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Moorings

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A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.Moorings follows sailors from...
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  • 03 June 2025
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A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

Moorings follows sailors from the Gulf of Kachchh in India as they voyage across the Indian Ocean on mechanized wooden sailing vessels known as vahans, or dhows. These voyages produce capital through moorings that are spatial, moral, material, and conceptual. With a view from the dhow, the book examines the social worlds of Muslim seafarers who have been rendered invisible even as they maneuver multiple regulatory regimes and the exigencies of life, navigating colonialism, neoliberalism, the rise of Hindutva, insurgency, climate change, and border regimes across the ocean. Based on historical and ethnographic research aboard ships, at ports, and in religious shrines and homes, Moorings shows how capitalism derives value from historically sedimented practices grounded in caste, gender, and transregional community-based forms of regulation.
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Price: $34.95
Pages: 272
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Publication Date: 03 June 2025
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780520413511
Format: Paperback
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Nidhi Mahajan is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Contents
 
List of Illustrations
Note on Language
Acknowledgments
 
Introduction. Moorings and Voyages: The View from the Dhow
1. Strangers on Shore: Hospitality and Sovereignty in Mombasa's Old Port
Interlude: Dispatches from the Shadows
2. Dhow Itineraries: Racial Capitalism and the Making of Shadow Economies in the Western Indian Ocean
Interlude: Habibi, Come to Dubai
3. A Burning Sea: Risk and Geopolitical Arbitrage across the Persian Gulf
Interlude: Mausam—At Sea
4. Of Sailors and Sufis: Divine Sovereignty and Danger at Sea
Interlude: Aakhar—At Home
5. Those Who Stay: Patronage, Kinship, and Seasons of Sail in the Gulf of Kachchh
Epilogue
 
Notes
References
Index