Indian Ocean Studies: Cultural, Social, and Political Perspectives

The Indian Ocean is famously referred to as the "cradle of globalization," as it facilitated cultural and economic exchanges between Africa, the Arab world, the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, and China, for 5000 years prior to European presence in the region. As this ocean's significance has gained increasing attention from scholars in recent years, few have examined the 'human' dimensions in Indian Ocean exchanges. Including the work of historians, geographers, anthropologists and literary analysts, each essay in this volume addresses a specific human factor, such as the fate of the creole in the Bay of Bengal, creolization as a globalized phenomenon, migrancy and diaspora, the lives of seafarers then and now, and the lives of those who inhabit the ocean's littoral. This volume is a necessary addition to the field of Indian Ocean studies.

Ashraf Jamal is Senior Lecturer in Art History and Visual Culture at Rhodes University, South Africa. He has published numerous essays and monographs, namely Predicaments of Culture in South Africa and the co-authored Art in South Africa: The Future Present.With Shanti Moorthy he has edited an anthology of Southeast Asian fiction. He is also a director-playwright and fiction writer.

Shanti Moorthy holds a medical degree from Melbourne University and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh. Formerly a dancer and nattuvanar with the Melbourne based Bharatam Dance Company and freelance scriptwriter for the Bombay based Antah UTV in Malaysia, Shanti is now a consultant otolaryngologist and Senior Lecturer in Anatomy at Monash University. She co-edited the final volume of Silverfish New Writing 7 in 2007 with Ashraf Jamal and is completing an MA in English Literature, situating the works of Abdulrazak Gurnah in the Indian Ocean World.

Preface Michael Pearson 1. Introduction: New Conjunctures in Maritime Imaginaries Shanti Moorthy and Ashraf Jamal 2. Fabulation: Flying Carpets and Artful Politics in the Indian Ocean Stephen Muecke 3. The Indian Ocean and the Making of Outback Australia: An Ecocultural Odyssey Haripriya Rangan and Christian Kull 4. Contesting History: Have We Ever Been Cosmopolitan? Shanti Moorthy 5. Destined to Disappear Without a Trace: Gender and the Languages of Creolisation in the Indian Ocean, Africa, Brazil, and the Caribbean Fernando Rosa Ribeiro 6. Commerce, Circulation and Consumption: Indian Ocean Communities in Historical Perspective Lakshmi Subramanian 7. Shared Hopes: New Worlds: Indians, Australians & Indonesians in the Boycott of Dutch Shipping 1945 – 1949 Heather Goodall 8. ‘Signs of Wonder’: The Postmortem Travels of Francis Xavier in the Indian Ocean World Pamila Gupta 9. Kuo Pao Kun’s Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral and the Myth of Modern Singapore Susan Philip 10. ‘The Great Ocean of Idealism’: Calcutta, the Tagore Circle and the Idea of Asia, 1900-1920 Mark Ravinder Frost 11. ‘Is It the Same Sea as Back Home?’ Transformative Complicities as Traveling Tropes in Fictions from Sri Lanka, Mauritius and South Africa" Miki Flockemann 12. Making Home on the Indian Ocean Rim: Re-Locations in South African Literatures Meg Samuelson 13. A Traveling Science: Anthropometry and Colonialism in the Indian Ocean Rochelle Pinto 14. Whiteness in Golden Goa: Linschoten on Phenotype Arun Saldanha 15. Power and Beliefs in Reunion Island Christian Ghasarian 16. Through Magical Flowers: Tourism and Creole Self-fashioning in La Reunion David Picard 17. Black Bag Ashraf Jamal 18. Telling and Selling on the Indian Ocean Rim Ashraf Jamal 19. Post-Orientalism Stephen Muecke