Challenging Caste: Race, Gender and Class in the Indian Political Matrix
A one-day seminar to be held on October 10, 2002 [Thursday, preceding the annual South Asia Conference, Madison, WI]
In the history of South Asia, there are few concepts and social institutions that can compare with caste. It is both, the ideological and material basis for the exercise of power. It is also, simultaneously, the basis of much resistance to power. Yet, caste has shown an immense ability to adapt itself to changing social formations and seems to present all forms of hurdles to the pursuit of egalitarian societies in South Asia. This has in turn led to renewed scholarly attention to caste especially from historians, anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists.
This conference seeks to go beyond 'contextualizing' caste to 'challenging' it. It proposes to do this by theorizing a politics that foregrounds the violent biography of caste in its ideology and practices and going on to consider the means by which caste may be successfully worked against in today's concrete social and political situation. Such a project will require a sustained critique of the political matrix of the reproduction and transformation of age-old inequalities. Academic scholarship can contribute to this only by breaking disciplinary boundaries and historicizing its own discourses in that process. The individual panels in this conference will focus on the ways in which caste comes together with class, gender, religion, race and nation in India.
In addition to inviting scholars from the US, Canada and France, we have invited scholars from India to participate in different ways including presenting papers, chairing panels, acting as discussants and presenting plenary statements. We believe that such a forum will provide much opportunity for the mixing of different streams of thought, many of which tend to remain marginalized despite rhetoric to the contrary. The conference proposes to hold panels broadly weaving caste around the issues of class, gender, religion, race and nation. These will be followed by a roundtable discussion and an evening of appreciation and support for Dalit art and artists. Depending on the number of responses to this call we will be planning for a one or a two-day conference.
Those interested should send individual paper proposals by April 1, 2002. Submissions can be sent by email to murlin@iastate.edu or tart@iastate.edu or by ordinary mail to:
Balmurli Natrajan
324 Curtiss Hall
Anthropology
Iowa State University
Ames, IA 50011
The selection of the papers for the conference will be made by Eleanor Zelliot, Gary Michael Tartakov and Balmurli Natrajan.