[Urban-Media] THURSDAY: Labour Space & Politics

[Shekhar Krishnan]

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