Abstracts are invited by January 15 for the”Violence, Insurgencies, Deceptions: Conceptualizing Urban Life in South Asia” Conference, to be held in Singapore 06 May 2013 – 07 May 2013
Urban life in South Asia has encompassed volatile conditions catalyzed not only by globalization, urbanization and neoliberal economic restructuring, but also by dramatic changes in the national political-economy, for instance the emergence of new electoral democracies that disrupt established norms of rule and privilege, the rise of xenophobic and exclusivist agendas that are cast within nationalist discourses, and new political rationalities that affect state transformations and urban policy. New forms of representation, plebian identities and ethnic markings coalesce in ways that disrupt the ideal vision of the modern, secular city. Alongside the new politics of xenophobia in which violence is an integral part of public culture sits the rhetoric of entitlements and aspirations of the ‘phantom’ urban majority who define their stakes through contradictory and competing claims to the city. For the urban majority the precarity of urban life encompasses constant dislocations, deceptions and uncertainties that may amount to a mode of knowing or discerning political possibilities. In the realm of participatory politics hope is often dashed and replaced with the politics of irritation.
Themes that will guide the workshop proceedings to speak across disciplinary and geographical boundaries include but are not limited to:
• Role of politics and vernacular practices/strategies (vernacular modernism?)
• Ethnic and political spaces for claiming land
• Gender, violence and representations of community
• Aggression, Militancy and Non-liberal politics
• Emergent spaces of invention, agency, and hope
• Mobility/ flexibility/Risk in navigating the city to maintain stability
• Violence of Law, Violence of Grid
• Intersections between technologies of city, body and community
• Corruption, forgery, deception, secrecy
SUBMISSION OF PROPOSALS
Paper proposals should include a title, an abstract (250 words maximum) and a brief personal biography of 150 words by 15 January 2013 to Dr Nausheen Anwar at arinha(at)nus.edu.sg.
Successful applicants will be notified by 1 February 2013 and will be required to send in a completed draft paper (5,000 – 8,000 words) by 1 April 2013.
A detailed call for proposals is available at this website.