18 | Interrogating Marginalities Across Disciplinary Boundaries: Perspectives From South Asia
Adopting an inter-disciplinary approach, the panel seeks to examine the conceptualisations of marginality in its multiple dimensions – political, societal, economic, legal, spatial – in colonial and postcolonial India.
Convenors:
· Amit Prakash Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, India)
· Anna Bochkovskaya Institute of Asian and African Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State University (Moscow, Russia)
Timeslots:
· 07/26 | 17:30-19:00 UTC+2/CEST
· 07/27 | 15:30-17:00 UTC+2/CEST
· 07/28 | 15:30-17:00 UTC+2/CEST
· 07/28 | 17:30-19:00 UTC+2/CEST
Long Abstract
A relational position, marginality presupposes a confrontation with centrality or the ‘mainstream’ within a common discourse of knowledge and power. In much of South Asia, contemporary marginalities are a product of the evolving liberal discourse since colonial times when extant liberal premises lent themselves to the Orientalist framing of religion, caste, gender, civilizational progress and geographical location as marginalities by deploying anthropology and universalistic history as intellectual anchors. Some continue to exist in the postcolonial period (despite promises of liberty and equality), while new marginalities have emerged from the interface of a developmental state with the new liberal Constitutional order. Examples of new marginalities include constructs around politico-social categories, majoritarianism in its various expressions, lifestyle choices (food, dress, sexuality), regions, relationship to resources and societal location, with respect to the institutional architecture of the state and Law. The intellectual anchors for such formulations are provided by economics, history and political science in various guises of modernisation, economic development, nationhood and politics. For a contextualised understanding of the continuities and fractures in conceptualising marginalities, it is essential to adopt an interdisciplinary lens. The panel invites papers reflecting on varied aspects of evolving marginalities – structural, cultural and psychological – in South Asia in diverse temporal, spatial or societal contexts. Contributions examining the discourses and institutional mechanisms and economic processes that engender or contest margins are encouraged.
Presentations
-
07/26 | 15:30-15:50 UTC+2/CEST
Anxiety as Art: Reading People , Precarity and Landscape in Assam's Borderlands (Rakhee Moral) -
07/26 | 15:50-16:10 UTC+2/CEST
Masquerading in the Margins: The Figure of the Bystander in South Asian Literature (Debjani Banerjee) -
07/26 | 16:10-16:30 UTC+2/CEST
Between Empathy and Representation : On the Discourse on a Common Binary in Dalit/Adivasi Hindi Literature (Heinz Werner Wessler) -
07/26 | 16:30-16:50 UTC+2/CEST
Exploring Marginalities: Representations of Male Domestic Workers in Two Films on Colonial and Postcolonial Bengal, India (Swapna Banerjee) -
07/26 | 17:30-17:50 UTC+2/CEST
Construction of the ‘Hijra/Kinnar ’ (Eunuch) Identity as/in a Transgressing Body (Leena Sharma) -
07/26 | 17:50-18:10 UTC+2/CEST
Slaves, Prostitutes, and Patronage: Female Dancers in Colonial Bombay Presidency (Pratichi Priyambada (Mahapatra)) -
07/26 | 18:10-18:30 UTC+2/CEST
Unique but Common: Marginality of Pakistani Hijras in South Asian Perspective (Alina Filimonova) -
07/26 | 18:30-18:50 UTC+2/CEST
Victimised in the Name of Protection – Revisiting the Institutional Reforms for Marginalised Women in Shelter Homes (Pallavi Beri) -
07/27 | 15:30-15:50 UTC+2/CEST
At the Margins of the Empire Making Project: Masters, Servants and Household in Colonial India (Svetlana Sidorova) -
07/27 | 15:50-16:10 UTC+2/CEST
Between Marginalisation & Connectedness: Muslim Artisans in India (Thomas Chambers) -
07/27 | 16:10-16:30 UTC+2/CEST
‘Marginal’ Scriptures in Contemporary Punjab: A Heterochronic Approach (Anna Bochkovskaya) -
07/27 | 16:30-16:50 UTC+2/CEST
The Centre and the Margin in Jharkhand Adivasi Histories (Sanjukta Das Gupta) -
07/28 | 15:30-15:50 UTC+2/CEST
Structural Violence Against Dalit and Tribal Christians in India (Mani Sudhir Selvaraj) -
07/28 | 15:50-16:10 UTC+2/CEST
Debating Land and Development at the Margins: Political Discourse, State-Society Relations, and the Maoist Conflict in India (Denise Ripamonti) -
07/28 | 16:10-16:30 UTC+2/CEST
Marginalisation Through Empowerment: The Policy of Reservation for the Scheduled Castes in India (Padmanabh Samarendra) -
07/28 | 16:30-16:50 UTC+2/CEST
Interrogating Marginalities as a Crisis of the Liberal Script (Amit Prakash) -
07/28 | 17:30-17:50 UTC+2/CEST
Including the Marginalised: Governing Digital Divides in India (Elvira Graner) -
07/28 | 17:50-18:10 UTC+2/CEST
Politics of Jaankaari: Mediation and Marginalisation in Digital Delhi (Aasim Khan, Martin Webb, Ratan Suri and Farhat Salim) -
07/28 | 18:10-18:30 UTC+2/CEST
Spheres of Marginality in the Urban Space: Exploring Interconnections in a Global City (Priyanka Nupur)