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- Convenors:
-
José Mapril
(Center for Research in Anthropology (CRIA), Universidade Nova de Lisboa)
Manpreet K. Janeja (Utrecht University)
Benjamin Zeitlyn (University of Sussex)
- Location:
- C407
- Start time:
- 25 July, 2012 at
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
This panel inquires into the ways in which Bangladesh is imagined in contemporary research and popular discourses. Its main objectives are to bring together original research that investigates the frames by which Bangladesh is imagined and create a debate about the contemporary study of Bangladesh.
Long Abstract:
This panel inquires into the ways in which Bangladesh is imagined in contemporary research and popular discourses. It examines what their implications might be for the study of Bangladesh today. Bangladesh studies comprise a wide diversity of fields, with exciting new work emerging across a range of disciplinary, theoretical and methodological boundaries. Bangladesh is imagined through a range of frameworks, such as medical discourses, visual formats, developmental approaches, aesthetic frames, political perspectives, material cultures, affective tropes, migrant and transnational imaginaries, and literary frameworks. This panel endeavours to bring together original and innovative research in the field of Bangladesh studies that critically investigates some of the frames by which Bangladesh is imagined, at home and abroad. Inviting papers that imaginatively approach the study of Bangladesh, we aim to create a cross-disciplinary debate about research themes, agendas, and methods in the contemporary study of Bangladesh.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Md. Mokhlesur Rahman (The University of Hong Kong) Shammi Akter Satu (The University of Hong Kong)
Paper short abstract:
Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. This paper explores the changing patterns of Dhaka in terms of area and population density and the major causes and consequences of this development pattern.
Paper long abstract:
Bangladesh is a developing country located in South Asia with an area of about 147,570 km² and a population of 142. The two urban giants in Bangladesh, Dhaka and Chittagong, are home to almost half of the country's urban population. Dhaka is the capital as well as the primate city of Bangladesh. The population density of Dhaka is 7,324 people per sq. km. in the metropolitan area and 18,055 persons/ sq. km. in the inner core of the city in 2001 (BBS, 2001), and is among the highest in the world. This creates extreme pressure on land for living and also contributes to severe traffic congestion, environmental degradation and strain on utilities and infrastructures as well as other facilities. The current trend of urbanization, industrialization and agglomeration of other economic activities in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, attracts huge immigrants each year from other parts of the country. Population growth due to natural increase and migration is contributing towards the increased population density and intensification of the built environment in Dhaka. In the past decades Dhaka has been developed along the axes towards the north of Dhaka. Capital Development Authority (RAJUK) caters for the physical planning and development control within its jurisdiction through Dhaka Metropolitan Development Plan (DMDP). Changing pattern of Dhaka in terms of area and population density and the major causes and consequences of this development pattern have been presented in the paper.
Benjamin Zeitlyn (University of Sussex)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I propose that in the years since Gardner's (1993) research, the nature of British Bangladeshi communities and connections and transnationalism itself has changed. This is due to advances in technology and the emergence of a distinctly British Bangladeshi social field and habitus.
Paper long abstract:
In 'Desh-Bidesh: Sylheti Images of Home and Away', Gardner (1993) explains the way locality is used to discuss and express change over time and people's desires. Desh refers to the home, land or country; while bidesh refers to foreign countries. Connected to these two expressions of geographical locations are related sets of meanings and discourses. In this paper I propose that in the years since Gardner's research, the nature of British Bangladeshi transnationalism changed. This is due to the emergence of a distinctly British Bangladeshi social field and habitus. Rather than two separate places linked to discourses of power, desh and bidesh have become two locations in a transnational social field, which is fuelled by inequalities both between and within these locations and facilitated by increasingly accessible technology. Technology has also linked British Bangladeshis to other transnational sources of symbolic power meaning that the discourses of desh and bidesh have decreased in importance. For British Bangladeshi adults the desh has lost some of its spiritual power, but for their children, the connections between the words, the locations and the discourses are not made.
Ellen Bal (Vrije University Amsterdam)
Paper short abstract:
This paper addresses the cultural construction of migration aspirations among educated youth in Dhaka. It shows how the failure of the state, political leadership and fellow citizens to provide human security causes them to disengage with the nation-state and to aspire migration.
Paper long abstract:
This paper addresses the cultural construction of migration aspirations among lower and middle class educated youth in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh. It tries to show how a total lack of confidence in the state, (political) leadership and fellow citizens inspires these young and educated people to dream of leaving for places where their dreams can be fulfilled. Those imagined destinies represent everything that they yearn for and that the Bangladesh that they experience is short of. In other words, their dreams of countries of affluence and possibilities are tightly connected to local experiences and to expectations of what a nation-state should be about. Failure of the state, political leadership and fellow citizens to provide human security hamper their sense of engagement and loyalty to the nation-state, and cause these citizens to disengage and to dream of leaving. The paper tries to go beyond the study of migration aspirations as a question of migration only. It takes into account that many dreams are never materialized and that a comprehensive study of imagined futures "away from home" need not directly relate to existing migrant networks and migrant successes. Instead it approaches those imaginations as the outcome of continuous evaluations of individual aspirations and local possibilities against the backdrop of continuing globalization offering new (if only) endless/borderless possibilities.
José Mapril (Center for Research in Anthropology (CRIA), Universidade Nova de Lisboa)
Paper short abstract:
This paper relates the agency of objects, the distributed person and the transnational experience. Through an ethnography of the construction of a replica of the Shaheed Minar in central Lisbon, the argument is that this sculpture remakes nationalist imaginaries and social ties, at home and abroad.
Paper long abstract:
Drawing inspiration on the works of Alfred Gell and Bruno Latour, this paper will reveal the relation between the agency of material objects - namely their capacity to act and shape the contexts surrounding them - the distributed person and the transnational experience. These themes will be empirically explored through an ethnography of the (occasional) construction of a small replica of the Shaheed Minar - the martyrs memorial located in Dhaka University - in a central square in downtown Lisbon. The main argument is that this sculpture not only reproduces the aesthetics of a specific nationalist imaginary about the desh but simultaneously enables the making of ties between persons, present and past, at home and abroad.
Manpreet K. Janeja (Utrecht University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on the role of relations of ownership as belonging generated by food that are recognized/disputed, and appropriated as rights of possession, in imagining Bangladesh.
Paper long abstract:
Food elicits myriad forms of imagining Bangladesh. This paper focuses on the role of relations of ownership as belonging generated by food that are recognized/disputed, and appropriated as rights of possession, in imagining Bangladesh. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Dhaka, Calcutta, and London, it examines the dynamics of such imaginings emergent in the claims of ownership of the creative performance of "authentic" Bengali food. In so doing, it reflects on understandings of ownership and creativity when diverse norms seek to regulate it.
Fabiene Gama (Universidade de Brasíla )
Paper short abstract:
This paper aims to explore the representations built by Pathshala's photographers. Through analyses of their photos and discourses I'll reflect on how these photographers are imagining their country and with whom they are seeking dialogue to build their own representation of Bangladesh.
Paper long abstract:
"An independent media institute. Inclusive. Innovative. Independent." is what we see entering Pathshala: The South Asian Media Academy's website. Started in 1998 with a three-year World Press Photo educational initiative, more and more photographers are graduating from the school interested in building their own images of Bangladesh. Many of the themes portrayed are related to the Independence War and the emergence of a country based on a majority of Bengalis Muslims. Thus, we'll find a lot of photo essays on the "freedom fighters" and on minority groups such as the Biharis, the Rohingyas and the indigenous communities of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, beyond the madrassas. Global issues like climate changes and shipbreaking are also being photographed. How are these photographers imagining their country and with whom they are seeking dialogue to build their own representations of Bangladesh? Facing the contradictory desire to participate in the global photographic market and of changing the image the "western world" has about them, they have to make negotiations that pushes analysis away from the simplistic dualist approach that puts "us" and "them" into opposing fields and show us a range of interesting reflections on the contemporary Bangladesh imaginary. Through the analysis of these photos and discourses, and based on a cross-cultural comparative research between Brazil and Bangladesh, this paper will discuss these (re)presentations as well as the displacements I made to construct my own perspective on this reflection. The concepts of identity building, otherness and photo-activism will also be addressed.