From shekhar at MIT.EDU Sun Mar 11 19:53:16 2007 From: shekhar at MIT.EDU (Shekhar Krishnan) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2007 19:53:16 -0400 Subject: [Urban-Media] THURSDAY: Labour Space & Politics Message-ID: <1173657196.1109.206.camel@nowhereman> Dear All: My apologies for the late notice about this week's meeting, which Nikhil and I are hoping to use in preparation for a roundtable discussion at the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) annual meeting in Boston from 22-24 March. At AAS, we will be participating in a roundtable in memory of Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, the renowned social historian who tragically passed away a year ago, in the prime of his career. For more information on Raj and his work, see the entry on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajnarayan_Chandavarkar We will meet this THURSDAY 15 MARCH from 7.00 to 9.00 p.m. in MIT E51-191 to discuss Raj's scholarship, and his legacy for urban historians. The abstract for our planned roundtable is appended below. We plan to read the following essays for this week's discussion: Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, "From Neighbourhood to Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Left in Bombay's Girangaon in the 20th Century", introductory essay from Meena Menon and Neera Adarkar, One Hundred Years, One Hundred Voices: The Mill Workers of Girangaon: An Oral History (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2004). http://www.mit.edu/~shekhar/urban-media/bombay/chandavarkar_girangaon.pdf ---, "Workers' Politics and the Mill Districts in Bombay Between the Wars" from Imperial Power and Popular Politics: Class, Resistance and the State in India, 1850-1950, pp.100-142 http://www.mit.edu/~shekhar/urban-media/chandavarkar.pdf ---, "Police and Public Order in Bombay, 1880-1947" from Imperial Power and Popular Politics: Class, Resistance and the State in India, 1850-1950, pp.180-233 ---, "Plague Panic and Epidemic Politics in India, 1896-1914" from Imperial Power and Popular Politics: Class, Resistance and the State in India, 1850-1950, pp.234-265 I will circulate the last two articles tomorrow once I have them scanned. See below for the abstract of the roundtable which we will be organising at AAS in two weeks. We look forward to seeing all of you on Thursday. Unfortunately, the Guru is in India now so we will not have a catered dinner as usual. Feel free to bring your own food! Best, Shekhar --- "Labour Space and Politics: Rajnarayan Chandavarkar and the History of Modern South Asia" Roundtable at the Assoc for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference 2007 http://www.aasianst.org/annmtg.htm THURSDAY 22 March 7.00 to 9.00 p.m. Salon E, 4th Floor Boston Marriott Copley Place 110 Huntington Avenue Boston,Massachusetts 02116 ABSTRACT: Rajnarayan Chandavarkar was one of the foremost scholars of urban and working class history writing on South Asia. His sudden death in April 2006 has been an inestimable loss to the academic community. The empirical depth of Chandavarkar's scholarship stood out amongst his contemporaries. The impact of his work on the field remains to be assessed. This roundtable will focus on several areas where Chandavarkar's contributions remain significant and offer new directions for future scholarship. His challenge to universalising narratives of world capitalism opened up new ways of understanding the social spaces, political choices and organising strategies of urban working classes. Larger formations such as class and nationalist politics articulated with everyday relations amongst women, migrants and the urban poor. The earlier importance given to the workplace as the primary site of class mobilisation gave way to a wider understanding of how the spaces of the neighbourhood and countryside enabled workers to engage in urban politics. His attention to social organisation emphasised the shifting nature of class and community identities in the context of mass action, challenging functionalist conceptions of social structure and political agency. This roundtable will situate Chandavarkar's wide-ranging contributions to the historiography of modern South Asia, addressing critiques of his work as well as areas where his interpretations have gained acceptance. This roundtable also points to new directions which his work and mentorship have helped shape amongst his peers and colleagues. The participants include senior historians, younger scholars, and Chandavarkar's former students from the U.S., U.K. and India. CHAIR: Frank Conlon Department of History, University of Washington, Seattle, WA PARTICIPANTS: Douglas Haynes Department of History, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire Subho Basu Department of History, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York Lisa Trivedi Department of History Hamilton College, Clinton, New York Nikhil Rao Department of History Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts Shekhar Krishnan Program in History and Anthropology of Science & Technology MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Cambridge, Massachusetts Best, S.K. -- Shekhar Krishnan 400, West 119th Street, Apt.10D New York, NY 10027 U.S.A. http://www.mit.edu/~shekhar http://www.heptanesia.net http://www.crit.org.in/members/shekhar