"Da Costa provides powerful analytic tools to interrogate the ways activists such as Bird Song work within and against the complicities and potentialities of neoliberal creative economy discourse and practice. . . . A powerful feminist intervention."
Antipode "Herein lies the rich potential for scholars in theatre and performance to turn to this book as a way of reimagining our own ... Read morepraxis within creative-economy imperatives that promise emancipation, even while eradicating the creative hungers and labors that sustain us."
Theatre Journal "By exploring these two companies Da Costa challenges the optimism that surrounds creative economic theory by revealing the messiness of its realities for communities that hunger for the arts in the neoliberal present."
Theatre Journal "Fills a gap in terms of uncovering the history of contemporary groups and locating their political work in the contexts of intersecting issues of class, caste, gender, and political power play. Importantly, it also carefully exposes the political conditions under which groups such as Janam and Budhan operate and the limitations and possibilities of their operations. Situating the work of the above-mentioned groups in the context of developmental discourses and within global networks of power (especially the role of UN organizations in defining 'creativity' and its implications for local contexts within India) adds an extremely important dimension to the work."
Nandi Bhatia, author of Performing Women/Performing Womanhood: Theatre, Politics, and Dissent in North India "Intersecting with political science and sociology as well as performance, this is a thorough critical analysis of the political and artistic environment in India. . . . Recommended."
Choice "Da Costa's work represents a milestone in the study of India's place in a globalized commodification of culture. Rather than to simply point to this phenomenon or critique easy targets of religion and nation, Da Costa's book offers depth, nuance, and analytical power. No consideration of India in and of globalization will be complete without it."
Contributions to Indian Sociology "An ambitious book. . . . Offering both a critical analysis of the sentiment of optimism that so frequently surrounds the creative economy and a sympathetic critique of the compromised opportunities that this discourse allows for marginal and oppositional cultural groups in postcolonial India."
Geraldine Pratt, author of Families Apart: Migrant Mothers and the Conflicts of Labor and Love Show Less