Constructing the Criminal Tribe in Colonial India: Acting Like a Thief

Henry Schwarz

Wiley, Apr 26, 2010 - Literary Criticism - 176 pages

Constructing the Criminal Tribe in Colonial India provides a detailed overview of the phenomenon of the “criminal tribe” in India from the early days of colonial rule to the present.

• Traces and analyzes historical debates in historiography, anthropology and criminology
• Argues that crime in the colonial context is used as much to control subject populations as to define morally repugnant behavior
• Explores how crime evolved as the foil of political legitimacy under military
• Examines the popular movement that has arisen to reverse the discrimination against the millions of people laboring under the stigma of criminal inheritance, producing a radical culture that contests stereotypes to reclaim their humanity

About the author

Henry Schwarz is Associate Professor of English at Georgetown University.  He is author of Writing Cultural History in Colonial and Postcolonial India (1997) and co-editor of Reading the Shape of the World: Toward an International Cultural Studies  (with Richard Dienst, 1996) and of A Companion to Postcolonial Studies (with Sangeeta Ray, Blackwell, 2000).

Bibliographic information

• Title: Constructing the Criminal Tribe in Colonial India: Acting Like a Thief
• Author: Henry Schwarz
• Publisher: Wiley, 2010
• ISBN: 1405120576, 9781405120579
• Length: 176 pages
• Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / General; Literary Criticism / Semiotics & Theory