Dear Sirs,
I would like to submit to all those who are interested the possibility
to submit a paper-proposal to the workshop "Changing approaches to fieldwork
in India in the age of globalization" organized by Prof. Shalini Randeria
(from the University of Zurich) and Paolo Favero (from the Dept. of Social
Anthropology at Stockholm University, Sweden).
The panel will be hosted at the coming 9th EASA (European Association of
Social Anthropologists) Conference which will be held at the University of
Bristol, UK - 18th-21st Sept 2006.
Below and by attachment I send the abstract of the panel.
For further information http://www.easaonline.org/
Best Regards,
Paolo Favero
ABSTRACT
Changing approaches to fieldwork in India in the age of globalization
Over the past decade India has become more strongly connected to the
'global' economy. This process has entailed a number of, at times
paradoxical, transformations. The GDP, the size of the middle classes and
the foreign investments in the country have grown. But so has the gap
between rich and poor or between urban and rural areas, phenomena which also
contribute to the growth of emigration from the country.
These recent transformations have entailed also changes in how India is
represented and imagined, within the country as well as abroad. Within the
country there is a visible contrast between the transformations that have
taken place and the discourses surrounding these (whereby 'problems' are
more and more often presented as 'possibilities'). In the West, the image of
India is undergoing a change as well. No longer primarily represented as an
exotic dreamland populated by barefoot beggars and wandering holy men, India
has become in the Western imagination, but also a superpower in-the-making,
a new frontier for technology and market opportunities as well as a
potential competitor.
What do these changes imply for how we conduct anthropological research in
contemporary India? The panel will explore the new trends of fieldwork in
India and enquire into how anthropologists can critically face the
transformations taking place in India. How can we overcome the limitations
of older discourses and refocus our research while avoiding the current
celebratory rhetoric. What kind of approaches would avoid reifying India
according to older categories but also eschew new stereotypes? Is there a
way to combine divergent issues such as caste, new sectarian movements,
village structures, state institutions, Bollywood, reproductive medicine
clinics, kinship studies and HI-Tech call-centres into a new critical
framework? Which innovative methodological tools and ethnographic practices
can be used for an ethnography of these fields? The panel addresses
questions regarding the implication of these changes for the modalities of
fieldwork and the longstanding tradition of anthropological research in
India.
Panel Organizers:
Shalini Randeria
Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Zurich
Paolo Favero
Postdoctoral Fellow, Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), Dept. of
Social Anthropology, Stockholm University
Paolo Favero
Postdoc Fellow, Swedish Research Council
Dept. of Social Anthropology,
Stockholm University, Sweden
