Consumable Texts in Contemporary India

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

   PDF

2. Keywords and Preliminaries

   • Suman Gupta

   Pages 1-17

3. Indian Commercial Fiction in English

   • Suman Gupta

   Pages 18-38

4. Indian Vernacular Pulp Fiction in English Translation

   • Suman Gupta

   Pages 39-60

5. On the Indian Readers of Hitler’s Mein Kampf

   • Suman Gupta

   Pages 61-79

6. Framing Group Discussion Guidebooks

   • Suman Gupta

   Pages 80-99

7. Low-End Group Discussion Guidebooks and Kunjis

   • Suman Gupta

   Pages 100-128

8. Approaching Public Sector “Value Education” Publications

   • Suman Gupta

   Pages 129-144

9. Mapping Public Sector “Value Education” Publications

   • Suman Gupta

   Pages 145-171

10. Rules of Bibliographical Sociology’s Method

    • Suman Gupta

    Pages 172-179

11. Back Matter

    Pages 180-204

    PDF

Through what he terms "bibliographical sociology", Suman Gupta explores the presence of English-language publications in the contemporary Indian context – their productions, circulations and readerships – to understand current social trends.

• Youth
• group discussion
• value education
• commercial fiction
• Indian English
• Indian vernaculars
• publishing industry
• Mein Kampf
• global and local
• popular culture
• mass culture
• business communication
• Asia
• Asian culture
• Asian languages
• cultural theory
• culture
• English
• ethnicity
• history of literature
• linguistics
• literary theory
• literature
• social science
• sociology

“Gupta displays an easy familiarity with an admirable range of both, the academic and the non-academic—as well as cultured and uncultured—literatures and discourses, and not only applies them to a range of topics and issues that are unexpected (to say the least), but with remarkably accurate, insightful and incisive results. The analyses are subtle, sophisticated and frighteningly persuasive in their implications for the sheer reach and impact of such uncultured books, and the political and ideological effects they are likely to have.” (P K Vijayan, Economic Political Weekly, Vol. 51 (36), September 3, 2016)

• The Open University, UK

  Suman Gupta

Suman Gupta is Professor of Literature and Cultural History at the Open University UK. He is the author of eleven previous books and editor of seven, including The Theory and Reality of Democracy, Social Constructionist Identity Politics and Literary Studies, Globalization and Literature, Imagining Iraq and Contemporary Literature: The Basics.

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