CFP: a workshop in Göttingen, June 2010
An international workshop to be held in Göttingen from the 24th to the 26th of June 2010. This is the first of a series of annual workshops that will be organised by the small team of social historians at the newly founded Centre for Modern Indian Studies. We'd be grateful if you responded to this CfP and/or circulated it among colleagues who might be interested.
Call for Papers, International Workshop, 24-26 June 2010, Göttingen, Germany
The Department of History of the newly founded Centre for Modern Indian Studies at the University of Göttingen invites proposals for papers to be presented at the workshop from historians and social scientists on the following theme:
Space, Capital and Social History in South Asia
Social space, in a distinctly non-metaphorical and concrete sense, has emerged as a fulcrum of contemporary social transformation and political conflict in South Asia. Some of the themes that have come to prominence are:
- the deindustrialisation of formerly celebrated ‘Manchesters of the East’ like Ahmedabad and the gentrification of workers’ neighbourhoods like Mumbai’s vast ‘factory village’ Girangaon
- the relocation of industries and the rapid production of new, transnationally connected landscapes of capital (like that of Gurgaon) brought to life by both ‘informally’ and ‘formally’ employed work forces
- violent conflicts over land for capital-induced ‘Special Economic Zones’ or schemes of infrastructural 'development'
- the seemingly irresistible rise of the corporate ‘developer’ and the dynamics of spatial segregation in India’s metropolitan cities
This workshop seeks to create a forum for younger as well as more experienced researchers from various disciplines, including history, sociology, social anthropology and geography, to explore fresh, critical perspectives on the history of social space in South Asia. Our point of departure is that whoever speaks of social space in modern South Asia should not be silent on capital and the historically differentiated complex of social relationships inhering it.
Proceeding from this assumption, a wide range of historical as well as contemporary themes and problems come into view on which we invite proposals for contributions. Among these themes and problems are the following:
- the instability of spaces of capital, the phenomenon of ‘deindustrialization’ and patterns of industrial relocation
- the development of bounded industrial spaces (including plantations, labour camps, mining and railway settlements, steel towns and SEZs)
- spatial relationships between households and sites of industrial production
- spaces of capital and labour as sites of cultural production
- tendencies of segmentation, polarisation and exclusion in urban space (according to gender, religion, ethnicity or class)
- corporate interests, the state and the process of spatial planning
- the property market and its regulation (both urban and rural)
- the social history of land acquisition for industrial or infrastructural projects
- changing policies of ‘mass housing’, ‘slum clearance’ and of the ‘policing’ of space
- transformations in the production of built environment and its quotidian appropriation
- changing relationships between villages and cities
- circuits and economies of labour migration (both internal and transterritorial)
- transport and communication networks and rhythms of quotidian mobility
- the development of spatial strategies of resistance by social and political movements
Dr. Ravi Ahuja
Professor of Modern Indian History
Centre for Modern Indian Studies | University of Göttingen Weender Landstr. 14 | 37073 Göttingen | Germany
Phone: +49 551 3910720
Fax: +49 322 224 483 79
Email: [mailto]Ravi.Ahuja@phil.uni-goettingen.de[/mailto]
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