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The Indian subdistrict of Shahabad, located in the dwindling forests of the southeastern tip of Rajasthan, is an area of extreme poverty. Beset by droughts and food shortages in recent years, it is the home of the Sahariyas, former bonded laborers, officially classified as Rajasthan’s only “primitive tribe.” From afar, we might consider this the bleakest of the bleak, but in Poverty and the Quest for Life, Bhrigupati Singh asks us to reconsider just what quality of life means. He shows how the Sahariyas conceive of aspiration, advancement, and vitality in both material and spiritual terms, and how such bridging can engender new possibilities of life. Singh organizes his study around two themes: power and ethics, through which he explores a complex terrain of material and spiritual forces. Authority remains contested, whether in divine or human forms; the state is both despised and desired; high and low castes negotiate new ways of living together, in conflict but also cooperation; new gods move across rival social groups; animals and plants leave their tracks on human subjectivity and religiosity; and the potential for vitality persists even as natural resources steadily disappear. Studying this milieu, Singh offers new ways of thinking beyond the religion-secularism and nature-culture dichotomies, juxtaposing questions about quality of life with political theologies of sovereignty, neighborliness, and ethics, in the process painting a rich portrait of perseverance and fragility in contemporary rural India.

Rural poor --- Ethnology --- Rajasthan (India) --- Rajasthan (India) --- Social conditions. --- Social life and customs. --- poverty, wealth, income, poor, class, classism, spiritual, spirituality, faith, belief, material, goods, possessions, rural, india, indian, southeast, asia, eastern, anthropology, inequality, justice, injustice, shahabad, region, local, community, rajasthan, drought, food, shortage, labor, indentured, bonded, laborer, worker, exploitation, oppression, religiosity, ethnography, ethnographic, migration, power.

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To what extent are our most romantic moments determined by the portrayal of love in film and on TV? Is a walk on a moonlit beach a moment of perfect romance or simply a simulation of the familiar ideal seen again and again on billboards and movie screens? In her unique study of American love in the twentieth century, Eva Illouz unravels the mass of images that define our ideas of love and romance, revealing that the experience of "true" love is deeply embedded in the experience of consumer capitalism. Illouz studies how individual conceptions of love overlap with the world of clichés and images she calls the "Romantic Utopia." This utopia lives in the collective imagination of the nation and is built on images that unite amorous and economic activities in the rituals of dating, lovemaking, and marriage. Since the early 1900s, advertisers have tied the purchase of beauty products, sports cars, diet drinks, and snack foods to success in love and happiness. Illouz reveals that, ultimately, every cliché of romance--from an intimate dinner to a dozen red roses--is constructed by advertising and media images that preach a democratic ethos of consumption: material goods and happiness are available to all. Engaging and witty, Illouz's study begins with readings of ads, songs, films, and other public representations of romance and concludes with individual interviews in order to analyze the ways in which mass messages are internalized. Combining extensive historical research, interviews, and postmodern social theory, Illouz brings an impressive scholarship to her fascinating portrait of love in America.

Love --- Capitalism --- Sociology & Social History --- Social Sciences --- Family & Marriage --- Market economy --- Economics --- Profit --- Capital --- Affection --- Emotions --- First loves --- Friendship --- Intimacy (Psychology) --- Love. --- Capitalism. --- 20th century american culture. --- 20th century american films. --- advertising. --- american film. --- american love. --- american movies. --- beauty products. --- collective imagination. --- consumer capitalism. --- dating. --- diet drinks. --- ethos of consumption. --- hollywood films. --- love and happiness. --- love and romance. --- love in film. --- love on television. --- lovemaking. --- marriage. --- mass media. --- material goods. --- media images. --- media studies. --- postmodern social theory. --- postmodernism. --- public representations. --- romantic utopia. --- snack foods. --- sports cars. --- utopia.