The relationship between anthropology and history has been contradictory, passionate, and productive. The two disciplines frequently converge yet there is often a mistrust between them. Over the last three decades, the interchange between the two disciplines has acquired a fresh purpose in theoretical and empirical studies. This has resulted in considerations for the history of anthropology and anthropology of history. This collection brings together the terrains and trajectories of the entangling of anthropology and history. It offers to students and scholars a wide-ranging domain of anthropological and historical endeavor under the rubric of historical anthropology--marking its departures, charting its contexts, exploring it characteristics and tracking its predicaments and possibilities.

In this book, conversations between anthropology and history are approached by treating the two as disciplines. It explores formative orientations of anthropology to time and temporality, and of history to culture and tradition. It considers the more recent transformations of anthropology and history. It discusses important developments in study of pasts and communities, empire and nation, and culture and power in South Asia as part of a wider interplay between anthropology and history. In a nutshell, this volume attempts to open up the terms of historical anthropology.