The official publication of the North American Conference on British Studies (NACBS), the Journal of British Studies, has positioned itself as the critical resource for scholars of British culture from the Middle Ages through the present. Drawing on both established and emerging approaches, JBS presents scholarly articles and books reviews from renowned international authors who share their ideas on British society, politics, law, economics, and the arts. In 2005 (Vol. 44), the journal merged with the NACBS publication Albion, creating one journal for NACBS membership.
Albion Book Prize
STANSKY BOOK PRIZE 2012 COMPETITION
Deadline, April 1, 2012
The Stansky Book Prize, formerly the Albion Book Prize, of $500 is awarded annually by the North American Conference on British Studies for the best book published anywhere by a North American scholar on any aspect of British studies since 1800. The author must be a citizen or permanent resident of the United States or Canada and be living in either country at the time of the award. Nominations may be made by the author or by the publisher of the book. A publisher may nominate more than one title each year but should use discretion and not overburden the Prize Committee.
The 2012 competition covers books published in 2011. Separate copies of the letter of nomination and of the book nominated should be sent by April 1, 2012 to each member of the Prize Committee (only books sent to every committee member can be considered). For prompt attention, mark packages "NACBS Prize Committee." Send all relevant materials to:
Professor Jeffrey Auerbach, Chair
Department of History
California State University, Northridge
18111 Nordhoff St.
Northridge, CA 91330-8250
Email: Jeffrey.auerbach@csun.edu
Professor Joy Dixon, Committee
Department of History
University of British Columbia
1297-1873 East Mall
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6T 1Z1
Email: joydixon@interchange.ubc.ca
Professor Martin Wiener
History Department – MS 42
Rice University
PO Box 1892
Houston, TX 77251-1892
Email: wiener@rice.edu
RECENT AWARD WINNERS
Albion Prize (2010)
Ritu Birla (University of Toronto), Stages of Capital: Law, Culture and Market Governance in Late Colonial India (Duke University Press, 2009)
Interrogating the roots of modern Indian capitalism, Stages of Capital enters the colonial archive from a previously under utilized portal, the rich fiscal and commercial legislation unleashed between 1870-1930 to reconstitute Indian society as a modern market, a normative arena of impersonal, contract-based exchange, unimpeded by antiquated customs and restrictive social ties. The book centers on the delicate negotiations between the colonial ambition to forge new economic subjectivity and vernacular capitalism, which had operated through fluid networks of kinship and affinity, specifically the case of the Marwari commercial clans of northern and eastern India. One of Ritu Birla’s chief achievements is the unlocking of the shrewd logic of colonial market governance, especially its casting of culture as the localized other of the market’s universal rationality. In the name of cultural preservation, the Indian family firm was to be ambiguously tolerated as an exception to modernity, its inner working privatized and subjected to personal law regulation. In the name of the public good and economic progress, however, indigenous mercantile practices were delegitimized, trimmed, or even abolished, as, for example, the Marwari custom of gambling on future rainfalls. The Marwaris contested but ultimately internalized and even manipulated the boundaries of the public/private distinction, now staged as the decoupling of ‘culture’ and ‘economy.’ They managed to assert their control over their familial spaces as well as to gain public respectability as philanthropists, and, ultimately, leaders of the new national economy, upholding their status as both guardians of ancient culture and fully modern capitalist actors.
Imaginatively empirical and theoretically rich, Stages of Capital provides a much needed bridge between the history of the economy and post/colonial studies, as it successfully marshals diverse critical strategies from feminist theory to the study of law and society. This remarkable book excels in delineating the Indian iteration of the historical encounter between local commercial practices and systems of valuation and the universalizing ideology of capital. Facing the current global crisis and the neo-liberal denial of history as well as its own forms of governance, Birla’s is a timely and poignant intervention in the new history of world capitalism.
