Y-SASM 2021 will be held online, on 02-05 June, with the support of the Graduate Institute’s Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy, and the Departments of Anthropology and Sociology, and International History and Politics.
To register for the event, please write to us at: y.sasmconf@googlemail.com
About the Event
Everyday forms of state formation reveal how the state manifests itself while also elucidating how people engage with the state. This conference seeks to unpack the role and authority of the state in everyday lives, with a particular focus on South Asia. A careful unpacking of the everyday state, through an interdisciplinary approach, would enable us to gauge the complexity and paradoxes of state power and the ways in which it affects everyday life and the art of governance.
Current developments in South Asia suggest the need to pay close attention to not only the processes in which contemporary forms of Foucauldian governmentality may manifest but also expose the limits, fissures, and frictions of governmental rationality. The history and specificities of South Asia provide ample scope to investigate the distinct yet intertwined means through which colonial and postcolonial everyday state has reconstituted itself alongside the development of peculiar kinds of governmental rationality.
In recent decades, scholars have approached the study and theorization of the everyday state by focusing on the production and circulation of bureaucratic documents, the role of archival records in categorizing populations and rendering them visible, the flow of labor and capital, the conceptualization and nature of citizenship, and the ways in which colonial institutions materialized the state, resulting in the production of specific kinds of knowledges. With a focus on South Asia, Y-SASM 2021 provides an interdisciplinary forum for a vibrant discussion on these issues by building on, and extending, the existing scholarship.
Consequently, for the 7th edition of Y-SASM, we feature 8 panels that examine and explore the strategies, processes and practices employed by the everyday state—both material and symbolic. These papers also draw attention to how populations resist, negotiate and/or intervene in such processes and practices.