The 2021 Young South Asia Scholars’ Meet explores how the state is experienced in the everyday.
The everyday state and state-making practices have been an important theme of research in the field of South Asian Studies across the disciplines of Anthropology, History, Geography, Sociology and Political Science. This conference hopes to place these disciplines in a conversation and engage with them to produce a renewed understanding of the Everyday State in South Asia. It explores how the state is experienced in the everyday, through complex networks with individuals and institutions.
In recent decades, scholars have approached the study and theorisation of the everyday state by focusing on the production and circulation of bureaucratic documents, the role of archival records in categorising populations and rendering them visible, the flow of labour and capital, the conceptualization and nature of citizenship, and the ways in which colonial institutions materialized the state, resulting in the production of specific kinds of knowledge. With a focus on South Asia, this conference will provide an interdisciplinary platform for a vibrant discussion on these issues by building upon, and extending, the existing scholarship.
Organised under the banner of the Young South Asia Scholars’ Meet (Y-SASM) and in collaboration with the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy, and the Departments of Anthropology and Sociology and International History and Politics, the conference will feature 8 panels that examine and explore the strategies, processes and practices employed by the everyday state— both material and symbolic.
Download the event programme HERE. Further information can also be found on the Y-SASM blog.