Jahazpur is a small market town or qasba with a diverse population of
more than 20,000 people located in Bhilwara District in the North Indian
state of Rajasthan. With roots deep in history and legend, Shiptown (a
literal translation of landlocked Jahazpur's name) today is a
subdistrict headquarters and thus a regional hub for government services
unavailable in villages. Rural and town lives have long intersected in
Shiptown's market streets, which are crammed with shopping
opportunities, many designed to allure village customers. Temples,
mosques, and shrines attract Hindus and Muslims from nearby areas. In
the town's densely settled center--still partially walled, with arched
gateways intact--many neighborhoods remain segregated by hereditary
birth group. By contrast, in some newer, more spacious residential areas
outside the walls, persons of distinct communities and religions live as
neighbors. Throughout Jahazpur municipality a peaceful pluralism
normally prevails.
Ann Grodzins Gold lived in Santosh Nagar, the oldest of Shiptown's new
settlements, for ten months, recording interviews and participating in
festival, ritual, and social events--public and private, religious and
secular. While engaged with contemporary scholarship, Shiptown is
moored in the everyday lives of the town's residents, and each chapter
has at its center a specific node of Jahazpur experience. Gold seeks to
portray how neighborly relations are forged and endure across lines of
difference; how ancient hierarchical social structures shift in major
ways while never exactly disappearing; how in spite of pervasive
conservative family values, gender roles are transforming rapidly and
radically; how environmental deterioration affects not only public
health but individual hearts, inspiring activism; and how commerce and
morality keep uneasy company. She sustains a conviction that, even in
the globalized present, local experiences are significant, and that
anthropology--that most intimate and poetic of the social
sciences--continues to foster productive conversations among human
beings.
