Sociology Academic Outreach Programs, January - February 2015

21st - 22nd January 2015:

International Seminar on 'Performative Communication: Culture and Politics in 

South Asia', 

co-organized with Center for Culture, Media and Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, 

at JMI, Delhi

28 February 2015 @ 02.30 PM 

'Human Economy: People, Money and Power in Economic Crisis - Perspectives

 from the Global South'; 

A book launch panel presented by the Faculty of Social Sciences in collaboration with the Department of Sociology at South Asian University with the participation of Keith Hart, LSE and University of Pretoria, Amita Baviskar at IEG and CP Chandrasekhar at JNU. Venue: FSI Hall, South Asian University, Akbar Bhawan, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi

29th January 2015 @ 05.30 PM:

Contributions to Contemporary Knowledge Lecture Series, No. 03 – 2015

‘Gandhi as a Global Thinker: Legacies of the Anti-Colonial Revolution’ 

By Keith Hart 

Centennial Professor of Economic Anthropology, Department of International Development, 

London School of Economics and

International Director, Human Economy Program, University of Pretoria, South Africa) 

at Multipurpose Hall, India International Centre, New Delhi in collaboration with the Office of the Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences

3rd February 2015 @ 05.30 PM:

Launch of the journal of the Department of Sociology, 'Society and Culture in South Asia,' co-published and co-organized with Sage India at Seminar Hall 2 & 3, India International Centre, New Delhi

6th February 2015 @ 5.30 PM: 10.00 AM – 05.30 PM:

Seminar on 'South Asia? Explorations of the Region: From Within and Without', co-organized with Japan Foundation, India at FSI Hall, South Asian University, New Delhi

28th February 2015: 10.00 AM – 05.00 PM:

Workshop on 'Reimagining Visuality: Exploring Possibilities in Photography, Theory and Practice' at FSI Hall, South Asian University.

Sociology+Initiatives@SAU 

http://www.sau.ac.in/sociology.html

Contributions to Contemporary Knowledge Lecture Series - 2015

Launch of Society and Culture in South Asia

You are cordially invited to the release and discussion

Society and Culture in South Asia
Edited by Sasanka Perera 

Editorial Board

Ravi Kumar
Dev Pathak
Ankur Datta

on Tuesday, 3^rd February 2015 in Seminar Hall 2 & 3 at 6:00 pm
India International Centre, 40, Max Mueller Marg, Lodhi Estate, New Delhi 110 003

Inaugural comments and welcome:
Dr Ravi Kumar,
Chairman, Department of Sociology, South Asian University

Chief Guest:
Prof Prabhat Patnaik,
Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, JNU

Panel discussion on
‘Politics of Academic Publishing,’ 

with:

Prof Roma Chatterji,
Department of Sociology, University of Delhi

Prof Patricia Uberoi,
Vice Chairperson, Institute of Chinese Studies

Prof Avijt Pathak,
Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Prof Sasanka Perera,
Professor, Department of Sociology and Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, South Asian University

Please join us for tea before the event

RSVP: 

Rishabh Narang | SAGE Publications | email: rishabh.narang@sagepub.in | Tel: 011 4063 9239

Samson George | Faculty of Social Sciences, South Asian University | Telephone: +91-11-24122512,

 011-24122513, 011-24122514 | email: samsontifac@gmail.com

Echoes of Silence

South Asian University and Lila Foundation present
Echoes of Silence

 

with

R. Cheran

(poet)

and

Vikram Kapur

(novelist)

 

Chaired by
Kavita Sharma
(President, SAU)

 

At FSI Hall
South Asian University

 

18th December 2014

06.00 PM

South Asia? Explorations of the Region: From Within and Without

Faculty Essay

In Search of a Humanistic South Asia

From Creating Humanistic Borders to Ending Crypto-colonial Aid, SAARC has to offer a  new vision for the world

Mallika Shakya

Department of Sociology

South Asian University

New Delhi

SAARC is thirty years young and I am about a decade older – about the age when a mid-life crisis is permissible. Mine came in the form of a search for a place called home. It ended, for now, in South Asian University in Delhi.

I was born and brought up entirely in Kathmandu, in Nepali medium schools and government colleges. But my only Nepali employer was my mother who ran a small crockery-cutlery shop in Patan. Since nineteen, I have been on the paychecks of the aid industry, home and abroad. That changed when I made a concerted decision to quit aid industry and take up jobs in Oxford and Pretoria.

My current employer South Asian University (SAU) is partly Nepali. The class I teach at SAU is also partly Nepali, but more importantly, it is only partly Indian, while being also partly Afghan, Bangladeshi, Bhutani, Maldivian and Sri Lankan. I am a lot more at home with this class than I would have been if it was just one of any of these nationalities.

SAARC does not control what I do at SAU but the idea of pan-national regionalism in South Asia is common for us both. We at university are busy trying to figure out what all is this ‘regionalism’ that dominates the SAARC talk. But first its political cousin, or flip side of the coin, ‘nationalism.’ In Latin, the word nation referred to a group of foreign students, congregating in a cosmopolitan university from faraway regions. By extension, the word referred to a community of opinion and purpose. Eventually, however, the word nation came to mean a body of a people, bound by passports and flags, and at times unleashed as mobs to keep what it considers ‘others’ out.

The death of humanistic nations

There was probably a time when nations seamlessly spilled into regions in South Asia through flexible borders and humanistic regimes. Ashis Nandy is one of many who claimed that aggressive nationalism crept into South Asia, piggybacking first on colonial hegemony and then on anti-colonial movements. Rabindranath Tagore, an ardent pan-nationalist visionary who lived a century before European scholars coined the term post-nationalism, warned Japan not to follow the Western suit on narrow nationalism. But it seems, his own home region willingly traded humanist borders with Westphalian, soon after it got its own independent nation. Wagah between India and Pakistan is the epitome of Westphalian border psyche. Wars might have given rise to the self-defeating logic behind this hyper-masculine choreography of national muscle-power between India and Pakistan, but the Wagah syndrome now dominates state policies and talks on many other frontiers where India has never officially been at war.

Hyper-masculine nationalism is exactly what is problematic about the choreographed expressions of stately love like those of the SAARC summits. Instead of moderating individual egos to make room for a collective Southasia, summits end up triggering rivalries of nations -- be it about bulletproof cars or paranoiac security arrangements. The idea of South Asia then gets reduced to a mathematical summation of nations when it should have nurtured a common sensibility and belonging for all Southasians.

Let Africa inspire

Let us dig the history of regionalism elsewhere, especially from within the Global South. Let me be provocative and suggest that vision and leadership for this alter-national regionalism need not come only from big and rich nations, but from the tiniest and poorest. Take for example, Aime Cesaire and Franz Fanon – a teacher-student duo who launched the pan-Africanist canon as we know it today, who were both from Martinique, a small Caribbean island with a land area of about one thousand square kilometres and a population of 386,000 inhabitants. In fact, an entire generation of pan-African movement came from the small islands of the Caribbean, including George Padmore and CLR James, who mentored Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana to lead the African independence movement against the European colonization.

African regionalism did not dwell on the statuses of GNP per capita or growth rates, let alone the sizes of army and headcounts of nuclear missiles. Pan-Africanism flourished in the understanding that a community belongs together if they have suffered a common injustice and have risen against it together. It took roots in anti-slavery movement and eventually culminated in an anti-colonial movement. It would not be far fetched to claim that Gandhi fed indirectly off these movements during his two decades in South Africa. Yes, Africa today has many problems including political violence between each other, but it still sets the standard on regionalism for the world. The first pan-national regional unit was not European Union, it was the South African Customs Union which was achieved 1889 and has stayed in place throughout Africa’s colonial and postcolonial turmoil.

Coming back to South Asia, there is nothing bitter about statesmen wining and dining to sign joint declarations, but SAARC will mean much only if it can influence the global order in a meaningful way. Can the world be made more just and democratic, not only for Southasians but for everybody else who has been disenfranchised by colonial history and its postcolonial residues? This and the next generation of Southasians must concern themselves with this central problem, than endless petty bargaining about aid, hydropower and ego-massaging.

Problem of our century 

Aid is a gone game. Half a century long bikas only made Nepal more desperate; the definition of bikas itself needs to be fundamentally altered for any hope to follow for things to improve on the ground.

The main event of the twentieth century was the anti-colonial revolution, but the twenty-first century world remains marred in deeply flawed systems of international development. First of all I want to emphasise that ‘development’ is not a neutral word. Although a dictionary may define it in a certain way, its uses and interpretations are pervasive, and it has come to acquire a political meaning that is clearly hegemonic. It is in this political meaning that ‘development’ or ‘bikas’ of the twentieth century is different from the ‘industrial revolution’ of the century before and ‘enlightenment’ even earlier.

It would be fair to say that, just after WWII, developmentalism replaced colonialism in giving rise to a new global order. When the ‘new states’ in Asia and Africa became independent, development came to be considered the new common goal and aspiration for humanity. There was clearly a great deal of enthusiasm at the time for this. Over time, modalities of development changed, starting from ‘two-sector’ model to a ‘take-off’ model to ‘protectionism’ to ‘economic liberalization’ of the 1990s. Regrettably, however, enthusiasm has died along the way. Scholars like James Ferguson have called today’s aid industry an ‘anti-politics machine’ because it concerns only with technical-managerial projects that carve out jobs for elites and technocrats while distancing itself from the big question of social and political justice.

The reason cynicism took over enthusiasm about development has a lot to do with the fact that this idea came from the West and remained Western, as we see in the current ownership pattern of largest aid organisations and the values they prescribe. Despite calls that the aid industry must put meritocracy over citizenry superiority, the West has stuck with the unwritten tradition that the head of the World Bank is always an American whereas the head of the IMF is always an European. Bilateral donors operate with an implicit two-tier membership. The broader aid community remains bifurcated between ‘local’ NGOs and ‘international.’ In other words, the aid world continues to operate with the logic that donors are always right and poverty is the fault of the poor, in much the same logic that gave rise to a situation where Mt Everest could only be climbed by a white mountaineer and an America could only be discovered by a white explorer.

Does SAARC have a vision to offer to counter this? Does it even care? Or is it just another Queen Victoria in a new garb? Nepal’s new collaboration with anybody, starting with neighbours as we talk of SAARC in this summit, should revolve around efforts that can alter the rules of the game on how to liberate itself and the world from the shackles of crypto-colonial aid.

This essay was originally published in The Record, Nepal (http://recordnepal.com/perspective/search-humanistic-south-asia)

Contributions to Contemporary Knowledge Lecture Series - 2015

Faculty of Social Sciences at South Asian University

In collaboration with the Department of Sociology

Present

Contributions to Contemporary Knowledge - 2015

Gandhi as a Global Thinker:

Legacies of the Anti-Colonial Revolution

By

Keith Hart

Centennial Professor of Economic Anthropology

Department of International Development

London School of Economics

And

International Director

Human Economy Program

University of Pretoria, South Africa

Date and Time:

Thursday, 29 January 2015; 06.00 PM

Venue:

Multipurpose Hall

India International Centre (IIC), New Delhi

Abstract of lecture: The new human universal is not an idea; it is 7 billion of us searching for ways of living together on this planet. In order to do so we must be able to conceptualise world society as something that each of us can relate to meaningfully. Global thinking is in short supply and I look for it in key moments of world society’s formation.

Europeans launched world society in the nineteenth century when they coerced the peoples of the planet into joining their colonial empires. As a result, by 1900 Europeans controlled 80% of the inhabited land. The main event of the twentieth century was the anti-colonial revolution, when colonised peoples sought to establish their own independent relationship to world society. 

Hart takes two main sources as exemplary of this movement: three New World Panafricanists (W E B Dubois, C L R James and Frantz Fanon) and Mohandas K Gandhi. In the early twentieth century, Panafricanism, fuelled by resistance to racism and was the most inclusive political movement in the world. Gandhi fed indirectly off these currents during his two decades in South Africa.

Kant claimed for himself a Copernican revolution in metaphysics. “Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects… (but what) if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge?” Understanding must begin not with the empirical existence of objects, but with the reasoning embedded in all the judgments each of us has made. So the world is inside each of us as much as it is out there. One definition of ‘world’ is ‘all that relates to or affects the life of a person’. Our task is to bring the two poles together as subjective individuals who share the object world in common with the rest of humanity.

Gandhi’s critique of the modern state was devastating. He held that it disabled its citizens, subjecting mind and body to the control of professional experts, when the purpose of a civilization should be to enhance its members’ self-reliance. He proposed an anthropology based on two universal postulates: that every human being is a unique personality and as such participates with the rest of humanity in an encompassing whole. Between these extremes lie a great variety of associations. Gandhi settled on the village as the most appropriate social vehicle for human development.

The problem Gandhi confronted is crucial. If the world is devoid of meaning, then, being governed by remote impersonal forces known only to specially trained experts, leaves each of us feeling small, isolated and vulnerable. Yet, modern cultures tell us that we have significant personalities. In this context, how does one  bridge the gap between a vast, unknowable world, which we experience as an external object, and a puny self, endowed with the subjective capacity to act alone or with others? 

We must scale down the world, scale up the self or a combination of both. Traditionally this task was performed by religion, notably through prayer. Gandhi chose the village as the site of India’s renaissance because it had a social scale appropriate to self-respecting members of the civilization. Moreover, he devoted a large part of his philosophy and practice to building up the personal resources of individuals, not least his own. One aim of the lecture is to bring this project up to date.

About the speaker:  Keith Hart is Centennial Professor of Economic Anthropology in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and International Director of the Human Economy Program at the University of Pretoria. He is an anthropologist by training and a self-taught economist who lives in Paris with his family. He also has a home in Durban, South Africa.

Hart studied classics and went on to explore the African diaspora in West Africa, North America, the Caribbean, Britain, France and South Africa. He has taught for a long time in Cambridge University, where he was Director of the African Studies Centre. 

His interests include building a human economy; economic anthropology; money and finance; informal economy; African development; migration; national capitalism; the digital revolution in communications; social media; intellectual property and its discontents; the emergence of world society; world citizenship.

His recent books include Market and Society: The Great Transformation Today (2009), The Human Economy: A Citizen’s Guide (2010) and People, Money and Power in the Economic Crisis: Perspectives from the Global South (Vol. 1 in Berghahn’s Human Economy series), all co-edited volumes. He wrote Economic Anthropology (2011) with Chris Hann. He authored The Memory Bank: Money in an Unequal World (2000) and numerous papers. His next book, about African development in the twenty-first century, will be Africa: The Coming Revolution.

Invitations: If you would like to have an invitation to the lecture, please send a request with your name, postal address, email addresses to the following email addresses: sociology@sau.ac.in; mallika@sau.ac.in

For more information, please contact:

Mallika Shakya, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology

Samson George, Personal Secretary to the Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences

Telephone: +91-11-24122512-14; +91-11-24195000

'Society and Culture in South Asia' from the Department of Sociology at South Asian University and Sage India will be globally available in January 2015

Entrapment, Transparency and Technologies of Truth

Department of Sociology Seminar SeriesFaculty of Social Sciences

Monsoon Semester - 2014-15

Entrapment, Transparency and

Technologies of Truth

By Prof. Ravi Sundaram

Centre for the Study of Developing Societies

New Delhi

Abstract: The last decade in India has witnessed a growing number of entrapment events or media 'stings.' Aided by the rapid spread of technological modernity and low-cost media gadgets like mobile phones, the media sting has been carried out by print, TV and new media, transparency campaigners, NGO's, political parties, social movements, and ordinary individuals. This mode of rendering public comes in the background of the controversial Aadhaar programme by the government. As entrapment expands from a police technique to a generalised technology of transparency, it has produced great strains in existing control systems and traumatic disruptions at all levels. I use legal and media archives to reflect on the implications of these new truth strategies for a theory of the contemporary.

Prof. Ravi Sundaram’s work rests at the intersection of the post-colonial city and contemporary media experiences. He was one of the initiators of the Sarai programme which he co-directs. He has co-edited the critically acclaimed Sarai Reader series: The Public Domain (2001), The Cities of Everyday Life (2002), Shaping Technologies (2003), Crisis Media (2004), and Turbulence (2006). His other publications include Pirate Modernity: Media Urbanism in Delhi (2009). Two of his other volumes are No Limits: Media Studies from India (Oxford University Press, 2012) and Delhi’s Twentieth Century (forthcoming OUP).

Date: 12 November 2014, Wednesday

Time: 02.30 PM

FSI HALL, South Asian University, 

Akbar Bhawan, Chanakyapuri,

New Delhi 110021

ALL ARE CORDIALLY INVITED

'Society and Culture in South Asia' will get off ground in January 2015

Issue 1, Volume 1 of Society and Culture in South Asia (SCiSA) co-published by the Department of Sociology, South Asian University and Sage India will be out in January 2015. It will be published twice year (two issues per volume).

The disciplinary dimensions to which the journal responds to covers sociology and social anthropology in the main, and sociology of education, sociology of medicine, arts and aesthetics, cultural studies, sociology of mass media, sociology of law, urban studies and so on. However it will be open to contributions from other disciplines in the wider domains of social sciences and humanities in so far as they inform the disciplinary dimensions identified above.

The journal possesses an international character in two senses: regional internalism and trans-regional internationalism. On one level, it focuses on readership and contributions from the scholars of South Asian countries (SAARC countries) and on the other it will appeal to scholars beyond South Asia who exhibit intellectual interest in the discourses on and from South Asia. 

For more information, click here. 

Tentative Contents of Society and Culture in South Asia, Vol. 1; Issue No. 1:

Preface Vol 1; Issue 1

Papers

Gananath Obeyesekere
The coming of Brahmin migrants: the śudra fate of an Indian elite in Sri Lanka

Ravi Nandan Singh
Modes of Processing the Dead: Ethnography of Crematoria

Benu Verma
Plenitude Of The Singular: Draupadi In Literature And Life

Review Essay

Sheena Jain
Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1990, pp. 333, ISBN: 0-7456-0597-4,

Opinion/Debate

Thongkholal Haokip
The Politics of Scheduled Tribe Status in Manipur

Photo Essay

Jagath Dheerasekara
Manuwangku Under the Nuclear Cloud

Book Reviews

Susan Visvanathan
Roland Lardinois. 2013. Scholars and Prophets: Sociology of India from France, 19th-20th Centuries. New Delhi: Social Science Press. Pp. 564, price: Rs. 795. ISBN 978-81-87358-70-1

Renny Thomas
Jeffrey C. Alexander, Trauma: A Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press, June 2012, 180 pp. Notes, Bibliography, Index. ISBN 9780745649115 and 9122. US $22.95

Ruchika Wason Singh
Navina. Performing Heritage: Art of Exhibit Walks, Sage, New Delhi. 2012. pp. 216, ISBN 978-81-321-0699-9

Editorial Board

Editor in Chief: Sasanka Perera (South Asian University, Department of Sociology)
Associate Editor: Ravi Kumar (South Asian University, Department of Sociology)
Reviews Editor: Dev Pathak (South Asian University, Department of Sociology)
Ankur Datta (South Asian University, Department of Sociology)
Kumud Bhansali (Editorial Assistant, South Asian University, Department of Sociology)

International Editorial Advisory Board

Gananath Obeysekere (Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, Princeton University, New Jersey)
Roma Chatterji (Delhi School of Economics, New Delhi)
Radhika Chopra (Delhi School of Economics, New Delhi)
Maitrayee Chaudhuri (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)
N. Jayaram (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai)
Chaitanya Mishra (Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu)
Siddharth Malavarappu (South Asian University, New Delhi)
Sujata Patel (Hyderabad Central University, Hyderabad)
Tariq Jazeel (University College London, London)
Salima Hashmi (Beacon House National University, Lahore)
Jagath Weerasinghe (Post Graduate Institute of Archeology, Colombo)
Yoshiko Ashiwa (Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo)
Bob Simpson (Durham University, Durham)
R.L. Stirrat (University of Sussex, Brighton)

Thee Years of South Asian University: Experiences and Expectations

This is what the recently published book, Pathways to Power: The Domestic Politics of South Asia edited by Arjun Gunaratne and Anita M Weiss (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014) says about South Asian University in its introduction:

“When India has professed a priority, it seems that SAARC takes it up and the result is generally in India’s favor. Take, for example, SAARC’s initiative to create a South Asian University. For many years, the idea was bandied about in conferences, meetings and high-level summits. It was envisioned as an opportunity for SAARC to bring together the greatest minds of the sub-continent while also providing an outstanding higher education opportunity for students from every South Asian country. But what was the final result? SAARC’s South Asian University abuts Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, and its faculty consists mostly of JNU graduates. There is nothing particularly distinctive about the SAARC South Asian University except its focus on political economy; in essence, it is Indian University with apolitical economic focus. Indeed, other SAARC proposals have shared similar fates: those that India wished to ignore dissipated, and those that India supported have essentially become Indian initiatives. India has been able to proceed with its own economic and political agenda without the need to collaborate with other states in the region. Until such time that India can be a partner rather than seek to be the regional chief executive, SAARC’s prospects to promote economic and social collaborations within the region will remain problematic” ('Introduction: Situating Domestic Politics in South Asia', p. 17).

Whatever the merits of this brief opinion, SAU has been and will continue to be in South Asia's public domain. It has and will continue to generate ideas both positive and not so positive about the very idea of the university as well as its being. Do you have any ideas? Any comments? Any anxieties? And suggestions? Come join the exchange of views about our presence on September 19th at SAU's FSI Hall:

Invitation to Book Reviewers

Greetings from the Department of Sociology, South Asian University, New Delhi! We are writing to invite academics from South Asia and beyond to become part of the pool of reviewers for our journal, Society and Culture in South Asia co-published by the Department of Sociology, SAU and Sage India.

Guidelines

It would be useful to consider the following basic instructions and guidelines when writing a review:

• Kindly send an email to the Reviews Editor to join the pool of reviewers. In that email please outline the nature of your academic training, areas of expertise and interest, contact details and institutional afflictions. 

• The journal solicits reviews of recently published books (post 2012) that you may have read recently. The journal provides a reviewer with a book, matching the research interests of the reviewers. The author is entitled to keep the book after submitting the review, unless a return of the book is required by the journal in exceptional circumstances. 

• The review should be 1000 words or less in length. Any significant variation from the limit will be subject to editing based on the discretion of the Reviews Editor. 

• If you were to write a longer review essay, putting together two or more books, the length would be 5000 words. This would however be based on editorial discretion taking into account the thematic veracity of the review essay and the specific them of any given issue of the journal. 

• In general, the review could be critical and searching, based on a clear idea of the book’s contents. In doing so, reviewers need to respond to the book itself by engaging with its ideas and issues. 

• More specifically, the review ought to discuss the merits or otherwise of the book’s ideas and arguments, its organisation and clarity, while commenting on the standard of writing and possible readership for the book. 

• Critical comments should analyse the book’s success or otherwise in meeting its objectives, before extending the discussion into areas which may have been missed or misunderstood. 

• While it is essential to be assertive, it is also essential to be just and sensitive. Reviews in Society and Culture in South Asia should not be a forum to publicise one’s own scholarship. 

• Reviews should reach the Reviews Editor within eight weeks from the date of the receipt of the book. 

• Reviews should be submitted to the Reviews Editor electronically, as a Microsoft Word email attachment using the font Calibri point 11; it should be double-spaced. 

• Footnotes should be avoided in reviews and personal identification (name, affiliation, postal address and email id) of the reviewer ought to be displayed at the end of the review. 

• Please set out the bibliographical details of the book under review at the top of the document in the following format: Cathrine Brun and Tariq Jazeel (Eds.,), Spatialising Politics: Culture and Geography in Postcolonial Sri Lanka. Sage, New Delhi, 2009, pp. 238, ISBN: 078-81-7829-929-7. INR. 695.00. 

• Your name should be placed above your institutional affiliation at the end of the review. If you are not 
affiliated with an institution, please include your town or city of residence. 

• Please return the book in case you are unable to review. 

For more information, Please contact the Reviews Editor, Dr Dev N Pathak @ Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, South Asian University, New Delhi 110021.

Email: dev@soc.sau.ac.in 


Currently Available Books for Review 

Ravi Kumar & Savyasaachi, (ed.), Social Movements: Transformative Shifts & Turning Points. Routledge, Delhi, 2013, pp. 380, ISBN: 978-0-415-71736-6. INR. 850.00.

Krishna Kumar, Politics of Education in Colonial India. Routledge, Delhi, 2013, pp. 248, ISBN: 978-0-415-72879-9. INR. 695.00.

Assa Doron & Alex Broom, (ed.), Gender and Masculinities. Routledge, Delhi, 2013, ISBN: 978-81-89643-36-2, INR. 695.00.

Tanvi Bajaj & Swasti S. Vohra, Performing Arts and Therapeutic Implications. Routledge, Delhi, 2013, pp. 196, ISBN: 978-0-415-71011-4, INR. 695.00.

Eva Pfost, (ed.), Between Ethics and Politics: Gandhi Today. Routledge, Delhi, 2013, ISBN: 978-0-415-71064-0, INR. 595.00.

Mukulika Banerjee, Why India Votes?. Routledge, Delhi, 2013, pp. 286, ISBN: 978-1-138-01971-3, INR. 495.00.

Himanshu P. Ray, The Return of the Buddha: Ancient Symbols for a New Nation. Routledge, Delhi, 2014, pp. 300, ISBN: 978-0-415-71115-9, INR. 795.00.

Ranbir Samadar & S. K. Sen. (ed.), New Subjects and New Governance in India. Routledge, Delhi, 2012, pp. 405, ISBN: 978-0-415-52290-8, INR. 895.00.

Govind Kelkar & Maithreyi Krishnaraj, (ed.), Women, Land and Power in Asia, Routledge, Delhi, 2013,  pp. 388, ISBN: 978-0-415-66214-7, INR. 995.00.

Sujata Patel & Tina Uys, (ed.), Contemporary India and South Africa: Legacies, Identities and Dilemmas. Routledge, Delhi, 2012, pp. 330, ISBN: 978-0-415-52299-1.

Sarah Beth Hunt, Hindi Dalit Literature and the Politics of Representation, Routledge, Delhi, 2014, pp. 264, ISBN: 978-0-415-73629-9, INR. 695.00.

Beatrix Hauser, Promising Rituals: Gender and Performativity in Eastern India. Routledge, Delhi, 2012, pp. 277, ISBN: 978-0-415-71115-9, INR. 795.00.

Radha Chakravarty. Novelist Tagore: Gender and Modernity in Selected Texts. Routledge, Delhi, 2013, pp. 160, ISBN: 978-0-415-84043-9, INR. 595.

Vibha Arora & N. Jayaram, (ed.), Routeing Democracy in the Himalayas: Experiments and Experiences. Routledge, Delhi, 2013, pp. 303, ISBN: 978-0-415-81199-6, INR. 795.00.

Arindam Chakrabarti & Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, (ed.). Mahabharata Now: Narration, Aesthetics and Ethics. Routledge, Delhi, 2013, pp. 292, ISBN: 978-0-415-71055-8, INR. 895.00.

A. Raghuramraju, (ed.). Ramachandra Gandhi: The Man and his Philosophy. Routledge, Delhi, 2013, pp. 355, ISBN: 978-0-415-82435-4, INR. 895.00

Ranbir Samaddar and Suhit K. Sen, (ed.), Political Transition and Development Imperatives in India. Routledge, Delhi, 2012, pp. 296, ISBN: 978-0-415-52289-2, INR. 795.

Neera Chandhoke and Sanjay K Agrawal, (ed.), Social Protection Policies in South Asia. Routledge, Delhi, 2013, pp. 268, ISBN: 978-0-415-81214-6, INR. 750.00.

Renu Addlakha, (ed.), Disability studies in India: Global Discourses and Local Realities. Routledge, Delhi, 2013, pp. 441, ISBN: 978-0-415-81212-2, INR. 895.00.

Ghanshaym Shah, (ed.), Re-reading Hind Swaraj: Modernity and Subalterns. Routledge, Delhi, 2013, pp. 248, ISBN: 978-0-415-66210-9, INR. 795.00.

Tanveer Fazal, (ed.), Minority Nationalisms in South Asia. Routledge, Delhi, 2012, pp. 257, ISBN: 978-81-89643-33-1, INR. 650.00.

Sarmistha Dutta Gupta, Identities & Histories: Women’s Writing and Politics in Bengal. Stree, Calcutta, 2010, pp. 294, ISBN: 978-81-906760-3-8, INR. 700.00.

Sociology Seminar Series, 2014-2015 (Monsoon Semester) - Madrasas and the Question of Reforms

Madrasas and the Question of Reforms

By Dr. Arshad Alam

Centre for the Study of Social Systems

Jawaharlal Nehru University

Abstract: Principal actors involved in the debate on reforms of Indian madrasas are the state and the ulama. Both operate with very different perspectives on what constitutes reform. For the state, it has largely meant making the madrasa system relevant to the needs of occupational structure; for the ulama, it has always involved the moral question of how best to socialize a Muslim child. Operating at such cross purposes, it is not very difficult to see why madrasa reforms have very nearly failed. The location and articulation of contemporary madrasas cannot be understood without a historical reading of the institution. Over time, the institution has undergone changes in terms of its contents, aims and methods. Appreciating this historical shift is central in understanding its position on madrasa reforms today.

About the Speaker: Arshad Alam is Assistant Professor, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has previously taught at the Jamia Millia University, New Delhi and was an International Ford Fellow at the University of Erfurt, Germany. He has published in the area of Muslim identity and education, low caste political articulations, Indian Muslims and the question of diversity within Indian Islam. He was Assistant Editor with the journal History and Sociology of South Asia during 2006-2012. Arshad Alam has an MA from CSSS/JNU and an MPhil and PhD from ZHCES/JNU. He is the author of Inside a Madrasa: Knowledge, Power and Islamic Identity in India (New Delhi and London: Routledge)

Date: 

17 September 2014, Wednesday

Time: 

02.30 PM

@

FSI HALL, South Asian University, 

Akbar Bhawan, Chanakyapuri,

New Delhi 110021

ALL ARE CORDIALLY INVITED

Sundarban Delta: Picturing Voices From the Margins

 

Sundarban Delta:
Picturing Voices From the Margins
An Exhibition of Photographs

 

By Dr Debojyoti Das

Birkbeck, University of London

25-26 August 2014, Gallery Space, Main Lobby

South Asian University

New Delhi

Sundarban etymologically means “beautiful forest” has historically captivated attention of colonials (British Empire), Portuguese sea pirates, Mog bandits of the Arakan highlands and of late environmentalist, conservationist and nature lovers for its resplendent mangrove forest and the threatened Royal Bengal Tiger. It is a ‘hybrid landscape’ where the waters of two mighty rivers the Ganges and the Brahmaputra meet to form a bird-footed delta. Consequently, in the pre-colonial literature the delta seaboard has been referred to as the land of eighteen tides- atharo bhatir desh. In this water based artisan economy, the riverine communities are socially connected through dispersed village settlements and weekly markets (locally known as hut bazar). The rivers are not just channels of water; they carry a thriving trade, transporting people, goods and ideas from one part of the delta to another. A lot has been written and visually illustrates its flora and fauna. Still there is hardly any significant visual work that captures the lives of communities who struggle routinely to live with the fear of man-eating tigers, alligators, venomous reptiles and natural calamities like cyclones and tropical storms. The stories of people who inhabit the delta seaboard are heart-rending. They belong to the marginalised lower stratum of society and their livelihoods (fishing, seafaring, honey collection, wood cutting) are closely attached to the sea and the mangrove forest. Their life and struggle with nature can be best illustrated through pictures. The photo exhibition will try to address the absence of these communities in the contemporary literature on the Bay of Bengal through visual displays of their everyday life in villages, at sea and inside the forest. They occupy the liminal spaces of aquatic and terrestrial world and are placed at the ‘coastal frontiers’ where the state exercises panoptic control through maritime border patrol over its territorial waters and the Tiger Reserve with camouflaged infrared cameras.

 

 In the past decades the lives of communities living in the coastal belt has been radically challenged by transnational development. The powerful ship breaking industry in Chittagong is creating a massive livelihood crisis in Bangladesh’s Sitakund coastal seaboard, among the traditional fishing community, as toxic litter from breaking ships and land grabbing by power land mafia pollutes the coastal water depleting fish catch. Conversely in India the Sundarbans has been opened up for eco-tourism. This has allowed unregulated entry of engine boats that cause oil spills and pollutes the pristine backwaters. Similarly the tourist flow has put up the demand for guesthouses and hotels in the delicate delta milieu. Also shrimp farming once a thriving business in the coast has significantly damaged the mangrove forest that act as a windbreak to tropical storms and cyclones. Both in India and Bangladesh human intervention and changing state policies in favour of neo-liberalization and globalizations have adversely affected coastal environment.

 

The photographs will bring to light the littoral community’s everyday struggle with the environment, their aspirations for improvement, local beliefs, customs, festivals, folk tradition, drama, theatre and syncretic religious practices of the Hindus and Muslims. The author took these photographs during his yearlong ethnographic field research in India and Bangladesh (2012-13). While the national and western audience has been introduced to a number of literatures on the delta illustrating its flora and fauna, this visuals deliberation of human societies will be a first of its kind. The photographs aim to highlight the social, political and economic life of the delta undermined in popular ecological and environmental discourses dominated by the Bengal tiger.

 

The photo exhibition is the brainchild of the author in association with the Faculty of Social Sciences, South Asian University (SAU). The exhibition comes out of the project entitled “Coastal Frontiers: Water, Power and Boundaries in South Asia” supported by the European Research Commission with Dr Sunil Amrith as the PI in Birkbeck College, University of London.

 

About the Photographer

Dr. Debojyoti Das is an Anthropologist and Photographer, interested social, cultural and historical anthropology of frontier and marginal communities occupying South Asia’s littoral, highland and forest scape. He is a currently based as a Research Associate at the Dept. of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbek, University of London.

 

The photo exhibition will run during 25-26 of August 2014

at the in the Gallery Space
Main Lobby, South Asian University
Akbar Bhavan, Chanakyapuri
New Delhi 110021 

 

 

A reception will be held at South Asian University in the Lobby in front of the FSI Hall on 25 August, 2.15pm

 

 All are warmly invited to attend the event and reception.

Invitation: A Conversation with Professor Parul Mukherji

A Conversation with Professor Parul Mukherji

Rickshaw: A Students’ Collective @ Department of Sociology, South Asian University presents

'A Conversation with Professor Parul Mukherji.'

From 02.00 – 05.00 pm, 29th August 2014; FSI Hall, South Asian University, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi.

Those keen on participating can send a question not exceeding fifty (50) words on any of the following themes with reference to Professor Mukherji’s work: 

art history, visual culture, politics of culture, erotica, Shakunthala, gender and art, globalization and culture.

Please send your questions with your name and institutional affiliation to: rickshaweditors@gmail.com before 20^th of August 2014.

ALL ARE INVITED!

Please keep your mobile phones switched off during the conversation.

Reimagining Visuality

Department of Sociology 

Faculty of Social Sciences 

South Asian University

Reimagining Visuality: 

Exploring Possibilities in Photography,
Theory and Practice
 
Call for Abstracts

The social history of photography in South Asia for the most part has been associated with the need to capture and document images in order to serve the colonial agenda. Further, its shift from then to the present context through the vagaries of post-coloniality is marked by two main developments among many. The first has to do with the evolution of photographic technologies in the 21st century while the second relates to the accessibility of photographic devices in the form of digital cameras and ubiquitous camera-phones making this once elite practice a very democratic one in terms of access. These developments accompanied by increased interactions through alternative means such as the social media and the internet more generally have led to the proliferation of images around us and a radical transformation in the practice of photography.

By the 1980s, the new sub-disciplines of visual sociology and anthropology had emerged in Europe and North America with a concerted focus on imagery as a central occupation in their analytical approach. These developments nevertheless had no discernable impact on the practice of sociology and social anthropology in South Asia on one hand, and on mainstream sociology and anthropology more generally and globally. This meant that only a handful of scholars working in the mainstream of these disciplines have historically used photographs in their work as part of a conscious methodological framework for research or analytical approach for interpretation. With very few exceptions, even when photographs are used, the purpose has often been to illustrate or act as evidence. Thus, photographs are used not as part of a distinct theoretically informed methodological apparatus but to substantiate claims made by the written word. Moreover, this feeble attempt to incorporate pictures combined with the lacuna in the theory and interpretation of photography has made its use vacuous to a large extent. This inconsistent use, often lacking in rigor has further resulted in photography’s inability to claim a serious space for itself within the realm of methodological practices of these disciplines.

So if a picture is worth a thousand words then why does the written word still predominate the practice of sociology and social anthropology in particular and social sciences more generally?

The Department of Sociology at South Asian University calls for a conscious and rigorous engagement with this question by looking at photography as a method with a focus on the practice of sociology and anthropology in South Asia. The primary intent of the proposed workshop is to seriously explore the potentiality of photographs and photography as a methodological tool that could be used in conjunction with other methods in the practice of sociology and social anthropology as well as in other realms of social sciences which might inform the practice of these two disciplines in contemporary times. To do this, we believe it is necessary to bring together scholars from various disciplinary contexts to discuss and engage with the possibilities and challenges involved in the attempt to create a methodology around theory, interpretation and practice of photography within social sciences.

It is expected that selected papers from among those presented will contribute to a special volume on photography in the practice of sociology/anthropology in South Asia.

We invite abstracts not exceeding 500 words from interested scholars on any theme within the areas of interest outlined above.

Workshop date and venue:

Saturday 28th February 2015 @ South Asian University, Akbar Bhawan, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi 110021.

Co-conveners:

Sasanka Perera, Kumud Bhansali and Krishna Pandey, Department of Sociology, South Asian University, New Delhi

Deadlines and contact details:

Abstracts should be received by the conveners by 15th September 2014. Decisions will be communicated to potential paper presenters by 15th October 2014. Complete papers are expected to reach SAU by 1st January 2015. All communications regarding the conference as well as abstracts should be directed to: kumud.bhansali@gmail.com