Nullius: The Anthropology of Ownership, Sovereignty, and the Law in India (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781912808472)

Nullius is an award-winning anthropological account of the troubled status of ownership in India and its consequences for our understanding of sovereignty and social relations. Though property rights and ownership are said to be a cornerstone of modern law, in the Indian case they are often a spectral presence. Kapila offers a detailed study of paradigms where proprietary relations have been erased, denied, misappropriated.

The book examines three forms of negation, where the Indian state de facto adopted doctrines of terra nullius (in the erasure of indigenous title), res nullius (in acquiring museum objects), and, controversially, corpus nullius (in denying citizens ownership of their bodies under biometrics). The result is a pathbreaking reconnection of questions of property, exchange, dispossession, law, and sovereignty.

Nullius is the winner of the 2024 Bernard S. Cohn Prize, Association of Asian Studies.

Author: Kriti Kapila
ISBN-10: 1912808471
ISBN-13: 9781912808472
Publisher: Hau
Language: English
Published: 07/21/2022
Pages: 150
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.91w x 0.63d