the wrestler's physique that elucidates the somatic structure of the wrestler's identity and ideology |
| Analysis |
India |
|
Wrestling |
|
India |
|
Wrestling |
| Notes |
Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 271-294) and index |
| Notes |
A digital reproduction is available from E-Editions, a collaboration of the University of California Press and the California Digital Library's eScholarship program |
|
English |
|
Description based on print version record |
| Subject |
Hinduism.
|
|
Identity (Philosophical concept)
|
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Identity (Psychology)
|
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Ideology.
|
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Wrestling -- Social aspects -- India.
|
| SUBJECT |
India -- Social life and customs. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh86007592
|
| Author |
University of California Press.
|
| LC no. |
91031560 |
| ISBN |
0520076974 (alk. paper) |
|
