How Campuses Mediate a Nationwide Upsurge against India's Communalization. An...
The wide resonance of the aphorism, "from shadows to the stars," closing the 2016 suicide letter of lower caste student activist Rohith Vemula 1 suggests broken hopes for South Asian educated youth. It points at the tragic obstacles to political change and social upliftment experienced by many young people, reflecting a characteristic desire for individual and collective change. The astounding protests that ensued from Rohith's suicide in India are now contributing to the revival of scholarly interest in the formation of political attitudes among educated youth, subjecting the question of students' socialization into politics to academic scrutiny. Indeed, amidst the uncertain social, economic and political promises of the South Asian educational bulge, 2 contemporary politics in university spaces in South Asia has the potential of shaping youth as idiosyncratic generations. They are characterized not only by their aspirations for a better future, but also by their ability to experience collectively, yet in their own way, major political and social events. 2Making sense of this research agenda revival is core to this special issue's enquiry, which runs through ethnographic and historical insights of eight contributions, covering youths' experiments with politics in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. This introduction questions the relevance of student politics as an object of inquiry by asking whether it truly constitutes a field that is autonomous from wider organized politics. By interpreting student politics as political becoming, this collection of articles indicates that everyday campus-based activism is a potent vehicle for the (re)production of contemporary South Asian polity. Interrogations over the meaning of this "(re)"sprinkle the issue, as authors debate how student politics, understood as an experimental learning process of politics within a given educational space (Loader, Vromen and Xenos 2014) both produces and reproduces political imaginaries, cultural tropes and social hierarchies. While party politics is not always central in the conduct Generational Communities: Student Activism and the Politics of Becoming in So...
This article analyzes the positionality of the researcher in the field of area studies, taking as an example our engagement with African and Dalit studies and issues of race and caste. We present an autoethnographic essay on our own historically constituted agentive positionality by weaving together different angles of inquiry – Lithuanian area studies (and its institutional context), Lithuania’s position in the post-Soviet and postcolonial narratives (the historical context), and our positionality in area studies and our particular fields of research (the personal context). The article shows how we as researchers construct our professional identities and relations with our interlocutors as we navigate through the Soviet past and the globalized present. We argue that the crucial question for scholars of area studies is not only the macro-political context in which knowledge production takes place (the predominant focus of area studies for decades), but also the personal micro-dimensions of knowledge production, which are inherent in the particular researcher as a historically constituted and strategically acting individual.
This article presents an analysis of a debate between two students of so-called "untouchable origin" 1 during which they discussed the moral dictate of "paying back to society." 2 Among Dalit activists, "paying back to the society" is a common explanation for why they engage in Dalit student activism. Such altruism is not solely a Dalit idiosyncrasy, but should rather be seen as reflecting a broader Indian moral concern (Bornstein 2012;Copeman 2011;Jeffrey and Dyson 2014;Srivatsan 2019). 3 Srivatsan has shown how sevā (social service), "the keystone of ethics of modern India" (2019:24), has reoccurred in different contexts by various forms in the postcolonial Indian history. This research also highlighted how through sevā (social service) hierarchical relations were maintained and altruism used as a means of domination. Contradicting the predominant image of youth in the global South as entangled in "predatory patronclient networks," Jeffrey and Dyson showed how Indian youth in Uttarakhand engaged in "generative politics," by "channeling their energies and time into serving...others," and thus generating new social and political relations (2014: 967-68).2 Dalit social responsibility ethics, while resonating with the broader Indian cultural values of altruism, also have their own characteristics and logic rooted in the Dalit movement's history and ideology. The idea of "paying back to society" was introduced by Kanshi Ram, the founder of the Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh. It was based on the vision of the broader Dalit community, which encompasses different exuntouchable groups. Kanshi Ram suggested that having benefited from the quota scheme, upwardly mobile Dalits should reciprocate and work for the betterment of the community. This idea was intended to help overcome the prevalent caste-centrism and competitive division among the SCs while encouraging social responsibility. Naudet
Going under the title “Old Discipline, New Trajectories: Theories, Methods and Practices in Anthropology”, the conference seeks to provide a “home” for socio-cultural and linguistic anthropologists as well as archeologists and bio-evolutionary anthropologists who identify themselves and seek to connect with scientifically minded anthropologists. It does not neglect the humanistic aspect of anthropology and embraces it as part of the unity implicit in the study of human lifeways and the cultural stuff that gives meaning, direction and collective identities to us. The conference might be seen as an important foundational step to establishing closer collaboration and integration among different disciplinary and methodological strands within the discipline of anthropology. The conference will broadly focus on theory, methods and practices in anthropology and will address the following questions: - Can we still say that anthropology is the most scientific of humanities and most humanistic of social sciences?- What does a scientific approach to the study of culture imply theoretically and methodologically?- Should ethnography still hold a central place in anthropology?- How can the results of the study of human evolution, cultural evolution and language evolution contribute insights into the current human condition?- What are the consequences the current rapid technological change is having on culture?- What can anthropology contribute to the important questions of today’s world such as pandemics, growing economic inequality, fascism, second demographic transition, climate change, etc.?
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