Creative Lives and Works

Book excerpt: Creative Lives and Works: Adrian C. Mayer, M.N. Srinivas, André Béteille and Johnathan Parry is a collection of interviews conducted by one of England’s leading social anthropologists and historians, Professor Alan Macfarlane. Filmed over a period of 40 years, the four conversations in this volume, are part of a larger set of interviews that cut across various disciplines, from the social sciences, the sciences to the performing and visual arts. The current volume, on four of the world’s foremost social anthropologists and sociologists, who have been closely associated with the British anthropological tradition, is the third in the series of several such books. These conversations focus primarily on fieldwork experience in India and how new dimensions and interpretations were added to the discipline of sociology and social anthropology as more and more primitive cultures and ancient civilizations were studied. This book brings out the diversity of the Indian subcontinent and its people through its engaging conversations and occasional anecdotes. Immensely riveting as conversations, this collection gives one a flavour of the many different cultures that coexist in a vast country like India, often with no knowledge of each other’s existence while de-jargonizing complex sociological concepts. The book will be of enormous value not just to those interested in the subject of Sociology, Social Anthropology and Ethnography, but also those with an avid interest in History, Culture Studies as well as those with an interest in learning about other societies. Please note: This title is co-published with Social Science Press, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.