Publications

A Selection

Monographs

Rao, Ursula. 2010. News as culture: journalistic practices and the remaking of Indian leadership traditions. Anthropology of Media 3. New York: Berghahn.
Rao, Ursula. 2003. Negotiating the divine: temple religion and temple politics in contemporary urban India. South Asian Studies 41. New Delhi: Manohar.

Edited Books / Special Issues

Rao, Ursula and Vijayanka Nair (eds.). 2019. Aadhaar: governing with biometrics. South Asia 42(3): 469–481. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2019.1595343.
Maguire, Mark, Ursula Rao, and Nils Zurawski (eds.). 2018. Bodies as evidence: security, knowledge, and power. Global Insecurities. Durham; London: Duke University Press.
Köpping, Klaus-Peter and Ursula Rao (eds.). 2000. Im Rausch des Rituals: Gestaltung und Transformation der Wirklichkeit in körperlicher Performanz. 1. ed. Performanzen: interkulturelle Studien zu Ritual, Spiel und Theater 1. Münster; Hamburg; London: Lit.

Journal Articles (peer reviewed)

Rao, Ursula. 2022. Policy as experimentation: failing 'forward' towards universal health coverage in India. Social Anthropology 30(2): 81–100. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3167/saas.2022.300206.
Rao, Ursula. 2023. Making informal sacred geographies: spiritual presence, sensual engagement, and wayside shrines in urban India. Space and Culture 26(2): 192–203. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312221130244.
Rao, Ursula. 2019. Biometric IDs and the remaking of the Indian (welfare) state. Economic Sociology 21(1): 13–21.
Rao, Ursula. 2019. Population meets database: aligning personal, documentary and digital identity in Aadhaar-enabled India. South Asia 42(3): 537–553. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2019.1594065.
Rao, Ursula. 2018. Biometric bodies, or how to make electronic fingerprinting work in India. Body and Society 24(3): 68–94. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X18780983.
Anjaria, Jonathan Shapiro and Ursula Rao. 2014. Talking back to the state: citizens' engagement after neoliberal reform in India. Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale 22(4): 410–427. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.12088.
Rao, Ursula. 2013. Tolerated encroachment: resettlement policies and the negotiation of the licit/illicit divide in an Indian metropolis. Cultural Anthropology 28(4): 760–779. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/cuan.12036.
Rao, Ursula. 2013. Biometric marginality: UID and the shaping of homeless identities in the city. Economic and Political Weekly 48(13): 71.
Rao, Ursula. 2010. Making the global city: urban citizenship at the margins of Delhi. Ethnos 75(4): 402–424. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2010.532227.

Book Chapters

Rao, Ursula. 2020. Remediating the local through localised news making: India's booming multilingual press as agent in political and social change. In: Agnes Gulyas and David Baines (eds.). The Routledge companion to local media and journalism. London; New York: Routledge, pp. 149–157.
Rao, Ursula. 2019. Re-spatializing social security in India. In: Setha Low and Mark Maguire (eds.). Spaces of security: ethnographies of securityscapes, surveillance, and control. New York: New York University Press, pp. 231–252.
Rao, Ursula. 2019. Global cities. In: Matthias Middell (ed.). The Routledge handbook of transregional studies. The Routledge History Handbooks. London; New York: Routledge, pp. 188–196.
Rao, Ursula. 2018. Incremental gentrification: upgrading and the predicaments of making India slum-free. In: Setha Low (ed.). The Routledge handbook of anthropology and the city. Routledge Handbooks. London; New York: Routledge, pp. 214–227.
Rao, Ursula. 2017. Writing, typing and scanning: distributive justice and the politics of visibility in the era of e-governance. In: Sahana Udupa and Stephen D. McDowell (eds.). Media as politics in South Asia. Routledge Contemporary South Asia Series 118. London; New York: Routledge, pp. 127–140.
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