Parameswaran article analyzes ‘animalizing’ India
Professor Radhika Parameswaran is author of “Animalizing India: Emerging Signs of an Unruly Market,” published in Consumption Markets & Culture.
In the article, Parameswaran analyzes the ways in which India’s potential as an emerging market and a rising power is being conjured in the popular aesthetics of magazine and nonfiction book covers. Even as an outpouring of verbal discourse from business and policy experts has hailed an India that is transitioning from a peripheral Third-World nation to a rising power, a steady stream of visual illustrations, including those that deploy animal avatars, has sought to illuminate India’s rocky path toward its newfound economic recognition, she writes.
This project was funded by a Summer 2012 Collaborative Research and Creative Activity Funding Award from the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, IU Bloomington. Portions of this paper have been presented at the 2013 conference of the International Communication Association, the 2011 American Folklore Society conference and at University of Texas-Austin’s South Asian Institute’s spring 2011 “Media and Postcolonial Theory” research talk series.
Doctoral students Sangwon Park and Yanqin Lu provided meticulous research assistance on this project.