Conference program 2014

Rethinking inequality in South Asia

21-22 July 2014; Venue: ETH Zurich

Monday, 21 July 2014

09:00 – 09:30: Opening

09:30 – 11:45: Panel “Gender issues of inequality”

Commentator: Charu Gupta (University of Delhi)

1. Raphael Susewind (University of Bielefeld): Middle class moralities and masculine aspirations: anti-poor rhetoric in Lucknow's contemporary Muslim landscape

2. Subhasree Ghosh (Asutosh College, University of Calcutta): Countering gender inequality in 19th century colonial India: Some rethinkings

3. Jana Tschurenev (Göttingen University): Mothers, Wives, Teachers: Agendas of female education in colonial India

11:45 – 12:45: Lunch Break 

12:45 – 14:15: Panel “Empowerment/Disempowerment”

Commentator: Shalini Randeria (The Graduate Institute Geneva) 

1. Anna-Lena Wolf (University Bern): The claim to equality and the right to development in India  

2. Sabrina Regmi (Ochanomizu University/ University of Basel): Unequal development: micro-business creation and gendered outcomes in rural Nepal  

14:15 – 14:45: Coffee Break 

14:45 – 17:00: Panel “State and Power” 

Commentator: Nitin Sinha (University of York)

1. David Devadas (Humboldt University Berlin): Hierarchy as State Strategy: Feudatories in the Politics and Economics of Jammu & Kashmir 

2. Andrea Hagn (ETH Zurich): Of "old bastis" and "new slums": Persistent and emerging inequalities in the socio-spatial fabric of the temple town Puri in the context of government programmes for slum improvement  

3. Nida Sajid (University of Toronto): Invisible Caste: Articulating Dalit-Muslim Identity in India 

17:30 – 19:00: Keynote

Charu Gupta (University of Delhi): Intimate and Embodied Desires: Dalit Women and Religious Conversions in India

Tuesday 22 July 2014

09:30 – 11:45: Panel “Health/Medicine” 

Commentator: Aparna Nair (Göttingen University)

1. Dominik Merdes (Technical University Braunschweig): The Emergence of Chemotherapy in Colonial India: Modern Medicine and Inequality 

2. Sudip Saha (North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong): Tropical Medicine and colonial enclave: issues of inequality in Assam Valley tea plantation

3. Emilija Zabiliute (University of Copenhagen): Affective clinic and bodies in transition: A Primary Healthcare Centre in the Vicinity of the Sanjay Camp 

11:45 – 12:45: Lunch Break

12:45 – 15:00: Panel “Education”

Commentator: Sylvie Guichard (University of Geneva)

1. Sumeet Mhaskar (Göttingen University): Schooling in the times of industrial decline: A study of Mumbai's Mill Workers' household decisions on children schooling

2. Arun Kumar (Göttingen University): Histories of miscalculation and the politics of the possible: The reproduction and production of subjects in colonial industrial schools

3. Simone Holzwarth (Humboldt-University Berlin): A Postcolonial Social Order through Teaching Rural Crafts? The Debates about Basic Education between 1937 and 1949 

15:00 – 15:30: Coffee Break 

15:30 – 17:45: Panel “Knowledge Production” 

Commentator: Patrick Eisenlohr (Göttingen University)

1. Kalyan Shankar (University of Pune): Who Studies What, Where and Why? Systemic Inequalities beyond Affirmative Action Policies in Indian Higher Education

2. Francesca Fuoli (SOAS, London): The role of ethnography and the study of Pashto in the construction of the Pashtun race in nineteenth century British colonial discourses on Afghanistan

3. Camille Frazier (University of California): Agriculture as Risky Business: Agricultural Crisis, Inequality, and Resistance in India

17:45 – 18:15: Concluding Remarks (Vasudha Bharadwaj, Nikolay Kamenov and Jana Tschurenev) 

19:30: Conference Diner