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- Convenors:
-
Tuhina Ganguly
(Shiv Nadar University)
Vinicius Ferreira (Rio de Janeiro State University)
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- Chair:
-
Yasmeen Arif
(Shiv Nadar University)
- Stream:
- Who Speaks and for Whom?
- Sessions:
- Monday 29 March, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
How can collaborations among anthropologists from the 'South' enable different theoretical frames that both critique 'Northern' epistemological hegemony and simultaneously go beyond embodying the presumed radical alterity of the 'South'?
Long Abstract:
Anthropology is recognising the inequities inherent to the discipline, the multiple voices and power imbalances emerging from 'the West vs rest' binary. But how do we locate the anthropologist from the 'South' where the 'South' is not simply an ethnographic locale but also an epistemological location beyond its own geopolitical confines. We ask what of the 'Southern' anthropologist who works on diverse contours and contexts of not only the ethnographic South but also of the ethnographic 'North', and whose theoretical frames may not necessarily be native or from the position of one's ethnographic locale? Can there be dialogue between anthropologists from the North and South only if the latter perform prescribed roles in the international division of intellectual labour by writing on given topics, quoting specific authors, adopting specific styles, and working on their own countries? Isn't it time for a 'Southern attitude' that entitles the anthropologist from the South to better appropriate and put forward her own praxis and intellectual lineages? Do we have to shoulder a responsibility of proposing radically alternative theoretical frames for it to be recognised as valid? Thus, we invite responses that are particularly alive to the possibility of South-South collaborations, and willing to go beyond the limits of suggesting and working with theoretical frames embodying the presumed radical alterity of the 'South'. The interrogations are meant to expand the epistemological horizon of the 'South', simultaneously critiquing the North/South binary and yet being acutely aware of the dynamics of one's location.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 29 March, 2021, -Cheshta Arora
Paper short abstract:
The paper contends that an insistence on the signifier ‘southern’ even when it is defined as an epistemological position continues to remain polemical and fails to offer alternatives that can capture the complexities of the globe and not just of factions such as the North or the South.
Paper long abstract:
The paper looks at the difficulty of representing/ writing the figure of the woman worker from the global south, a problem that DM Siddiqi noted almost 10 years ago writing about women garment workers in Bangladesh i.e., what does it mean to write about this figure without falling into ‘global moralism’ that contains the third-world as it is written about extensively from ‘under western eyes’. While Siddiqi took the discursive turn to situate her subjects, this paper aims towards analytics that are situated but instead of speaking from, to or against the west, the north, the elite or the privileged, they articulate a politics for “the entire seven billion”. The paper offers an ethnographic account of an Industrial town in North India, a strike, the union and the activities of a worker’s newspaper, Faridabad Majdoor Samachar (FMS), to reflect on the aforementioned problematic through a close reading of the activities, the transformation of the newspaper and its praxis in last 30 years and their excessive insistence on "aadan-pradaan banaam shastrarth" which roughly translates to “conversational interaction vs polemics”, where polemics is defined as proving the ‘other’ wrong. Through an analysis of FMS’ praxis, the paper contends that an insistence on the signifier ‘southern’ even when it is defined as an epistemological position continues to remain polemical and thus fails to offer alternatives to contemporary epistemological and political articulations, alternatives that can capture the complexities of the globe and not just of factions such as the North or the South.
Debarun Sarkar (University of Mumbai)
Paper short abstract:
To champion the ‘southern’ as an epistemological position and divorce its geopolitical connotations obfuscates the scalar nature of the ‘southern’ project. The paper argues that if there is no option to not be ‘southern’ then is it really as enabling as the ‘southernists’ claim to be?
Paper long abstract:
To champion the ‘southern’ as an epistemological position and divorce its geopolitical connotations obfuscates the scalar nature of the ‘southern’ project. A scalar outlook, one which pays heed to evaluations of ‘discreet’ units and the becoming of ‘units’, cannot let ‘southernists’ off the hook even if the claim of being a mere epistemic perspective is made because by doing so the ‘southernists’ are obfuscating the value and nature of their project. Such obfuscation has consequences of delinking a signifier with its affective and material relationalities. ‘Southern’ is not an empty signifier for the ‘southernists’ because the ‘south’ and ‘southern’ is tactically deployed at a particular historical moment when the signifier of ‘Global South’ has accrued value from the World Bank to the United Nations. The ‘southernists’ repeat a set of maneuvers which ignores the political economy of subjectivities by fetishizing the margins as a location for ‘radical’ knowledges, while maintaining a silence on the hegemonic position that the signifier of the ‘south’ has accrued. The paper responds to a concerted attempt to champion a ‘southern’ school in the field of urban studies. It primarily responds to the work of Ananya Roy to demonstrate that the ‘southernists’ engage in evaluating knowledge i.e., they scale knowledge during their fieldwork and when they present their work to the ‘globe’. The paper argues that if there is no option to not be ‘southern’ then is it really as enabling as the ‘southernists’ claim to be?
Edson Krenak (Vienna University) Luciana Landgraf (Université de Paris Cité)
Paper short abstract:
Mercury contamination due to mining activities on kayapo land and its impact on the other. For this presentation, we will focus on different ideas of territory and territorialization/deterritorialization processes which impact places and lives within and beyond indigenous borders.
Paper long abstract:
“Study us, we are being poisoned”: Indigenous rights, deterritorialization, and engaged anthropology
When one of us spoke with Patkore Kayapo, one of the Mebemgroke people’s representatives, and with Bekwaja Kayapo, another local leader, one sentence was repeated almost in unison: “study us, we are poisoned.” Mercury contamination due to mining activities on their land has gone through and beyond their lands, reaching the regional fish market. The demands for territorial protection are not only linked to the protection of their lives as an indigenous community but, given the ecology of the Kayapo’s lands, also of the eastern Amazon urbanized areas.
The Kayapo case in Sao Felix, south of the state of Para, Brazil, is an example of how supranational organizations’ actions converge two subjects: the ghost of colonization, always present on indigenous lands, and an effective type of exploitation of the poor, now through a global division of labor system. Machado Araóz (2011) recovers mining history in order to demonstrate, within it, the continuity of systematic violence since colonial times. Fernando Coronil writes that the international division of labor implies a global division of “nature” (2002).
These conflicts are characterized by an effective form of deterritorialization that undergoes within and beyond indigenous land borders. According to Santos (2006, p.328), deterritorialization means strangeness, “deculturation”. Strangeness refers to a foreign production system imposed.
For this presentation, we will focus on different ideas of territory and territorialization/deterritorialization processes which impact places and lives within and beyond indigenous borders.