Abhijit Guha (anthropologist)

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Abhijit Guha

Abhijit Guha (born 1956 in Kolkata) is an Indian anthropologist.[1][2]

Career[edit | edit source]

Guha studied anthropology at the University of Calcutta to Masters level and M.Phil. in Environmental Science and was an ICSSR scholar at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, researching the Bengali kinship system.[1][3]

Guha then taught and studied at Vidyasagar University in Medinipur, West Bengal for some thirty years. He was first employed by the university in December 1985 as a Lecturer and then appointed reader in 1998, took his Ph.D. in 2002 (his thesis was titled Land acquisition among the cultivators of rural Medinipur: an anthropological appraisal),[4] and retired as a full professor in 2016.[5][6] He was a senior fellow of the Indian Council of Social Science Research at the Institute of Development Studies Kolkata from 2018 to 2020.[1] His main area of research is development caused displacement and land acquisition on which Guha has published in peer-reviewed journals[7][8] including Economic and Political Weekly[9] He was a senior fellow of the Indian Council of Social Science Research(ICSSR) at the Institute of Development Studies Kolkata from 2018 to 2020.[1] Guha's topic of research under the ICSSR Senior Fellowship was on the nationalist trends in Indian anthropology on which he has published an occasional paper and a number of articles in peer-reviewed journals and a book.[10][11] One of Guha's important contribution was on rediscovering Tarak Chandra Das who was a forgotten anthropologist in India. Guha has published a good number of articles and a book on Das's contributions to Indian anthropology, particularly his work on the Bengal Famine of 1940s.[12] Guha has researched intensively on the founder of his own University Professor Anil Kumar Gayen and published articles on Gayen.[13] One interesting research area of Guha was the study of University campuses, including his own University.[14] Guha is fond of reviewing books, which ranges between hard core kinship studies to literary anthropology.[15][16][17]

With his Phd student Dr.Santanu Panda Guha has explored the history of "Criminal Tribes" in India and published a book and a number of articles.[18][19]

In 1994 Abhijit Guha debated with the Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen on the Darwinian view of progress in the journal Population and Development Review[20]

Guha was invited to the Lok Sabha as an expert participant during the drafting of land acquisition and resettlement amendment legislation in 2007-2008.[21][22] Abhijit Guha acted as a reviewer for the WennerGrenn Foundation for Anthropological Research in 2022[23]

Guha was engaged in a collaborative research project with CWDS[24] and Vidyasagar University during 1997-98 on women empowerment with the famous feminist Dr.Vina Majumdar[25] and wrote a book chapter on this theme.[26] He is engaged in the popularization of anthropology by writing books and articles in the vernacular.[27]

Selected publications[edit | edit source]

Some of Guha's notable publications include:

  • Land, Law, and the Left: The Saga of Disempowerment of the Peasantry in the Era of Globalization. Concept Publishing Company. 2007. ISBN 978-81-8069-398-4.
  • Maoism in India: Ideology and Ground Reality. Jhargram: Indian National Confederation and Academy of Anthropologists. 2012. ISBN 978-81-903866-6-1.
  • Tarak Chandra Das: The Unsung Hero of Indian Anthropology. Delhi: Studera Press. 2016. ISBN 978-93-85883-01-9.[28][29]
  • Nation-building in Indian Anthropology: Beyond the Colonial Encounter. Manohar Publishers & Distributors. 2022. ISBN 978-93-91928-73-5.[30][31][32]
  • Encountering Land Grab: An Ethnographic Journey. Routledge. 2022. ISBN 978-1-000-58897-2.[33]
  • Kanti Das, Bidhan; Chakraborty, Gorky; Guha, Abhijit (2024). Knowledge, Power and Ignorance. doi:10.4324/9781003485704. ISBN 978-1-003-48570-4.


References[edit | edit source]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Guha, Abhijit (1 January 2024). "CURRICULUM VITAE OF ABHIJIT GUHA". academia.edu. Archived from the original on 5 February 2025. Retrieved 13 February 2025.
  2. ↑ "Abhijit Guha".
  3. ↑ Guha, Abhijit (January 1989). "Bengali Kinship : A Preliminary Enquiry into the Native Categories". Journal of the Indian Anthropological Society, 24: 232-243(1989).
  4. ↑ Guha, Abhijit (2002). "Land Acquisition. Among the cultivators of Rural Medinipur: An Anthropological Appraisal". doi:10.13140/2.1.3184.0966.
  5. ↑ "Review of Phd thesis of Abhijit Guha(P.1)". Academia. Retrieved 12 April 2026. Archived 2025-02-05 at the Wayback Machine
  6. ↑ "Review of Phd thesis of Abhijit Guha(P.2)". Academia. Retrieved 12 April 2026.Archived 2025-02-05 at the Wayback Machine
  7. ↑ Guha, Abhijit (2015). "Acting Cleverly in the Comfort Zone of Power and Visceral Resistance: A Case of Land Acquisition in West Bengal, India". Indian Anthropologist. 45 (1): 15–29. JSTOR 43899413.
  8. ↑ Guha, Abhijit (2013). "The Macro-Costs of Forced Displacement of the Farmers in India: A Micro-Level Study". The European Journal of Development Research. 25 (5): 797–814. doi:10.1057/ejdr.2012.37.
  9. ↑ "Search | Economic and Political Weekly".
  10. ↑ "Occasional Papers | IDSK".
  11. ↑ "Nation-Building in Indian Anthropology: Beyond the Colonial Encounter".
  12. ↑ "(PDF) A Forgotten Book by a Marginalised Anthropologist". Archived from the original on 22 August 2025. Retrieved 5 April 2026.
  13. ↑ "Frontier articles on Society & Politics".
  14. ↑ "(PDF) Campus Anthropology: A Case Study from West Bengal, India". Archived from the original on 23 August 2025. Retrieved 5 April 2026.
  15. ↑ Guha, Abhijit (January 2024). "Selected Writings of Anil Gharai Dalit Literature from Bangla". Book review.
  16. ↑ Guha, Abhijit (20 July 2016). "Review of 'Kinship in Bali' by Clifford Geertz & Hildred Geertz 1985 in the Journal of the Indian Anthropological Society & a letter from one of the authors, Prof.Hildred Geertz". Journal of the Indian Anthropological Society. Vol.20, No. 1, March 1985, pp.93-95.
  17. ↑ Guha, Abhijit (January 1986). "The American Kin-Universe: A Genealogical Study by David M Schneider and C.B. Cottrell, Department of Anthropology.The University of Chicago.Illinois.1975". Book review in the Journal of the Indian Anthropological Society.21:196-198(1986).
  18. ↑ "'Criminal Tribe' to 'Primitive Tribal Group' and the Role of Welfare State: The Case of Lodhas in West Bengal, India – Nova Science Publishers".
  19. ↑ "How the lodhas became criminal or meeting of the past and the present" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 August 2020.
  20. ↑ "(PDF) Debate with Amartya Sen:ACompendium". Archived from the original on 27 August 2025. Retrieved 5 April 2026.
  21. ↑ Nath, Suman; Bhattacharya, Debraj (19 September 2021). Theory, Policy, Practice: Development and Discontents in India. Taylor & Francis. p. 1998. ISBN 978-1-000-43591-7. Retrieved 13 February 2025.
  22. ↑ D'Costa, Anthony P.; Chakraborty, Achin (2017). The Land Question in India: State, Dispossession, and Capitalist Transition. Oxford University Press. p. xx. ISBN 978-0-19-879244-4.
  23. ↑ "Wenner-Gren Foundation Reviewers for 2022" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 July 2023.
  24. ↑ "History – Centre for Women's Development Studies".
  25. ↑ "Stree - Samya Books || Book Details".
  26. ↑ Guha, Abhijit (January 2002). "Dui Pritibir Uttaran". Dui Pritibir Uttaran Edited by Vina Mazumdar.
  27. ↑ "Abhijit Guha - Vidyasagar University".
  28. ↑ Srivastava, V.K. (2016). "Review of Tarak Chandra Das: An Unsung Hero of Indian Anthropology. Studera Press: Delhi 2016, by Abhijit Guha". The Eastern Anthropologist. 69 (2): 246–249.
  29. ↑ Chatterji, Roma (3 July 2017). "Tarak Chandra Das: An Unsung Hero of Indian Anthropology, by Abhijit Guha". Anthropological Forum. 27 (3): 280–281. doi:10.1080/00664677.2016.1265271. Retrieved 13 February 2025.
  30. ↑ Dash Sharma, P. (2022). "Book Review" (PDF). South Asian Anthropologist. 22 (2): 181–183. Retrieved 13 February 2025.
  31. ↑ Singh, Ravinder (2023). "Reviews/Recensioni" (PDF). Antrocom Online Journal of Anthropology. 19 (2). ISSN 1973-2880. Retrieved 13 February 2025.
  32. ↑ Bandyopadhyay, Sumahan (2022). "BOOK REVIEW" (PDF). Man in India. 102 (3–4): 459–461. Retrieved 13 February 2025.
  33. ↑ Yadav, Krishna Kant (2023). "Review of Encountering Land Grab: An Ethnographic Journey". Indian Anthropologist. 53 (1/2): 186–188. ISSN 0970-0927. JSTOR 27310901. Retrieved 13 February 2025.

External links[edit | edit source]

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