The Colonial Eye: British Empire Images of the Punjab
“The Colonial Eye: British Empire images of the Punjab, India 1912 – 1947″.
On Sunday 19th February 2012 at 2pm (Free, booking is required)
at Phoenix Cinema 52 High Road East Finchley London N2 9PJ 020 8444 6789 (for bookings) www.phoenixcinema.co.uk
As part of the Phoenix Cinema ‘ From the Archives’ series Tajender Sagoo has curated a series of short films produced during the British rule of India with a focus on the Punjab. The screening will bring together public information and travelogue films found in British public archives and rarely seen on the big screen. (mostly silent films).
The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with four specialists on South Asian film, popular culture and history: Dr Virinder Kalra of the University of Manchester, Dr Yasmin Khan of Royal Holloway, University of London, Dr Anandi Ramamurthy of the University of Central Lancashire and Dr Richard Osbourne of Middlesex University.
Roots of Love
Told through the stories of six different men ranging in age from fourteen to eighty-six, Roots of Love documents the changing significance of hair and the turban among Sikhs in India. We see younger Sikh men abandoning their hair and turban to follow the current fashion trends, while the older generation struggles to retain the visible symbols of their religious and cultural identity.
“Beautifully conceived and shot…Pleasure to watch… A compassionate portrait of a community in transition…”
— Safina Uberoi, filmmaker and director of My Mother India and A Good Man
Awards: “Best Student Film” – 2011 Society for Visual Anthropology
ORDER NOW! for your university and academic institutions.
More Info: www.TilotamaProductions.com
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Call For Papers: Cultures of Decolonisation, c. 1945-1970 Symposium
Date: Wednesday, 30 May 2012
Venue: Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, Senate House
Keynote Speaker: Dr Bill Schwarz, Queen Mary, University of London
Call for Papers: This symposium will bring together scholars with an interest in the cultural practices, performances and material cultures of decolonisation, c.1945-1970.
While the problems of ‘empire’ and ‘the postcolonial’ have come under increasing scrutiny in the humanities and social sciences in recent years, and debate about the political and economic processes of decolonisation is well established, the cultural sites, spaces and social practices of this process in the middle years of the twentieth century have often been overlooked.
Yet new scholarship is beginning to point to the attention that the literary, visual and built environment paid to political, economic and social change in this period. In addition, the roles of individuals and institutions in cultural practices and performances of decolonisation are now drawing critical attention from a variety of fields. This symposium will bring together scholars from history, art and design history, cultural geography, literature, museum studies, architecture and other cultural fields to further explore these topics with regard to decolonisation between 1945 and 1970.
We invite contributions which examine aspects of cultural engagements with decolonisation. Papers may consider the peoples, sites, materials and practices of emerging and newly independent nations, as well as the processes of decolonisation as enacted in Europe. This event will lend new insights into debates about the contested nature of decolonisation, and into the impact of cultural practices on socio-political processes.
Papers might focus on:
. Cultural institutions and their reactions to and engagements with decolonisation
. Amateurs, professionals and enthusiasts in decolonisation
. Imperial knowledges, materials and collections, and their place in a decolonising world
. Specific media as arenas for political exchange
. Cultural sites of independence and decolonisation
. Visual and performance cultures of decolonisation
. Decolonising lives
. Networks of decolonisation
Please send abstracts of 250 words or expressions of interest to Dr Ruth Craggs, St Mary’s University College (craggsr@smuc.ac.uk) and Dr Claire Wintle, University of Brighton (c.wintle@brighton.ac.uk) by 30 January 2012.
Symposium Website:
http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/research/research-conferences/cultures-of-decolonisation-1945-1970
Supported by the Institute for Commonwealth Studies, University of London; School of Humanities, University of Brighton, and St Mary’s University College.
Contemporary South Asia: Call for papers
Call for papers for a special issue of Contemporary South Asia: Gendered and social consequences of innovations in South Asia
Gender relations in South Asia are considered as a major developmental challenge of the area. Technological, social and organizational innovations have potential for improving living conditions and supporting people’s active participation but they may as well work against the better interests of the disadvantaged.
Here, we are interested in technical, social and organizational innovations that have a particular developmental role in South Asia, such as mobile phones, use of ultrasound for sex detection, micro credit, or social business strategies. Here, we will look at innovations as social phenomena: they are never merely commercial or technical ventures or products. They are necessarily socio-cultural projects, put into practice and created by socially-situated individuals and groups. Thus the interest lies more on the process than on the end result of innovation.
The idea of an innovation entails a taken-for-granted positive and useful goal – improving wellbeing by adopting something new or doing something differently than before. We would like to forward a call for papers examining whether the implementation or creation of an innovation actually manages to transform social structures of inequality, particularly gender relations, in South Asia. Or do innovations socially reinforce existing inequalities while benefitting only some particular actors?
This special issue seeks contributions that do not see innovations merely as economic or technological ventures but also as socio-cultural projects that have important gender-specific and cultural frames and consequences. In order to strengthen our understanding on how social and other innovations work in starkly hierarchical societies of South Asia, positioned, contextualized and culture-specific micro-level analyses are needed.
Guest editors: Minna Säävälä (Population Research Institute, Helsinki) & Sirpa Tenhunen (University of Helsinki)
Article manuscripts analysing primary data are sought. Please send a synopsis of maximum 500 words to the guest editors minna.saavala@vaestoliitto.fi and sirpa.tenhunen@helsinki.fi by 31th Jan 2012. The special issue is scheduled to be published in 2014.
Call for Contributions: The Economics of Military Conflict in South Asia
The Economics of Military Conflict in South Asia
We seek original contributions from a wide range of disciplines including economics, econometrics, political science, international relations, strategic studies and public policy for an inter-disciplinary collection of essays to be published in a proposed special edition on the economics of military conflict in South Asia in the Journal of Asian Public Policy. Contributions should address an economic and public policy aspect of military conflict in a country, or combination of countries, from South Asian including Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. Studies of both inter- and sub-state conflict (including separatist movements and non-state actors) are welcome. Final articles should be 4,000-7,000 words in length with an expected date of publication in late 2012 or early 2013.
Possible topics include:
* The effects of conflict on trade or economic growth
* The economic determinants and costs of conflict
* Public policy responses and solutions to conflict
* The economic and social effects of military spending
* The economic impediments and imperatives of peace
Interested contributors should send a 200 word abstract with a brief biographical note to mwebb@pi.ac.ae or albert.wijeweera@scu.edu.au by 15 December 2011. Authors of selected abstracts will be contacted in early 2012. Final contributions will be subject to a process of peer review before publication.
The Lost British Accounts of Sikh Texts, 27th November 2011
Date: 27th November 2011
Venue: Guru Nanak Gurdwara, 9 Holy Bones, Leicester, UK, LE1 5LJ
Workshop on Asian Migration to Scandinavia, 12-14 December 2011
Date: 12-14 December 2011
Venue: NORASIA IV Conference, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Call for Papers: People from Asia have migrated to Scandinaviafor several decades and have increasingly made their presence felt in the region. Labour migration from e.g. South Asia gathered momentum during the 1960s and 1970s, accompanied by refugees and asylum seekers from many countries in Asia. More recently, as the various national laws governing migration to Scandinavia were modified and made stricter, casual migration has given way to family reunification and new forms of labour migration comprised inter alia by educational migrants, care workers and highly skilled engineers, doctors and nurses. In this workshop we aim to explore the vast field of Asian migration to Scandinavia by engaging in an exploratory and ambitious comparative exercise. What can we learn by comparing vastly different patterns of migration originating in Asia, and passing through or terminating in Scandinavia? Which cultural, national and regional differences make a difference, and how do changing legislative frameworks enable or constrain migrant practices? We particularly invite MA and PhD students with recent field experience to present their work. Topics covered under this broad umbrella include, but is not limited to:
- Histories of migration and community formation in the diaspora
- Homeland concerns, religious revivalism and diaspora politics
- Labour, cross-border remittances and global economic flows
- International terrorism, crime, trafficking and drugs
- Legislative processes and changing legal frameworks
- Majority – minority relations
Kindly send your abstract to the organisers no later than 15 November:
Karina Dalgas, Univ.of Copenhagen, arina.Dalgas@anthro.ku.dk
Kenneth Bo Nielsen, SUM, Univ.of Oslo, K.B.Nielsen@sum.uio.no
New E-Journal: Religion and Gender
The new e-journal Religion and Gender is pleased to announce the publication of its first issue. This volume addresses the theme ‘Critical Issues in the Study of Religion and Gender’ and is freely available online <http://www.religionandgender.org/index.php/rg/issue/current>.
The next two volumes of the journal will explore the themes ‘Religion, Gender and Multiculturalism’ (Winter 2011) and ‘Masculinities and Religion: Continuities and Change’ (Spring 2012).
Religion and Gender is a refereed, online, open access journal for the systematic study of gender and religion in an interdisciplinary perspective. The journal explores the relation, confrontation and intersection of gender and religion, taking into account the multiple and changing manifestations of religion in diverse social and cultural contexts. It analyses and reflects critically on gender in its interpretative and imaginative dimensions and as a fundamental principle of social ordering. It seeks to investigate gender at the intersection of feminist, sexuality, queer, masculinity and diversity studies.
Religion and Gender is edited by a small team of managing editors, supported by an international editorial board and an advisory board consisting of renowned scholars in the broad field of the study of religion and gender. As an academic journal, Religion and Gender aims to publish high level contributions from the Humanities and from qualitative and conceptual studies in the Social Sciences. It wants to focus in particular on contemporary debates and topics of emerging interest. The editors invite you to submit articles, book reviews, literature surveys of discussion papers, or to propose special issues.
You are encouraged to register <http://www.religionandgender.org/index.php/rg/user/register> at our website as a reader of Religion and Gender. As a registered user you will be notified when new issues of the journal are published. Occasionally you will also receive announcements related to the journal and other items of your interest.
You may also follow the journal on Academia.edu<http://religionandgender.academia.edu/ReligionandGenderejournal>
or on LinkedIn<http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Religion-Gender-4138623?home=&gid=4138623&trk=anet_ug_hm>.
Symposium: Digitial Religion, Abo June 13-15 2012
Date: 13-15 June 2012
Venue: The Donner Institute, Abo Akademi University, Abo/Turku, Finland
Programme: The Donner institute will arrange a Symposium 13-15 June 2012 in Åbo/Turku, Finland
The theme we have chosen for the Donner Institute 23rd Symposium is Digital Religion.
The conference “Digital Religion” aims to explore the complex relationship between religion and digital technologies of communication.
Digital religion encompasses a myriad of connections between religionand digital technologies of communication and the goal of the conference is to approach the subject from multiple perspectives.
Keynote speakers:
Ass. Prof. Heidi Campbell, Texas A & M University, Texas
Prof. Mia Lövheim, Uppsala University, Sweden
Prof. Jolyon Mitchell, University of Edinburg, UK
Dr. Marcus Moberg, Åbo Akademi University, Finland
Dr. Alexander Ornella, University of Hull, UK
Prof. Michael Pye, Phillips-Universität Marburg, Germany
Dr. Sofia Sjö, Åbo Akademi University, Finland
Call for Papers: Please send your application to give a paper, with a short abstract included, to the Donner Institute no later than February 15 2012.
Diasporas: Exploring Critical Issues, 5th Global Conference, 29th June-1st July 2012
Date: Friday 29th June 2012 – Sunday 1st July 2012
Venue: Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom
Call for Papers: This inter- and multi-disciplinary project seeks to explore the contemporary experience of Diasporas – communities who conceive of themselves as a national, ethnic, linguistic or other form of cultural and political construction of collective membership living outside of their ‘home lands.’ Diaspora is a concept which is far from being definitional. Despite problems and limitations in terminology, this notion may be defined with issues attached to it for a more complete understanding. Such a term which may have its roots in Greek, is used customarily to apply to a historical phenomenon that has now passed to a period that usually supposes that Diasporas are those who are settled forever in a country other from where they were born and thus this term has lost its dimension of irreversibility and of exile.
In order to increase our understanding of Diasporas and their impact on both the receiving countries and their respective homes left behind, key issues will be addressed related to Diaspora cultural expression and interests. In addition, the conference will address the questions: Do Diasporas continue to exist? Is the global economy, media and policies sending different messages about diaspora to future generations?
Papers, workshops, presentations and pre-formed panels are invited on any of the following themes:
1. Movies and Diasporas
The presence and impact of displaced / globalized populations of audiences, spectators and producers of new mainstream /Hollywood/ Bollywood cinema are crucial to the emergence of this post-diasporic cinema, as these narratives from texts to screen constitute a fundamental challenge for the negotiation of complex diasporic issues.
2. Motivational Factors for Research into Diaspora
Factors are numerous including most prominently, artistic and musical creations, intellectual outputs, and specific religious practices and which have made a significant international impact.
3. Myths and Symbols: how to meet, and get to know each other through the use of creative lenses
Diasporas group, re-group and their group myths and symbols change accordingly. Or Diasporas remain dominated, their myths and symbols mirror (or rebel) their domination. This manifestation could take in linguistic, artistic and other creative forms right down to graffiti to propaganda. The effects of Diaspora through a creative lens, as often this is where the true effects of migration and cultural adjustment expose themselves in a personal and celebratory way. These could include:
* Creative Expression as a result of shifting and integrating cultures. Cross cultural and cross disciplinary practices / cross cultural collaboration / representing the self and the nation / connecting history to the future / third space practice
* Shifting Art Practices and how traditional folk based art forms (art / music / literature / dance) can accommodate and represent modern diasporic communities in flux
* New Languages that represent broken boundaries such as graffiti / rap/ interactive & web based art forms / global design aesthetics/ symbolism / sound & vision / poetry and text / Esperanto
4. Public, Private and Virtual Spaces of Diaspora
The controversial meaning of private/public spaces remain fundamental arenas in the re/construction of gendered identities in an in-between space as a Diaspora context nurtures challenges to traditional socio-cultural behaviors. Virtual Diasporas – This questions a range of pre conceived notions about physicality, actuality and place (which in turn open up the discussions around ownership, representation and nation). Virtual diasporas are not limited to the arts of course but the shifts toward new technologies within art and design production are highlighting such issues through various forms of creativity and the critique that surrounds it.
We anticipate that these and related issues will be of interest to those working/researching in philosophy, education, ethics, cinematic/ literature, politics, sociology, history, architecture, photography, geography, globalization, international relations, refugee studies, migration studies, urban studies and cultural studies.
5. Novel ways to think about Diaspora due to globalization
In the new global world in which cultures act simultaneously how should we be thinking about Diaspora?
Some pertinent questions in this area that the conference is interested in addressing are: What are some of the ways to identity and define the subject in changing political boundaries where cultural interactions are amplified? What are the processes of social formation and reformation of? Diasporas that is unique to a global age? How do an intensified migration age that is coupled with broader and more flexible terrains of social structures can give Diaspora communities a window of opportunity to redefine their social position in both the country of origin and the host country? How does immigration in an age where the media and the internet are highly accessible, bring individuals to deal with multiple levels of traditions and cultures? What new cross-’ethnoscapes’ and cross-’ideoscapes’ are emerging in? In what new methods can we capture the web of forces that influences Diasporas at the same time?
Other aspects of Diaspora that we are interested in having discussions about are:
* Economics of diaspora
* Gendered diasporas
* Queer diasporas ‘flexible citizenship’
* Contested diasporic identities
* Invisible diasporas
* Emerging and changing patterns – is there an ‘American diaspora’ in
China? In Dubai? Etc.
* Stateless or homeless diasporas – diasporas of no return
* Guest workers as diasporans?
* Diasporas created by shifting state boundaries
* Internal (intranational diasporas) – for example, First Nations or
Indigenous/Native migration into urban areas
* Diasporans by adoption or ‘diasporans-in-law’ (partners of diasporans
adopted into diasporic communities, extended diasporas through family
relations, etc.)
* Overlapping diasporas, entanglement
* Competing claims or multiple claims on diasporans Inter-diasporan or
multi-diasporan realities
The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. Papers will also be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 13th January 2012. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 11th May 2012. Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs;abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: DIAS5 Abstract Submission.
Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the end of the year. We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.
Organising Chairs
Dr S. Ram Vemuri
School of Law and Business
Faculty of Law, Business and Arts
Charles Darwin University
Darwin NT0909
Australia
Email: Ram.Vemuri@cdu.edu.au
Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Leader
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Freeland, Oxfordshire,
United Kingdom
Email: dias5@inter-disciplinary.net
The conference is part of the ‘Diversity and Recognition’ series of research projects, which in turn belong to the At the Interface programmes of ID.Net. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and challenging. All papers accepted for and presented at the conference will be published in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into 20-25 page chapters for publication in a themed dialogic ISBN hard copy volume.
For further details of the project, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/diversity-recognition/diasporas/
For further details of the conference, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/diversity-recognition/diasporas/call-for-papers/
Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we
are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or
subsistence.
ESF-LiU Conference on Historiography of Religion, 10-14 September 2012
Programme: The conference will focus on the question: How, under which conditions and with which consequences are religions historicized? The conference aims at furthering the study of religion as of historiography by analysing how religious groups (or their adversaries) employ historical narratives in the construction of their identities or how such groups are invented by later historiography (comparative historiography). Thus the biases and elisions of current analytical and descriptive frames have to be analysed, too (history of research). Combing disciplinary competences of Religious Studies and History of Religion, Confessional Theologies, History, History of Science, and Literary Studies, the participants will help to initiate a comparative historiography of religion by applying literary comparison and historical contextualization to those texts that have been used as central documents for histories of individual religions and analyze their historiographic character, tools and strategies. Furthermore they will stimulate the history of historical research on religion; that is, identifying key steps in the early modern and modern history of research. The comparative approach will address Circum-Mediterranean and European as well as Asian religious traditions from the first millennium BCE to present.
Date: 10-14 September 2012
Venue: Scandic Linköping Vast, Sweden
Format: - Lectures by invited high level speakers
- Poster sessions, round table and open discussion periods
- Forward look panel discussion about future developments10-14 September 2012
Chaired by: Jörg Rüpke, Max-Weber-Centre, University of Erfurt, DE
Co-Chaired by: Susanne Rau, Department of History, University of Erfurt, DE
Call for Applications: click HERE
To learn more about the conference, click HERE
Conference flyer – Please circulate this announcement among your colleagues and contacts!
Pakistan Workshop, 11-13th May 2012. Secularity, Globalisation and Power
Both secularity and globalisation are understood to be phenomena that are intrinsically connected to rise of the post Enlightenment modern world. However, in order to understand the relationship between secularity, globalisation and power it is necessary for these themes to be contextualised in order to give them and the links between them, analytical meaning. In the case of Pakistan, a few of the “sub” concerns that emerge from this theme and need to be foregrounded to help frame contemporary Pakistan include:
1. The rise, spread – and perception – of international terrorism.
2. The increasingly interlinked and expansive information and communication systems. These are one of the hallmarks of the ostensibly globalised world and are an essential tool for the propagation of ideas. What does the recent increase in the regulation of the internet tell us about the Pakistani state? Do mobile phone texts and messages on blogs have the capacity to contribute to meaningful social change?
3. The rapid spread of the media in Pakistan. This is linked to debates on religious extremism and power not only because of what the media focuses on but because of the increased “craving” for news that arose in Pakistan post September 11th (Naqvi, 2010). What kind of popular “cravings” does the media respond to? Is it a force for progressive change in Pakistan or simply an inflammatory medium?
4. Changing demographics including an increase of women in the workplace
5. The growth of an urban middle class and consumer society
6. An evolving industrial base and the significant expansion in recent years of the service economy
7. The impact of the 3 Ts – low cost travel, telephone calls and satellite TV – on engagement with the Pakistani (professional) diaspora especially in Europe and North America
8. The internationalisation of Pakistani companies and the overseas interest in Pakistan as an emerging market
The deadline for abstracts is 10th February 2012, after which the organisers will make a selection and inform the participants of their decision. The finished papers would be required two weeks before the workshop, so they can be pre circulated to all participants.
For further information, contact pakistanworkshop@gmail.com or become a fan of the facebook group “Pakistan Workshop”. Further information is also available on the Pakistan Workshop website:
http://www.pakistanworkshop.org
Anushay Malik and Arif Zaman. Pakistan Workshop 2012 Organisers
Full details attached: Pakistan Workshop 2012-1
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