Asa12 Programme

ASA12
Arts and Aesthetics in a Globalising World

3rd-6th April 2012 Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi, India
Timetable
Wed 4th April Session 1 Tea & coffee Plenary 1 Lunch Session 2 Session 5 Lunch Lunch Session 8 Plenary 2 Plenary 3 Tea & coffee Tea & coffee Session 4 Session 7 Thu 5th April Fri 6th April
Tue 3rd April
0830-1030
1030-1100
1100-1300
1300-1500
Registration
1500-1530
1530-1600 Tea & coffee Session 3 Session 6 Tea & coffee Tea & coffee
1600-1630
Inaugauration
1630-1700
1700-1730
Tea & coffee
1730-1800
Firth lecture
1800-1830
1830-1900
Refreshments
1900-2000
2000-2100
Arts and aesthetics in globalising world

Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth Annual Conference Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
Conference programme
Convenors: Prof Susan Visvanathan & Prof Parul Dave Mukherji, JNU NomadIT: Rohan Jackson, Megan Caine, Darren Hatherley, Eli Bugler, Triinu Mets Funding: This conference is possible due to generous funding from JNU and the Wenner-Gren Foundation
Table of Contents
Welcome ... 6 Practical information ... 10 Events (Firth Lecture & Film programme) ... 14 Daily timetable ... 19 List of plenaries and panels ... 28 Plenary, panel and paper abstracts ... 36 List of presenters/convenors ... 175
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Welcome
From the Chair of the ASA
On behalf of the ASA committee, I should like to add our warm welcome to delegates and to thank our hosts, the Centre for the Study of Social Systems and the School of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University for what promises to be a stunning conference. Anthropology can know no borders in this globalising world and would be moribund if it worked to national agendas. As a professional association of social anthropologists, the ASA consistently endeavours to collaborate across borders and defer to colleagues across the world in setting conference agendas to animate the global discipline and challenge analytical complacency. This conference produces that challenge. It promises to force us all to reconsider the way the discipline engages with art and aesthetics and to re-imagine the contribution anthropology can make within the wider disciplinary encounters that are embraced by our hosts and collaborators. The huge diversity of panels and plenary topics that this conference has stimulated reveals researchers keen to meet the challenge. Looking through the wonderful programme, several of the panel titles recall that art and aesthetics also know no bounds. We have panels on the aesthetics and poetics of popular revolt and protest; on the artistic imagination of ruptured landscapes, and on the aesthetics of suicide, of governance, of medical display, and of science to cite but a few. Art is surely a celebration of human creativity and reexivity - but what else does art become in the hands of anthropology? We would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have developed panels and who are presenting papers. Developing research and pushing analysis is hard enough, but we need to recognise the dedication that leads you all to put yourselves on the line when presenting papers before peers, especially at an event such as this. Yet as ASA conferences are elaborated in the supportive spirit of joint enquiry, we hope that any anxiety will soon dissipate into pleasure. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank especially Professor Arjun Appadurai who will be delivering the Firth Lecture, so named for one of our associations founders. It is always an honour for the ASA to host this lecture, and an especial honour that Professor Appadurai has agreed to present at this conference at JNU.
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Arts and aesthetics in a globalising world
Because international collaborative conferences produce extraordinary organisational challenges, our committee would like to thank all the many people and institutions who have been involved in enabling us to meet in this way. We offer our profound thanks to Jawaharlal Nehru University and its Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Sudhir Kumar Sopory both for the spirit of collaboration and for the resources that the University has contributed. We should also like to extend our thanks to the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the World Council of Anthropology Associations, the Indian Anthropological Association and the Indian Anthropological Society for developing the collaborations which have enabled this extraordinary week devoted to a globalised anthropology. James Fairhead, Chair of the ASA
From the conference convenors

The School of Arts and Aesthetics and Centre for the Study of Social Systems are delighted to welcome participants to ASA2012 at Jawaharlal Nehru University. As we celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the founding of the School of Social Sciences with its interdisciplinary framework, like other Schools of JNU we are happy that two alumni of JNU now living and working in UK proposed JNU as the venue for this very important conference. Jawaharlal Nehru University is set in the Arravali hills, and some points of the campus have Palaeolithic sites which are very evident to the lay observer, as old stone tools are routinely found when the hills are dug up to make space for new university buildings. Bougainvillea lights up the landscape with its owers and in April the bright white light of early summer makes the campus very beautiful. Welcome to our home and work place, where four thousand students and ve hundred faculty members contribute to an effervescent intellectual culture. Our Vice Chancellor has been very supportive to our endeavour to bring the ASA Scholars and the JNU scholarly community together. The theme of the conference was put together over a span of several months as ASA members and ofce bearers, the Arts and Aesthetics Faculty and CSSS Faculty put their heads together. The fulcrum of the debate was craft communities as well as gallery art, and with the new
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perspectives on installations as combining the traditional and the post industrial, the framework of the conference became very large indeed. Although the focus of the conference is on arts and aesthetics, what they have come to mean in todays times of globalization is interdisciplinary in scope. Today the term aesthetics, after the cultural studies turn has broadened to encompass a wide range of practices that include the world of fashion, medicine, wedding photographs, ecology, among others. It is a matter of pride for the School of Arts and Aesthetics to be involved in this conference having completed 10 years since its inception. When it was set up in 2002, the Department of Visual Studies had a strong anthropological thrust built into it in its rejection of art history as a nomenclature. The conference also offers opportunity to not only create a platform for a multidisciplinary conversation across history, political studies, anthropology, science, art history, cinema studies, performance studies but also a dialogue between the department of sociology and the school of arts and aesthetics within JNU. When art in its contemporary avatar has entered the public sphere and begun to attract a larger public through various international exhibition spaces of biennales and art fairs, sociology and anthropology have once again acquired new relevance in grasping the dynamics of our contemporary moment. This conference on Arts and Aesthetics in a Globalizing World indeed aspires to address salient issues of our time and offers a forum for specialists from diverse institutions across the world to exchange ideas and set up conversations that will have far reaching impact on research and life of institutions. We welcome you to the JNU campus and the city of Delhi that is often regarded as a microcosm of India itself and hope that all the participants will have a productive time and a pleasant stay. Prof Susan Visvanathan, Professor of Sociology, Centre for the Study of Social Systems Prof Parul Dave Mukherji, Dean of Arts and Aesthetics, School of Arts and Aesthetics
Mark Aldenderfer, Editor

Current Anthropology encompasses the full range of humanistic and scientic anthropological scholarship, studying human cultures and the human and other primate species. Communicating across the subelds, Current Anthropology interprets social, cultural, and physical anthropology, as well as ethnology and ethnohistory, archaeology and prehistory, folklore, and linguistics. A must-read journal for physical and social anthropologists, archaeologists, sociologists, linguists, ecologists, and related scholars. Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. www.wennergren.org
Ranked #5 out of 75 Anthropology journals Impact Factor: 2.449

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A Call for Papers: Current Anthropology is seeking substantive papers on topics of anthropological and archaeological interest, and would like to encourage attendees of ASA12 to consider submitting manuscripts for review. To submit a paper for consideration, visit www.editorialmanager.com/ca. For inquiries regarding journal scope and submission rules, e-mail the editorial ofce at lmckamy@press.uchicago.edu, or visit www.journals.uchicago.edu/CA
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Practical information
Using this programme The timetable is on the inside cover of this book and gives the times of the plenaries, panels and other main events. Correlate the panel and plenary numbers with the List of plenaries and panels that follows the Daily timetable section, to obtain titles, convenors, timing and location. This is followed by a more detailed list of plenaries, panels and papers and their abstracts, in numerical order. There is also a day-by-day timetable that shows what is happening at any given moment. Finally, at the end of the book there is the List of presenters/convenors to help you identify the sessions in which particular colleagues will present their work. If you need any help interpreting the information in the conference book, do ask one of the conference team at the reception desk. Please note: Each 90-minute session ordinarily accommodates four papers. This can be used as a rough guide in establishing which papers will be presented when, within multi-session panels. However, convenors have a degree of exibility in structuring their panels, so we cannot guarantee the success of panelhopping! Venue The conference takes place on the JNU campus in the following buildings: Arts and Aesthetics (SAA-I and SAA-II), Social systems (SSS-I, SSS-II), SIS, and Sanksrit studies; with plenaries, (and some panels) being held in the Convention Centre. Lunch and tea/coffee will be served in foyer/verandah of the Convention Centre, although afternoon tea/coffee will also be served at Arts & Aesthetics. There is a campus map on the inside rear cover; and there will be conference signage giving directions to all rooms. The events section, panel lists and panel details all indicate the locations being used. If you have any problems nding your way around, please ask a member of the conference team for assistance.
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Food Registration includes refreshments (tea, coffee and water), which will be served twice a day on the verandah of the Convention Centre. Afternoon refreshments will also be served at Arts and Aesthetics. A self-service lunch is included as part of your registration (Wed-Fri), and this is served on the Convention Centre verandah. To avail of any refreshments or lunch you must wear and display your conference badge. Publishers stalls, Convention centre foyer The publishers stalls are located in the foyer of the Convention Centre. Delegates are invited to browse the titles and talk to the representatives of these publishing houses. Conference team There is a team of helpful staff, familiar with the programme, university and surrounding area, to whom you can turn when in need of assistance. Team members can be identied by their badges. If you cannot see a team member, please ask for help at the reception desk (in the Convention Centre foyer on the opening day, and in CSSS II, thereafter). Any nancial arrangements must be dealt with at the reception desk with the conference organisers. Contact address During the conference, emergency messages should be sent to conference@theasa.org. There will be a message board for delegates at the reception desk. Rohan Jackson, the conference administrator can be contacted on +919903706986 (preferably emergencies only). Internet There is wireless access around the campus, with login info available from our reception desk.
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Conference badges and meal tickets On arrival at the reception desk you will be given this book and your conference badge. The badge will be necessary to enter sessions, the plenary, and to avail of refreshments/lunch so please wear this at all times during the conference. The ASA re-uses the plastic badge holders and lanyards, so please hand these in at the boxes provided on the reception desk (or to a member of the conference team) when leaving the conference for the nal time. This not only saves resources, but helps keep registration costs to a minimum. Local travel JNU is situated in south Delhi. All the buildings we are using are within walking distance of each other. If you want to go further aeld, then you will require an auto-rickshaw, taxi or bus. The student team can assist you with directions and advice. While taxis and autos should take you on the basis of a meter-fare, their willingness to do so varies with time of day, who you are, etc.
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Events
Apart from the plenaries and panels, the annual conference is an opportunity for the ASA to hold its Firth lecture, and for other things to happen.
Tuesday 3rd April

Opening/inauguration, Convention Centre Auditorium I, 16:00-17:00 The convenors, the ASA, representatives of JNU, and members of various assocations will welcome delegates to the conference and ofcially open proceedings. The ASAs 2012 Firth Lecture, Convention Centre Auditorium I, 17:3018:30 The transnational family as an aesthetic eld Prof Ghassan Hage (University of Melbourne) This paper begins with two questions: does a transnational family have a culture? and, to what extent is it manifested or located in the aesthetic domain? Based on eldwork among a Lebanese family spread between Lebanon, Venezuela, US and Australia, this paper uses the analytic observation of a number of family gatherings to examine the way the family operates as a space structured by aesthetic differences, and as a eld of gendered strategies of national and class distinction. It is argued that while the aesthetic dimension can be an expression of these differences, and can therefore highlights divisions grounded in different social locations and power relations within the family, the aesthetic is also an autonmous eld where the family has a different mode of existence outside such power relations which produce a unied sense of familial space. Welcome refreshments, Convention Centre verandah, 18:30-19:00 JNU and the ASA invite all conference delegates to gather before taking off to dinner to have a glass of lassi or lime soda with colleagues.
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Wednesday 4th April

Film programme, Main CSSS auditorium We will be showing some lms parallel to the panel sessions on Wednesday and Thursday. Film-makers will be present to take questions and enable discussion. 09:00 Flyoverdelhi (52) Directors: Paolo Favero and Angelo Fontana Producer: Paolo Favero 2004 Based on an anthropological research on modernity and globalization in New Delhi, FLYOVERDELHI offers a series of snapshots on the life of young middle class men and women in this Indian metropolis. Young managers, sports professionals, journalists, tourist guides, airline hostesses, and DJs tell their experiences of growing up in a country opening up to the global market. With a visual language echoing the one of the video-clip alternated with more, stylistically speaking, classical moments, the lm introduces the viewer to a modern India seldom depicted in Western mass media, awakening also questions regarding the meaning of globalization in todays world. 10:00 Mediations on the Tiger (18) Directed and produced by Soudhamini With the lines of Rose Auslander and the images of Franz Marc offering friendly support, this 3 screen installation is set in Munich. Using a slender narrative thread braided into the foreign landscape, it explores the setting up of polyphonic rhythms by juxtaposing opposites - the still and the moving, the frontal and the diagonal, the familiar and the new.
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15:00 Its Open (17) Director: Nilanjan Bhattacharya; Assistant Director: Giulia Battaglia 2008 Focusing on a hundred-year-old cinema hall and an old wrestling place this short video celebrates the fading milieus of bygone time and space in a fasttransforming city like Bangalore.15:00 15:30 (What is) The White Matter? (49) By Soumyadeep Paul and Matti Pohjonen W: http://www.whatiswhitematter.com In the summer of 2012, a man named Anjan arrives in Varanasi, one of the holiest cities in India. Then he mysteriously disappears. Left behind is his research material and fragments of an ominous science-ction story about a strange character, K, whose ancestors visited the city from another dimension thousands of years ago. As we nd more about Anjan, the mystery only deepens. Where is Anjan? And what has happened to him as he desperately tries to nd answers to questions that torment him from this spiritual city? This lm, a reconstruction of the events, is as much about the city, as it is about its protagonist. Mixing research footage, real and ctional interviews and a surrealistic rhizomatic narrative, it blends the real and imaginary in ways that defy all conventions of classical lmmaking. Combining creative use of new digital technology with working in difcult locations and with real people, the lm opens up new possibilities of expression for visual anthropology today.
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17:00 The Lover and the Beloved: A Journey Into Tantra (70) Directed by Andy Lawrence Produced by All Rites Reversed and Asta Films in partnership with The Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Distribution: Documentary Educational Resources W: http://www.theloverandthebeloved.astalms.com/ A documentary feature lm about one mans journey across northern India and his search for enlightenment. Rajive McMullen, a history teacher suffering from a debilitating illness, makes the painful journey into the heart of Tantra, searching for meaning in holy shrines, coming close to death in cremation grounds and enjoying the chaos of the Aghori seekers. This lm offers dramatic insight into Tantrik ideas about the life cycle, particularly death, and contributes much to our understanding of how we seek knowledge and how we die. 18:30 The Divine Search: Baul singers of Bengal (26) Produced by Benoy Behl Fortunately, in the midst of our fast-changing and commercializing world, amazing pockets of traditional Indian thought and culture still survive. The Bauls of Bengal are among those who continue a very ancient legacy. The word Baul probably comes from the Sanskrit viyakul meaning impatiently eager. Some consider them to be insane, in a divinely inspired way. Indeed they are far from the sanity of the materialistic and mundane world. They are ecstatically impatient to lose themselves. To lose their own identities, to see themselves as a part of the greater one. That one which is also within.
Thursday 5th April

Film programme, Main CSSS auditorium The programme continues. 09:00 So Heddan So Hoddan (Like Here Like There) (52) Directors: Anjali Monteiro and K.P. Jayasankar Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, a medieval Su poet, is an iconic gure in the
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cultural history of Sindh. Bhitais Shah Ji Risalo is a remarkable collection of poems which are sung by many communities in Kachchh, Gujarat and across the border in Sindh (now in Pakistan). Umar Haji Suleiman is a self taught Su scholar; once a cattle herder, now a farmer, he lives his life through the poetry of Bhitai. Umars cousin, Mustafa Jatt sings the Bheths of Bhitai. He is accompanied on the Surando, by his cousin Usman Jatt. The lm explores the life worlds of the three cousins, their families and the Fakirani Jat community to which they belong. 15:00 Stitches Speak (12) Directed by Nina Sabnani Tanko Bole Chhe (The Stitches Speak) is an animated documentary which celebrates the art and passion of the Kutch artisans associated with Kala Raksha, tracing multiple journeys made by the participants towards dening their identities and towards forming a Trust and the School for Design. The lm uses their narrative art of applique and embroideries through which they articulate their responses to life, and events as traumatic as the earthquake and as joyful as forming a collective. Through conversations and memories four voices share their involvement in the evolution of a craft tradition. 15:20 Mukand and Riaz (8) Directed by Nina Sabnani Based on the true story of how Partition affects two friends. 15:30 Behind the masks (44) Directed by Monica Heintz and Alin Rus At the beginning of the 21st century, temporary migration from Eastern to Western Europe touches a high percentage of the Romanian rural population. The adults capable of work live between two worlds: their birthplace and their workplace abroad, due to the free circulation in the European space and to the development of means of communication. But where is their real life? Starting from Christmas celebrations in a family from Helesteni, a village in the north of Romania, and from their traditional New Year masquerade, we were trying to nd out what lies behind the masks.
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Daily timetable
Tuesday 3rd April
13:00-16:00 Reception desk opens and distributes badges and programmes (Convention Centre foyer) 16:00-17:00 Inauguration (Convention Centre Auditorium I) 17:30-18:30 Firth Lecture (Convention Centre Auditorium I) 18:30-19:30 Refreshments (Convention Centre verandah)
Wednesday 4th April

08:30-10:30 (Session 1) P01: Exploring the aesthetics and meanings of contemporary Indian fashion: from craft to the catwalk (Convention Centre Auditorium I) P05: Aesthetics of conversion (CSSS Class Room No.103, First Floor, SSSII) P07: VCD visions: the fabulous aesthetics and new industries of VCD cinema and television across South Asia (Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium) P16: Field and lm aesthetics: sensory anthropology and the texture of documentary lmmakers practice (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 101, SAA-I) P19: Anthropology in the contemporary artworld (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 102, SAA-I) P31: Healing arts? The arts and aesthetics of medical display (Convention Centre Lecture Hall-II) P32: The ethnographic framing of the migrant subject (CSSS Class Room No.104, First Floor, SSS-II) P33: The art of improvisation (SSS-I Committee Room, Ground Floor) 21 Committee Room No.013, Ground P34: Aesthetics, politics, conict (CSSS
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Floor, SSS-II) P38: Art worlds and the city: perspectives from India and beyond (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 003, SAA-II) P39: Art and activism in contemporary Dalit and Adivasi movements (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 002, SAA-II) P40: Shards of memory: memorials, commemorations, remembrance (Convention Centre Lecture Hall-I) P41: Ethnic by design: creative agency, aesthetics, and community in the global marketplace (SIS Appadurai Committee Room) P42: (Dis-)Locating the political: the aesthetics of self-making in postcolonial India (Sankskrit Conference Room) Film: Flyoverdelhi (Main CSSS auditorium) Film: Mediations on the Tiger (Main CSSS auditorium) 11:00-13:00 Plenary 1 (Convention Centre Auditorium I) 15:00-16:30 (Session 2) P01: Exploring the aesthetics and meanings of contemporary Indian fashion: from craft to the catwalk (Convention Centre Auditorium I) P02: World art and critical pedagogy (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 003, SAA-II) P05: Aesthetics of conversion (CSSS Class Room No.103, First Floor, SSSII) P11: Publishing, prestige, and money in global anthropology (WCAA) (SIS Appadurai Committee Room) P16: Field and lm aesthetics: sensory anthropology and the texture of documentary lmmakers practice (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 101, SAA-I) P19: Anthropology in the contemporary artworld (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 102, SAA-I) P31: Healing arts? The arts and aesthetics of medical display (Convention Centre Lecture Hall-II) P32: The ethnographic framing of the migrant subject (CSSS Class Room No.104, First Floor, SSS-II) P33: The art of improvisation (SSS-I Committee Room, Ground Floor) P34: Aesthetics, politics, conict (CSSS Committee Room No.013, Ground Floor, SSS-II)
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P39: Art and activism in contemporary Dalit and Adivasi movements (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 002, SAA-II) P40: Shards of memory: memorials, commemorations, remembrance (Convention Centre Lecture Hall-I) P42: (Dis-)Locating the political: the aesthetics of self-making in postcolonial India (Sankskrit Conference Room) P44: Cosmopolitanism, politics, and the (performing) arts (Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium) P52: Vernacular perspectives on arts and aesthetics (CSLG Conference Room) Film: Its Open (Main CSSS auditorium) Film: (What is) The White Matter? (Main CSSS auditorium) 17:00-18:30 (Session 3) P01: Exploring the aesthetics and meanings of contemporary Indian fashion: from craft to the catwalk (Convention Centre Auditorium I) P02: World art and critical pedagogy (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 003, SAA-II) P05: Aesthetics of conversion (CSSS Class Room No.103, First Floor, SSSII) P11: Publishing, prestige, and money in global anthropology (WCAA) (SIS Appadurai Committee Room) P16: Field and lm aesthetics: sensory anthropology and the texture of documentary lmmakers practice (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 101, SAA-I) P19: Anthropology in the contemporary artworld (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 102, SAA-I) P22: Taste (Sankskrit Conference Room) P31: Healing arts? The arts and aesthetics of medical display (Convention Centre Lecture Hall-II) P32: The ethnographic framing of the migrant subject (CSSS Class Room No.104, First Floor, SSS-II) P33: The art of improvisation (SSS-I Committee Room, Ground Floor) P34: Aesthetics, politics, conict (CSSS Committee Room No.013, Ground Floor, SSS-II) P39: Art and activism in contemporary Dalit and Adivasi movements (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 002, SAA-II) P40: Shards of memory: memorials, commemorations, remembrance (Convention Centre Lecture Hall-I) P44: Cosmopolitanism, politics, and the (performing) arts (Arts and
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Aesthetics Auditorium) P52: Vernacular perspectives on arts and aesthetics (CSLG Conference Room) Film: The Lover and the Beloved: A Journey Into Tantra (Main CSSS auditorium) Film: The Divine Search: Baul singers of Bengal (Main CSSS auditorium)
Thursday 5th April

08:30-10:30 (Session 4) P04: Beyond the Arab Spring: the aesthetics and poetics of popular revolt and protest (Convention Centre Lecture Hall-I) P08: The aesthetics of craft: explorations in the anthropology of craft production (SSS-I Committee Room, Ground Floor) P10: Consuming culture: the politics and aesthetics of cultural tourism in different national traditions (CSSS Class Room No.103, First Floor, SSS-II) P13: Arts of memory: skilful practices of living history (CSSS Committee Room No.013, Ground Floor, SSS-II) P14: Social sense and embodied sensibility at the cinema: towards an aesthetics of lm-going (Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium) P15: In-between ction and non-ction: reections on the poetics of ethnography in lm and literature (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 102, SAA-I) P18: Framing the northeast: visual practices in Northeast India in the 19th and 20th centuries (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 002, SAA-II) P20: Screening India through digital image-making (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 101, SAA-I) P25: Transformations in contemporary South Asian ritual: From sacred action to public performance (CSSS Class Room No.104, First Floor, SSSII) P28: The aesthetics of governance (SIS Appadurai Committee Room) P29: Art & religion: beyond-representation in the representation of the beyond (Sankskrit Conference Room) P49: Aesthetics of ritual performance (Convention Centre Lecture Hall-II) Film: So Heddan So Hoddan (Like Here Like There) (Main CSSS auditorium)
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11:00-13:00 Plenary 2 (Convention Centre Auditorium I) 15:00-16:30 (Session 5) P03: Exploring aesthetic experiences and practices (Convention Centre Lecture Hall-II) P04: Beyond the Arab Spring: the aesthetics and poetics of popular revolt and protest (Convention Centre Lecture Hall-I) P08: The aesthetics of craft: explorations in the anthropology of craft production (SSS-I Committee Room, Ground Floor) P10: Consuming culture: the politics and aesthetics of cultural tourism in different national traditions (CSSS Class Room No.103, First Floor, SSS-II) P12: The aesthetics of suicide (CSLG Conference Room) P13: Arts of memory: skilful practices of living history (CSSS Committee Room No.013, Ground Floor, SSS-II) P14: Social sense and embodied sensibility at the cinema: towards an aesthetics of lm-going (Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium) P15: In-between ction and non-ction: reections on the poetics of ethnography in lm and literature (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 102, SAA-I) P18: Framing the northeast: visual practices in Northeast India in the 19th and 20th centuries (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 002, SAA-II) P20: Screening India through digital image-making (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 101, SAA-I) P21: Music, digital media, and ontological politics: from piracy to intellectual property (SIS Appadurai Committee Room) P25: Transformations in contemporary South Asian ritual: From sacred action to public performance (CSSS Class Room No.104, First Floor, SSSII) P29: Art & religion: beyond-representation in the representation of the beyond (Sankskrit Conference Room) P37: The aesthetics and ctions of science (Convention Centre Auditorium I) P47: Traditional and modern art forms in protests and movements (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 003, SAA-II) Film: Stitches Speak (Main CSSS auditorium) Film: Mukand and Riaz (Main CSSS auditorium) Film: Behind the masks (Main CSSS auditorium)
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17:00-18:30 (Session 6) P03: Exploring aesthetic experiences and practices (Convention Centre Lecture Hall-II) P04: Beyond the Arab Spring: the aesthetics and poetics of popular revolt and protest (Convention Centre Lecture Hall-I) P08: The aesthetics of craft: explorations in the anthropology of craft production (SSS-I Committee Room, Ground Floor) P10: Consuming culture: the politics and aesthetics of cultural tourism in different national traditions (CSSS Class Room No.103, First Floor, SSS-II) P12: The aesthetics of suicide (CSLG Conference Room) P13: Arts of memory: skilful practices of living history (CSSS Committee Room No.013, Ground Floor, SSS-II) P14: Social sense and embodied sensibility at the cinema: towards an aesthetics of lm-going (Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium) P15: In-between ction and non-ction: reections on the poetics of ethnography in lm and literature (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 102, SAA-I) P18: Framing the northeast: visual practices in Northeast India in the 19th and 20th centuries (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 002, SAA-II) P20: Screening India through digital image-making (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 101, SAA-I) P21: Music, digital media, and ontological politics: from piracy to intellectual property (SIS Appadurai Committee Room) P25: Transformations in contemporary South Asian ritual: From sacred action to public performance (CSSS Class Room No.104, First Floor, SSSII) P29: Art & religion: beyond-representation in the representation of the beyond (Sankskrit Conference Room) P37: The aesthetics and ctions of science (Convention Centre Auditorium I) P47: Traditional and modern art forms in protests and movements (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 003, SAA-II)
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Friday 6th April

08:30-10:30 (Session 7) P06: Moral economy of agriculture in the global era (Convention Centre Lecture Hall-I) P09: The artistic imagination in ruptured landscapes (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 003, SAA-II) P17: Jewellery as property, jewellery as aesthetics (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 102, SAA-I) P23: Elite art in an age of populism: sowing monocultures? (Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium) P24: Accommodating the primordial: the function of myth in a globalising world (CSSS Committee Room No.013, Ground Floor, SSS-II) P26: Cultural dimensions of ecology (Convention Centre Auditorium I) P27: Cinema matters: the changing lm object in a globalizing world (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 101, SAA-I) P30: Insideout: art crafting substance, (bio)graphy and circulation (Sankskrit Conference Room) P35: Imagining Bangladesh and forty years of its aesthetic trajectory (SSS-I Committee Room, Ground Floor) P43: Aestheticisation: artefacts and emotions in diasporic contexts (CSSS Class Room No.104, First Floor, SSS-II) P45: Interdisciplinary approaches to wellbeing and anthropological perspectives (CSLG Conference Room) P46: Aesthetics of healing and the body in a globalising world (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 002, SAA-II) P48: Weddings: identity and aesthetics in a globalising consumer world (CSSS Class Room No.103, First Floor, SSS-II) P50: Narratives of coping with marginalization: impact of state policies on natural resources and tribal lives (Convention Centre Lecture Hall-II) P51: Art workshops for children with autism (SIS Appadurai Committee Room) 11:00-13:00 Plenary 3 (Convention Centre Auditorium I) 15:00-16:30 (Session 8) P06: Moral economy of agriculture in the global era (Convention Centre
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Lecture Hall-I) P17: Jewellery as property, jewellery as aesthetics (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 102, SAA-I) P23: Elite art in an age of populism: sowing monocultures? (Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium) P24: Accommodating the primordial: the function of myth in a globalising world (CSSS Committee Room No.013, Ground Floor, SSS-II) P26: Cultural dimensions of ecology (Convention Centre Auditorium I) P27: Cinema matters: the changing lm object in a globalizing world (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 101, SAA-I) P30: Insideout: art crafting substance, (bio)graphy and circulation (Sankskrit Conference Room) P35: Imagining Bangladesh and forty years of its aesthetic trajectory (SSS-I Committee Room, Ground Floor) P43: Aestheticisation: artefacts and emotions in diasporic contexts (CSSS Class Room No.104, First Floor, SSS-II) P45: Interdisciplinary approaches to wellbeing and anthropological perspectives (CSLG Conference Room) P46: Aesthetics of healing and the body in a globalising world (Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 002, SAA-II) P48: Weddings: identity and aesthetics in a globalising consumer world (CSSS Class Room No.103, First Floor, SSS-II) P50: Narratives of coping with marginalization: impact of state policies on natural resources and tribal lives (Convention Centre Lecture Hall-II) P51: Art workshops for children with autism (SIS Appadurai Committee Room)
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ASAonline is an Open-Access, Peer-Reviewed publication High quality, in-depth articles in any eld of anthropology, of any length. All articles are free to read online or download. All publications in the series are evaluated by anonymous peer-review. Articles may include illustrations and audio-visual elements. ASA journal online welcomes new submissions. Visit www.theasa.org or email the editor@theasa.org
The strong repetitive beat hammers the tempo; the bass of the rhythmic section makes the skin quiver. Bastien Birchler on Cuban rap music
The lure of Yosemites granite massifs, and the narratives of conquest they engender,animate a potent global economy of touristic passion and desire. Sally Ann Ness on bouldering in Yosemite National Park
Cubans are surprisingly willing to spend their hard-earned money on a girls 15th birthday celebration. Heidi Hrknen on Cuban Quince rituals
Editor: Simone Abram, Leeds Met University. Editorial Panel: John Gledhill, University of Manchester; Lisette Josephides, University of Belfast; Alberto Corsin-Jimenez, CSIC Spanish National Research Council ; Cathrine Degnen, University of Newcastle; Trevor Marchand, SOAS; Nayanika Mookherjee, Durham University; Andrew Garner, DSTL; Ian Harper, University of Edinburgh; John Postill, Shefeld Hallam University.
Reference ASA12 Wed Thu Fri Tereza Kuldova (Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo) Wed 08:30 Convention Centre Auditorium I 11:00 Convention Centre Auditorium I 11:00 Convention Centre Auditorium I Convention Centre Auditorium I
Panel Title
Convenors
Date
Location
Plenary 1
Start Time 11:00
Plenary 2
Plenary 3
P01
P02
Exploring the aesthetics and meanings of contemporary Indian fashion: from craft to the catwalk World art and critical pedagogy Wed 15:00 Thu 15:00 Convention Centre Lecture Hall-II Convention Centre Lecture Hall-I
Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 003, SAA-II
List of plenaries and panels
30 Thu 08:30 Wed 08:30
P03
Exploring aesthetic experiences and practices
P04
P05
Beyond the Arab Spring: the aesthetics and poetics of popular revolt and protest Aesthetics of conversion
Daniel Rycroft (University of East Anglia), Parul Dave Mukherji (School of Arts and Aesthetics) Andrew Whitehouse (Aberdeen University), Sara Asu Schroer (Aberdeen University) Dimitris Dalakoglou (University of Sussex), Pnina Werbner (Keele University), Martin Webb (University of Sussex) Vibha Joshi (Oxford University/JNU visiting Fellow 2012), James Staples (Brunel University)
CSSS Class Room No.103, First Floor, SSS-II
P06
Moral economy of agriculture in the global era
Fri
08:30
Convention Centre Lecture Hall-I
P07
Susan Visvanathan (Jawaharlal Nehru University), Mysore Narasimhan Panini (Jawaharlal Nehru University) Lotte Hoek (University of Edinburgh), Madhuja Mukherjee (Jadavpur University, Kolkata) Wed 08:30 Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium Thu 08:30 SSS-I Committee Room, Ground Floor
P08
31 Fri 08:30 Thu 08:30 Thomas Reuter (University of Melbourne), Gordon Mathews (The Chinese University of Hong Kong) Wed 15:00
VCD visions: the fabulous aesthetics and new industries of VCD cinema and television across South Asia The aesthetics of craft: explorations in the anthropology of craft production
P09
The artistic imagination in ruptured landscapes
Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 003, SAA-II CSSS Class Room No.103, First Floor, SSS-II
P10
Stephanie Bunn (University of St Andrews), Ravi Shankar Mishra (Indian Institute of Technology Delhi) Jonathan Miles-Watson (Luther College), Manpreet Kaur (St. Stephens College, Delhi University) Soumendra Patnaik (University of Delhi)
P11
Consuming culture: the politics and aesthetics of cultural tourism in different national traditions Publishing, prestige, and money in global anthropology (WCAA)
SIS Appadurai Committee Room
ASA12
Reference Thu Thu Thu 08:30 Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium 08:30 CSSS Committee Room No.013, Ground Floor, SSS-II CSLG Conference Room
Panel Title
Convenors
Date
Location
P12
Start Time 15:00
P13
P14
Tom Widger (University of Sussex) Safet Hadzimuhamedovic (Goldsmiths, University of London) Stephen Hughes (SOAS)
P15
Michelangelo Paganopoulos (Unknown)
Thu
08:30
32 Wed 08:30 Cathy Greenhalgh (University of the Arts, London), Nina Sabnani (IIT Bombay), Anjali Monteiro (Tata Institute of Social Sciences), KP Jayasankar (Tata Institute of Social Sciences) Nilika Mehrotra (Jawaharlal Nehru University) Fri 08:30
Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 102, SAA-I
P16
The aesthetics of suicide Arts of memory: skilful practices of living history Social sense and embodied sensibility at the cinema: towards an aesthetics of lm-going In-between ction and non-ction: reections on the poetics of ethnography in lm and literature Field and lm aesthetics: sensory anthropology and the texture of documentary lmmakers practice Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 101, SAA-I Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 102, SAA-I
P17
Jewellery as property, jewellery as aesthetics
P18
Framing the northeast: visual practices in Northeast India in the 19th and 20th centuries Wed 08:30 Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 102, SAA-I
Thu
08:30
P19
Anthropology in the contemporary artworld
P20
Thu
08:30
Screening India through digital image-making Thu 15:00
Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 101, SAA-I SIS Appadurai Committee Room
33 Wed Fri 17:00 08:30 Will Tuladhar-Douglas (University of Aberdeen) Emilia Terracciano (Courtauld Institute of Art), Deborah Swallow (Courtauld Institute of Art), Julian Stallabrass (Courtauld Institute)
P21
Joy L.K. Pachuau (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India), Debojyoti Das (School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)) Clare Harris (University of Oxford), Kavita Singh (Jawaharlal Nehru University), Christiane Brosius (Karl Jaspers Centre of Advanced Transcultural Studies ) Giulia Battaglia (SOAS, University of London), Paolo Favero (Lisbon University Institute (IUL)) Aditi Deo (University of Oxford), Georgina Born (Oxford University) Sankskrit Conference Room Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium
P22
Music, digital media, and ontological politics: from piracy to intellectual property Taste
P23
Elite art in an age of populism: sowing monocultures?
Reference ASA12 Leon Burnett (University of Essex) Geoffrey Samuel (Cardiff University), Santi Rozario (University of Tasmania) Fri Fri 08:30 08:30 Convention Centre Auditorium I Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 101, SAA-I SIS Appadurai Committee Room CSSS Class Room No.104, First Floor, SSS-II Thu 08:30 CSSS Class Room No.104, First Floor, SSS-II Fri CSSS Committee Room No.013, Ground Floor, SSS-II
Panel Title
Convenors
Date
Location
P24
Start Time 08:30
P25
P26
Accommodating the primordial: the function of myth in a globalising world Transformations in contemporary South Asian ritual: From sacred action to public performance Cultural dimensions of ecology
P27
34 Thu 08:30 Thu 08:30 Manuela Ciotti (Aarhus University), Aditya Bharadwaj (University of Edinburgh), Mani Shekhar Singh (Unknown) Fri 08:30
Cinema matters: the changing lm object in a globalizing world
P28
The aesthetics of governance
P29
Hoineilhing Sitlhou (Hyderabad Central University) Kuhu Tanvir (Unknown), Debjani Dutta (JNU), Ramna Walia (JNU), Shaunak Sen (JNU) Maya Dodd (Unknown), Dalia Wahdan (Foundation for Liberal and Management Education) Douglas Farrer (University of Guam), John WhalenBridge (National University of Singapore)
P30
Art & religion: beyondrepresentation in the representation of the beyond Insideout: art crafting substance, (bio)graphy and circulation
Sankskrit Conference Room
P31
Healing arts? The arts and aesthetics of medical display Wed Wed 08:30 SSS-I Committee Room, Ground Floor 08:30 CSSS Class Room No.104, First Floor, SSS-II
Wed
08:30
Convention Centre Lecture Hall-II
P32
Helen Lambert (Bristol University), Harish Naraindas (Jawaharlal Nehru University) Anita Bressan (University of Sydney)
P33
The ethnographic framing of the migrant subject The art of improvisation
P34
Aesthetics, politics, conict
Wed
08:30
CSSS Committee Room No.013, Ground Floor, SSS-II
35 Fri 08:30 Raminder Kaur (Sussex University), Saif Eqbal (Jawaharlal Nehru University) Amit Desai (The Queens University of Belfast) Thu 15:00 Wed 08:30
P35
Amanda Ravetz (Manchester Metropolitan University), Kathleen Coessens (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Anne Douglas (Robert Gordon University) Nayanika Mookherjee (Durham University), Tariq Jazeel (University of Shefeld), Malathi de Alwis (Unknown) Manpreet Janeja (University of Cambridge), Lala Rukh Selim (University of Dhaka) SSS-I Committee Room, Ground Floor
P37
Imagining Bangladesh and forty years of its aesthetic trajectory The aesthetics and ctions of science
Convention Centre Auditorium I
P38
Art worlds and the city: perspectives from India and beyond
ASA12
Reference Alice Tilche (School of oriental and african studies), David Mosse (SOAS) Radhika Chopra (University of Delhi) Nicolette Makovicky (Oxford University) Wed 08:30 SIS Appadurai Committee Room Wed 08:30 Convention Centre Lecture Hall-I Wed Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 002, SAA-II
Panel Title
Convenors
Date
Location
P39
Start Time 08:30
P40
P41
36 Uday Chandra (Yale University), Atreyee Majumder (Yale University) Fri 08:30 Wed 08:30 Anne Sigfrid Grnseth (University College of Lillehammer), Maruska Svasek (Queens University Belfast) Georgiana Gore (Blaise Pascal University, Clermont University), Andree Grau (Roehampton University, London) Wed 15:00
P42
Sankskrit Conference Room
P43
Art and activism in contemporary Dalit and Adivasi movements Shards of memory: memorials, commemorations, remembrance Ethnic by design: creative agency, aesthetics, and community in the global marketplace (Dis-)Locating the political: the aesthetics of self-making in postcolonial India Aestheticisation: artefacts and emotions in diasporic contexts CSSS Class Room No.104, First Floor, SSS-II Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium
P44
Cosmopolitanism, politics, and the (performing) arts
P45
Sarah White (University of Bath), Ajit Dalal (Unknown) Fri Thu 15:00 08:30 Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 002, SAA-II Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 003, SAA-II CSSS Class Room No.103, First Floor, SSS-II
Fri
08:30
CSLG Conference Room
P46
P47
Alison Macdonald (UCL), Serena Bindi (University Sophia Antipolis, Nice) Srinivas Gurram (Jawaharlal Nehru University) Gabriele Shenar (Unknown) Fri 08:30
P48
37 Thu Fri 08:30 08:30 Sumbul Farah (University of Delhi) Eswarappa Kasi (National Institute of Rural Development), Smita Yadav (University of Sussex) Fri Wed 08:30 15:00 Arun Mehta (Unknown), Manasi Dash (Bidirectional Access Promotion Society) Sanjukta Sunderason (University College London)
P49
P50
Convention Centre Lecture Hall-II Convention Centre Lecture Hall-II
P51
Interdisciplinary approaches to wellbeing and anthropological perspectives Aesthetics of healing and the body in a globalising world Traditional and modern art forms in protests and movements Weddings: identity and aesthetics in a globalising consumer world Aesthetics of ritual performance Narratives of coping with marginalization: impact of state policies on natural resources and tribal lives Art workshops for children with autism SIS Appadurai Committee Room CSLG Conference Room
P52
Vernacular perspectives on arts and aesthetics
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Plenary, panel and paper abstracts
Firth lecture
Tue 3rd April, 17:30-18:30 Convention Centre Auditorium I The transnational family as an aesthetic eld Prof Ghassan Hage (University of Melbourne) This paper begins with two questions: does a transnational family have a culture? and, to what extent is it manifested or located in the aesthetic domain? Based on eldwork among a Lebanese family spread between Lebanon, Venezuela, US and Australia, this paper uses the analytic observation of a number of family gatherings to examine the way the family operates as a space structured by aesthetic differences, and as a eld of gendered strategies of national and class distinction. It is argued that while the aesthetic dimension can be an expression of these differences, and can therefore highlights divisions grounded in different social locations and power relations within the family, the aesthetic is also an autonmous eld where the family has a different mode of existence outside such power relations which produce a unied sense of familial space.
Plenary 1
Wed 4th Apr, 11:00-13:00 Convention Centre Auditorium I Art Under Siege: Perils and Possibilities of Aesthetic Forms in a Globalizing World Prof Patricia Spyer (Leiden University) This paper explores two instances of the fate of images in war, foregrounding the relationship between aesthetic transformation and sociopolitical change, the conditions under which images move, and the play of absence and presence in art under siege.
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Art History and Its Discontents in Global Times Prof Parul Dave Mukherji (School of Arts and Aesthetics) What becomes of nationalist art histories when the world shrinks into a planet? The talk will explore the disciplinary crisis in the study of Indian art brought on by globalization and examine the anthropological turn that led to the formation of the discipline of visual studies in its wake. Revisiting the post-colonial in the work of three contemporary women artists Ms Gayatri Sinha Gayatri Spivaks seminal text Can the Subaltern Speak with its reections on Sati and structures of power appeared in 1984. Since then, the post-colonial imprint has encountered and mingled with other traces, and trajectories, including gendered subjectivity and representation. This paper examines leading post colonial identity issues in the work of three women contemporary artists, within the frame of nation, body/gender and environment. The artistic imagination in ruptured landscapes Dr Jyoti Sahi Folk art has inuenced modern Indian art. Modernity is global, but folk art is rooted in local culture. The elemental, links folk art to modern aesthetics. The ecological signicance of tribal art gains a new currency in modern art. Connecting modern with primal art afrms the universal in art.
Plenary 2
Thu 5th Apr, 11:00-13:00 Convention Centre Auditorium I Gandhi, Camera, Action! Anna Hazare and the media fold in twentyrst century India Prof Christopher Pinney (University College, London) The paper explores the visual image of the contemporary Indian anticorruption campaigner Anna Hazare as a second Gandhi. This idiom of iteration powerfully demonstrates the continuing vitality of gures associated
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with anti-colonial nationalism, not simply as empty points of visual reference but as forces that continue to animate the political landscape and the repertoire of political possibilities in India. The idea of the media-fold attempts to explicate the layering and bricolage which characterizes much popular Indian visual culture and whose logic seems to demand that the future is always halfseen-in-advance Retro Bombay in contemporary cinema Dr Ranjani Mazumdar (Jawaharlal Nehru University) This paper looks at a series of recent lms where Bombay has been re-created as a retro city. Through an engagement with these urban sets created by production and costume designers, the paper will explore the cultural, material and historical transactions involved in the designing of Indias best known city before the advent of globalization. The paradox of international laws on protecting and preserving heritage Dr Naman P Ahuja (Visual Studies, JNU) There is much debate in different quarters of governments, museums, artdealers and academia on rethinking the laws that govern the circulation of art. This paper outlines the larger social and aesthetic implications of the present laws. Beyond denial - the ethnographic lm-maker as author Prof Paul Henley (University of Manchester) In the history of ethnographic lm, there has been an enduring tendency to deny authorship, though for a broad variety of reasons. This presentation will trace this history before discussing the modes of authorship appropriate to contemporary ethnographic lm-making practice.
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Plenary 3
Fri 6th Apr, 11:00-13:00 Convention Centre Auditorium I Aesthetics and Contexts. Visual Cultures of the Muslim World Dr Juergen Wasim Frembgen (Munich State Museum of Ethnology) Examining the aesthetics and contexts of Muslim visual cultures in their multiplicity of perceptions, complexity and fundamental equality I call for a more inclusive understanding of their different genres. Drawing on aesthetic anthropology I argue that in various contexts objects engage multiple senses simultaneously. The local in the times of the global: interventions of an ethnomusicology archive Dr Shubha Chaudhuri (American Institute of Indian Studies) This paper will present cultural and methodological questions that arise out of a project of the Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology entitled Archives and Community Partnership carried out in Western Rajasthan and Goa. It will examine the attempt at evolving the archival space from academic use to focus on practitioners and tradition bearers. Art and waste management Dr Shiv Visvanathan (Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Communication and Technology, Gandhinagar) Abstract to follow.
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P01 Exploring the aesthetics and meanings of contemporary Indian fashion: from craft to the catwalk
Convenor: Miss Tereza Kuldova (Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo) Wed 4th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 Convention Centre Auditorium I The proposed panel sets as its objective to explore the realm of the relationships between the material and the social, taking as its point of departure clothing and fashion. These are the materials closest to our bodies, materials shaping our selves and reecting the society around them at the same time as their production and consumption gives shape to the very society around them. Clothing and fashion in India is a topic of daily talk and preoccupation, it employs millions and preoccupies minds of even more, and yet anthropological explorations of Indian society through the lens of material culture and particularly clothing and fashion are still very marginal and limited (though there are notable exceptions). This panel therefore invites contributions investigating these relations further and bringing new perspectives on a range of related topics: aesthetics, hierarchy, femininity and masculinity, seduction versus modesty and respectability, tradition and modernity and so forth. This panel is also open to explorations of contemporary fashion system in India and invites papers on various crafts and their market, as well as relationships with designers and other professionals, juxtaposing vernacular with capitalist economy and addressing the relations of production and consumption and their dialectics. Modernity, fashion and style as cultural constructs in India Dr Nita Mathur (Indira Gandhi National Open University) This paper addresses three critical issues: how does tradition juxtapose with modernity; how are fashion and style negotiated in the new middle class which constituted the largest section of the population India; and how are modernity, fashion and style imagined and locally constructed by the people at the grass-roots.
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Haute Couture: the making of an aesthetic category through Indian fashion Dr Meher Varma (UCLA) This paper explores how the category of haute couture is established and maintained through examining various production and consumption practices in Indian fashion. It will thus show how the construction of this aesthetic establishes boundaries of socioeconomic class in contemporary India. Textile crafts and their contribution in Indian fashion Mrs Toolika Gupta This paper explores how the crafts that were being lost to time were revived with the help of leading design institutes and design studios and are a major contributing factor in contemporary Indian Fashion. Crafting textile and cultural narratives: the Sari as a garment and a fashion construct Dr Janaki Turaga (Jawahar Lal Nehru University, New Delhi, INDIA) This paper explores the Sari as a tapestry of textile and cultural narratives on the female body. Doing something Indian: designer strategies betwixt and between Miss Janne Meier (Copenhagen Business school) This article maps out the eld of designer fashion in India. It examines and explores how ideas and ideals of national identity shape and link commercial industry practices and strategies to moral and national developmental discourses precariously balancing tradition and modernity. India in the World Fashion Fair Dr Nilanjana Mukherjee (Shaheed bhagat Singh College, University of Delhi) The fashion industry in India thrives in a crucible which amalgamates tradition and modernity. A new debate is opened up when Indian fashion is studied through the analytic aperture of Museology which can lead us back to India under British rule and early post-Independence imagination of the nation.
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From social status to ethnic identity: the ethnic fashion scene in Nagaland Marion Wettstein (University of Vienna) This paper examines the shift that ethnic dress among the Nagas of Northeast India underwent within the last hundred years: from precisely encoding the individual social status of its wearer to a general statement of ethnic and Naga national pride. Effect of fashion and media on beauty notions in society Ms Sanjana Sharma (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi-110067, India) The present paper attempts to analyze the relationship between fashion industry and trends spread by the media and the notion of beauty in society. It aims to bring forth the manner in which the notion of beauty and physical appearance for both women and men changes with the changing fashion. Embroidered seduction, embroidered modesty: on luxury garments and femininity in contemporary India Miss Tereza Kuldova (Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo) The paper focuses on the interrelations between luxury embroidery, phantasms produced by designers and the meanings of femininity in contemporary India. Dressing up for consumption: or how sex workers project themselves for the public gaze Dr Kalyan Shankar V (Symbiosis School of Economics); Dr Rohini Sahni (University of Pune) This paper uses data from the First Pan India Survey of Sex Workers to reect upon what sex workers perceive of themselves and their bodies. It probes into their understanding of attractiveness through material display (appearance), and display of intent/availability (body language) as they solicit for clients.
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P02
World art and critical pedagogy

Convenors: Dr Daniel Rycroft (University of East Anglia); Prof Parul Dave Mukherji (School of Arts and Aesthetics) Wed 4th Apr, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 003, SAA-II This panel aims to generate dialogues between anthropologists, art historians, artists and museologists whose professional practice is shaped by the concepts of world art, global art or intercultural art. Participants should question whether these concepts exist in relation to creative, intellectual or institutional histories and mechanisms, and how these concepts become operative in diverse practices, including curating, art making and art writing. They will consider how their own approaches to research, public communication, teaching, translation and learning draw upon the current geopolitics and contribute to the eld of critical pedagogy. Identifying ways in which individual, collective, social and political transformations generate opportunities for the emergence of new standpoints and critical positions, they will also reect on the shared need to move beyond multiculturalism and to engage more critically with the question of cultural difference. Discussion on relational, southern, post-colonial, post-humanist, post-western, cosmopolitan and other related theories, such as world anthropologies, is prioritised. Participants should assess how such concepts and theories become frameworks for group learning, public outreach and critical pedagogy. The anthropological imagination and the aesthetics of disjuncture Prof Anthony Shelton (University of British Columbia) This paper examines the recent focus on critical art practices by some of the worlds major ethnographic museums and explores and compares the relations between this art, disciplinary anthropology and the anthropological imagination.
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Spoken Word performance poetry as pedagogy of the oppressed Dr Ursula Troche (The Change Collective) Spoken Word Performance Poetry represent a Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I will also show how its multicultural character make it decolonial (Mignolo), and akin to a form of transformative mediation similar to Bush and Folger (1994). Haida goes pop! Transpacic graphics and indigenous narratives Dr Nicola Levell (University of British Columbia) This paper examines the political and pedagogic agency of Haida-manga-a transpacic artform originated by the Haida artist and activist, Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas. Fusing traditional Haida aesthetics with Japaneseinspired manga, Haida-manga is a dynamic graphic idiom that circulates local indigenous epistemologies and parables to a global public. This is not a portrait: the problem of representation and a global history of art Miss Sria Chatterjee (Oxford University) This paper explores the problem of representation in nineteenth century maritime India. It questions the category of portraiture as a universal, as understood by the traditional art historical canon, further pointing to a rethinking of a global art history as a multi-sited historiography of art.
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P03
Exploring aesthetic experiences and practices

Convenors: Dr Andrew Whitehouse (Aberdeen University); Ms Sara Asu Schroer (Aberdeen University) Thu 5th Apr, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 Convention Centre Lecture Hall-II When humans encounter the world their experience is often guided and understood ethically and in terms of ideals of what that encounter should be like. How should they act? What sort of effects, or indeed affects, should emerge? What should their environment be like? In short, these experiences are aesthetic. In this panel we aim to explore the aesthetics of experience, of how people idealise their direct engagement with the world and how this inuences the meaning and affectiveness of experience. We focus particularly on the relations between activities, whether mundane or skilled, and the creation, enhancement and revelation of the aesthetic qualities of experience. How do the intentions of people to conduct particular activities or to exercise certain skills inuence what they hope for in their encounters with the world? For example, how do practices such as farming, tourism or hunting guide the perception, appreciation, meaning or morality of a landscape? In taking this focus we explicitly reject an aesthetics that is only concerned with the disinterested appreciation of form and of aesthetic objects. Instead we encourage papers that delight in entangled, multi-sensory and affective encounters and that wish to explore how such experiences are desired, judged, remembered and made meaningful. Such encounters could be with or involve landscape, non-humans, art, music, sport or other skilled practices. They might be everyday encounters or quite exceptional. We invite work across a range of disciplines in addition to anthropology, including geography, history, ethnomusicology and philosophy.
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Flights like poetry: exploring aesthetic experiences in the practice of hunting with birds of prey Ms Sara Asu Schroer (Aberdeen University) In falconry the hunting process in general and the ights of the birds in particular are highly appreciated and create moments of aesthetic intensity. This paper explores aesthetic experiences of falconry practitioners through focussing on the creative and performative aspects of the practice. The river echoes with laughter: exploring Matses childrens aesthetic experiences in Peruvian Amazonia Ms Camilla Morelli (University of Manchester) This paper explores Matses childrens multi-sensorial, emotional and affective engagements with the river environment in Amazonia. By looking at their daily encounters with the river, it emphasises the aesthetics of childrens experiences and how these are enhanced through shared activities of play. A retro affair: silver emulsion in the age of digital Ms Anuradha Chandra This paper locates the special experiences inherent in the fast disappearing world of emulsion cinema with its essentially organic engagement with the world and its chimerical image-making; a world highlighted by its inaccessibility to the superhighway of digital cinema. Narrating familiarity: Frederick Growse and the architectural experience of colonial Bulandshahr, 1878-1886 Dr Venugopal Maddipati (CSDS) I consider how F.S. Growse, the collector of Bulandshahr (1878-1884), recounted the depth of his experiences by emphasizing his knowledge of the architectural particulars of a town square. I compare Growses texts with the accompanying photographs, and explore an aesthetics of translation. Feeling the underlying aesthetics of the Japanese pottery for the Wabicha tea ceremony and its internationalization Dr Gloria Garcia (ICADE Business School)
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Wabicha is a profound and complex social ritual in which participants feel the appreciation of the imperfect beauty of the utensils used. These present an aesthetics that transcend outward appearances, enabling each observer to perceive their internal beauty. How can be internationalized? Home and university: the aesthetics of making two ends meet Dr Shabnam Khan (National College of Arts) Taking my cues from the types of ideal Muslim womanhood, I examine the aesthetics--and the unaesthetics--of the experiences that educated middleclass Pakistani women encounter as they mediate the competing cultural demands of the traditional-Muslim home and the secular-modern university. Loudly sing, cuckoo! Bird song, resonance and an aesthetics of seasonality Dr Andrew Whitehouse (Aberdeen University) This paper explores the relations between seasonality and bird song, primarily within a British context. More broadly it is an investigation of how seasons and times are sensed and experienced, and how people idealise and aestheticise these experiences.
P04 Beyond the Arab Spring: the aesthetics and poetics of popular revolt and protest
Convenors: Dr Dimitris Dalakoglou (University of Sussex); Prof Pnina Werbner (Keele University); Dr Martin Webb (University of Sussex) Thu 5th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 Convention Centre Lecture Hall-I These protests have raised a lot of debates; however, the main emphasis of this panel is not simply on the politics of the revolts but on their aesthetic and poetical aspects. These protest events were/are imaginative and creative, utilising aesthetic popular media, electronic media, shared hand gestures, visual and material discourses, artistic actions and theatrical speeches
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to convey their message. Simultaneously, during this spring-summer of protests, people often resorted to the aesthetics of re, broken windows, ying glass bottles and the praxis of violence, as happened for example in the case of the UK during the August 2011 riots, but also before, during the anti-cuts movement protests where people responded to states violence with counter-violence. Everywhere, the political establishment responded in helpless shock, panic and often physical harm, utilizing the old and usual aesthetics of the State repressive apparatuses and the aesthetics of law, order and corporate mass media. This session invites contributions not only from anthropologists who have studied the events of the Arab Spring itself, but the rest of the popular protest and revolt which have been inspired by them or have shared some of their cosmopolitan values. We ask from the participants -without depoliticizing and undermining the political objectives of the protests- to approach them from the perspective of their aesthetic and poetical articulations; to talk about and analyse the material, visual, physical and sensual manifestations of these aesthetics and their meanings. Session 1: Protest Movements across the world Session 2: Egypt, Social Media and Tahrir Square Session 3: India The poetics of language and space in the Israeli 2011 protest Prof Tamar Katriel (University of Haifa) Addressing the poetics and politics of the Israeli 2011 protest, we focus on the culture-producing role of intertextuality, the spatial aesthetics of domesticity, and the rhetoric of communal engagement, arguing that the protest movement has conjured a liminal space in a quest to transcend social-structural divisions even while replicating them. Sensations, expressive forms and disillusionment in contemporary Iran Prof Setrag Manoukian (McGill University) A discussion of the relationship between politics and experience in contemporary Iran through an analysis of peoples actions, words and emotions during the street protests of 2009 and their aftermath. The protests triggered an existential interrogation about politics, which later morphed into disillusion.
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The mother of all strikes: popular protest culture and vernacular cosmopolitanism in the Botswana public service unions strike, 2011 Prof Pnina Werbner (Keele University) My paper explores the emergence of working class oppositional popular culture among members of ve public service unions in Botswana, whose joint, two months long strike challenged the countrys establishment and the perceived authoritarianism of government in creative and imaginative ways. Inspired in this respect by the events of the Arab Spring, strikers also drew on cosmopolitan themes of labour rights, dignity and social justice while deploying resistive popular-cultural traditional styles of song and dance to mock and insult politicians and celebrate worker solidarity. Subversion through performance: performative activism in London (2010-2011) Ms Paula Serani The focus of this paper will be the staging of performance-like actions by activist groups in the context of the demonstrations against austerity cuts in London from November 2010 to the present. I dreamed of being a people: Egypts revolution, the people, and critical imagination Dr Hanan Sabea (American Uni in Cairo) How can we think the construct of the people who comprised a revolutionary collective articulating a demand for change in the context of the January 25th Revolution in Egypt? Based on personal experiences and narrations collected during the 18 days and thereafter, I reect on the meanings of the people, the political and the imaginary since Jan 25th. Aesthetics of revolt in Tahrir Square Dr Dalia Wahdan (Foundation for Liberal and Management Education) The eighteen days spent in Tahrir Square at the heart of Cairo, Egypt that started on January 25 have been exceptional to the minds and lives of most Egyptians. While indiscriminate violence and brutalities by the deposed regimes security forces glued protesters together, singing, stand up comedies,
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chanting slogans and designing and circulating illustrative pamphlets have harnessed their energies and sustained their deant spirits. As confrontations with security forces continued and intimidations from state-run radio and television increased, artistic forms in Tahrir Square have transcended their functionality and emerged from being the expressions of emotions into acts of revolt. This paper registers the versatile forms of expression improvised by the protestors in Tahrir Square and on social media sites during and after deposing Mubaraks regime and argues that unlike the pre-uprising expressions of resentment and acts of resistance, Tahrir Square artistic expressions constitute an aesthetics of revolt the interpretation of which can forge an understanding of popular mass movements. Taking positions: politics of womens blogs in Egypt Dr Sonali Pahwa (Northwestern University-Qatar) Women activists in post-revolution Egypt perform ethical roles in blogs that project a new political terrain and authoritative feminine voice. I examine the performance of political stance in blogs by domestically and internationallyoriented activists as embodied imaginations of new citizenship. Reclaiming the political from aesthetics: exploring the Arab Spring and aftermath Mr Premjish Achari (Jawaharlal Nehru University) This paper argues that the cutting edge technologies (internet, social networking sites, applications, encrypted Blackberry Messengers) facilitate both aesthetic and political revolution by looking at Arab Spring, UK riots, and Occupy Wall Street movement. Supercharging Satyagraha? Saintly politics and media in the struggle for a Jan Lokpal Bill Dr Martin Webb (University of Sussex) This paper will explore the use of media and social media in the development of the India Against Corruption Movement in 2011. During the protests an idealised poetics and aesthetics of satyagraha, fasting, simplicity and nonviolent resistance by leading activists became the focus of mainstream and
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social media attention. This paper will ask: Why did a long ignored issue such as the Lokpal bill suddenly become newsworthy? How did the aesthetics of the protests help this process? How were the aesthetics of the protests presented in different media? And, in what ways did activists and media actors collaborate to produce particular rhetorical narratives and imagery? The changing contours of the politics in Kashmiri movement: ideas, practices & responses Ms Sarbani Sharma (Delhi School of Economics, DU) How can we reect on the nuances on the modes of resistance by the Kashmiris for a sovereign state through an analysis of the aesthetics of politics in contemporary times? Building protesting publics: local trade in new world-class Delhi Dr Diya Mehra (Centre de Sciences Humaines) This paper examines the mobilizing of a political community in New Delhi in opposition to a Supreme Court ruling ordering the shutting down of hundreds of local businesses. The paper focuses on how a citywide protesting public was mobilized discursively, metaphorically and practically, as well as through the local media, most critically by deploying the imagery of anti-colonial struggles, local understandings of ethical governance, and violent street based disruptions. Corrupt movements, the anti-corruption movement, and the movement of knowledge in Indian political practice Mr Anand Vaidya (Harvard University) This paper considers both Indias 2011 anti-corruption movement and failed attempts at corruption in proposing a theory of political practice driven by the movement and sedimentation of knowledge.
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P05
Aesthetics of conversion
Convenors: Dr Vibha Joshi (Oxford University/JNU visiting Fellow 2012); Dr James Staples (Brunel University) Wed 4th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 CSSS Class Room No.103, First Floor, SSS-II Paper presenters are invited to consider play surrounding the idea of conversion. Conversion can be seen as change from one use, function, or purpose to another; change that occurs with adoption of a new religion, faith or belief; or from one practice to another such as the shift from biomedicine to so-called alternative therapy or healing. What kind of aesthetics accompanies, or is thought to accompany such change? There is a complex here in which aesthetics, materiality and meaning have overlapping signicance for people who convert. Within this complex, we can ask: How much does this aesthetic transformation affect self images? How are changing notions of materiality related to conversion? As outlined in the call for panels, what is the place of the aesthetics of conversion in the processes of production and contexts of meaning, performance and (re)interpretation in everyday local settings, in perceptions of the body or in the design of buildings and cloth? Demonstrating Christian aesthetics in a South Indian leprosy community Dr James Staples (Brunel University) When the leprosy-affected people I worked with in South India converted from Hinduism or Islam to Christianity at the same time as being treated for their disease, they underwent a whole series of changes to their lives that went beyond the spiritual and which incorporated the aesthetic and the material. A change of religion not only meant a change of identity that enabled those I worked with to renegotiate how their disease status identied them, but it also had implications for how they dressed, what they consumed, how they decorated and occupied their houses and communities, and how they moved and presented themselves to the wider public. With conversion, in short, came
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a new Christian aesthetic that differentiated my informants from the Hindus and Muslims they lived in close proximity to. This paper sets out to document the aesthetics of conversion in this case and to explore what an analysis of these aesthetics might tell us. Aesthetics of community: ritual and identity in Brazilian pentecostalism Dr George St Clair (LSE) The development of religious subjectivities through structured ritual action is often described as an individual process of becoming. In this paper, however, I show how the distinctive aesthetic environment of an avowedly anti-materialist church leads intstead to a developing sense of group complicity. Designing a play for conversion: learning to perceive Krishna Miss Marje Ermel (Estonian Institute of Humanities, Tallinn University) This paper will explore the layered meaning of sound and body in the play of conversion among the Krishna devotees in Estonia. The paper will argue that both bodily practices and sound play an insightful role in constituting the aesthetics accompanying the change in perception of self and place. Different aesthethics for different religions: the case of the AfroBrazilian religions in Portugal Dr Clara Saraiva (Institute for Scientic Tropical Research/CRIA-UNLFCSH Lisbon) Afro-Brazilian religions are expanding in Portugal. One of the factors that attracts the Portuguese is the aesthetics of such religions: the idea of incorporating an orix and dress in the orixs beautiful clothes is something everyone longs for. How and why does this happen? Motifs and aesthetics of Christian conversion among the Naga of Northeast India Dr Vibha Joshi (Oxford University/JNU visiting Fellow 2012) Taking into account that the Naga peoples of Northeast India are now predominantly Christian, the paper will explore what conversion to another religion entails in terms of material cultural aesthetics.
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Warli paintings: tradition and change Miss Ashwini Shelke Warli Painting is an integral part of the wedding ceremony among the Warli Tribes located in Northern Maharashtra and Southern Gujarat. This paper attempts to understand the impact of changing religious practices on the art form. The aesthetics of conversion to school education in rural Chhattisgarh Dr Peggy Froerer (Brunel University) This paper is about this process of conversion to a pro-schooling perspective, the aesthetics that have accompanied this process, and the signicance that this phenomenon has had for both those who have converted (Christians and Hindus alike) and those who have not. Aberration as the norm: conversion and issues of representation in nineteenth century Bengal Ms Dhrupadi Chattopadhyay (Ruprecht Karls Universitt Heidelberg) This paper attempts to show how the biographies and autobiographies of rst generation converts in nineteenth century Bengal in effect came to create normative individuals in a climate of representational excess where they were often viewed as aberrations. The aesthetics of superiority: conversion narratives as performative acts in a climate of religious competition Dr Tabea Scharrer (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology) On the basis of Islamic conversion narratives it will be shown that in the Eastern African climate of religious competition between Christianity and Islam conversion narratives not only serve as an enactment of a truthful conversion but also as the very means in this competition.
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P06
Moral economy of agriculture in the global era

Convenors: Prof Susan Visvanathan (Jawaharlal Nehru University); Dr Mysore Narasimhan Panini (Jawaharlal Nehru University) Fri 6th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30 Convention Centre Lecture Hall-I This panel seeks to study processes of social and cultural hybridisation that contemporary global forces have unleashed in the eld of agriculture. Some instances of such hybridisation that I have witnessed are of small farmers in north Karnataka becoming successful plant breeders who are avidly sought after by big agribusiness rms; of horticulturists in a small town in south Karnataka catering to the growing market for a special variety of heritage banana by combining traditional horticultural knowledge with modern technologies, of enterprising farmers and traders inuenced by export oriented oriculture introducing non traditional ower varieties in local markets and initiating changes that seamlessly combine the traditional culture of plucked owers and garlands with the culture of cut owers and their bouquets. There are also instances of the proponents of organic farming evolving innovative practices to ensure that marginal and small farmers could convert their uneconomic holdings into productive assets. Such innovative solutions have given rise to new sensibilities of aesthetics and asceticism. This panel invites papers that offer thick descriptions of such social and cultural changes witnessed in the rural/agricultural sector. Documenting rural arts and crafts through photography Prof Susan Visvanathan (Jawaharlal Nehru University) Keywords:Crafts, markets, tourism, working traditions, division of labour, oikos. Photographing craftspeople in Kerala, when they work in small courtyards, under acres of sky as Cat Stevens would say.
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Ginger is a gamble: on the moral economy of agrarian crisis and the neoliberalisation of agriculture in Wayanad (Kerala) Dr Daniel Muenster (Halle University (MLU)) Responding to agrarian crisis, cultivators in Wayanad increasingly engage in the risky cultivation of ginger in other states of India. This paper engages the practices of and moral talk about ginger cultivation and argues that it is manifestation of post-agrarian, neoliberal agriculture. Valentines Day and oriculture in Bengaluru Ms Smriti Mehra (Shrishti School of Art and Design) We highlight how Velentines day is getting embedded in the culture of agriculture. The moral/aesthetic economy/ecology of agriculture in Bali Dr Graeme MacRae (Massey University) Agriculture is a technological, ecological, economic, social, moral and aesthetic process. This paper summarises recent transformations of the aesthetic/moral economy/ecology of rice growing in Bali and discusses projects which may be understood in terms of redressing moral/aesthetic imbalances. Domestic reections of sustenance strategies in northern Nepal Dr Ben Campbell (Durham University) Food values and viable subsistence in northern Nepal show Tamang idioms and aesthetics of domestic aspiration and insufciency engaging effects of labour migration in aesthetic and rhetorical transformations fashioned as fullnesses, depletions, and suitabilities. Globalisation and corporatisation of Indian agriculture: a review of food insecurity in India Mr Vikrant Kumar (JNU, New Delhi) This paper proposes to analyse the role of globalization and corporatisation in food insecurity in India.
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P07
VCD visions: the fabulous aesthetics and new industries of VCD cinema and television across South Asia
Convenors: Dr Lotte Hoek (University of Edinburgh); Dr Madhuja Mukherjee (Jadavpur University, Kolkata) Wed 4th Apr, 08:30-10:30 Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium This panel explores the new forms of vision opened up by the VCD format in South Asia. Across much of Asia and Africa, the VCD format has become extremely popular as low cost lm carrier. From resistance movements using the VCD in Burma through to the widespread availability of controversial Pastho lms in VCD formats in Pakistan, the VCD format lends itself to a range of unexpected media practices. This panel aims to explore the recent histories and current forms of VCD aesthetics and industry in old and new South Asian cinema and television. Challenging the dominance of large studios, national development corporations and linguistic majorities, the VCDs posit serious conceptual challenges and research opportunities for the anthropology and history of the media in South Asia. What new modes and means of production have been made available and to whom by the immense popularity of VCDs in South Asian cinema? What aesthetic transformations have been wrought by these new technologies? How and where have new audiences come into being through the VCD and its players? And in what ways might the theories of South Asian cinema need to be rethought on the basis of the VCD phenomenon? The panel encourages immersive ethnographic explorations of contemporary VCD practices and detailed histories of the format in South Asia. The Mujra dance video CDs: its production, content and masculine desire in present day Pakistani popular culture Ms Farida Batool Syeda (National College of Arts, Lahore) The rise of popular home made semi-professional videos of women dancing mujra, is a result of emergence of digital media, enabling laypersons to make
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such video in Pakistan. The content of these videos both from the visual to the lyrical reects the masculine expressions of fantasy and desire. Love, lms and chewing-tobacco: an exploration of the cultural margin of a VideoCD circulation by an ethnography of a village video night in India Dr Markus Schleiter (Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main) The paper explores in which ways a collective video night in an Indian village is embedded and signied within everyday culture. It is outlined then in how far a cultural margin in form of a net of cultural practices is part of letting Santali Video-CD lms to travel into the village. Otherness of cinema: video technologies, marginal cultures, economy of new industries Dr Madhuja Mukherjee (Jadavpur University, Kolkata) This paper presents an overview of digital practices, its aesthetic meanings, and economic ramications in larger historical contexts. In addition, it focuses on contemporary video and digital cultures popular in the linguistically, politically, and economically marginalized areas of Bengal. Straight-to-VCD: new forms of lm in Dhaka Dr Lotte Hoek (University of Edinburgh) This paper explores the complex interweaving between the public industry of celluloid cinema and the private ventures of VCD lm in Bangladesh to investigate conict and continuity in the realms of aesthetics, work, aspiration and pleasure within these overlapping industries.
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P08
The aesthetics of craft: explorations in the anthropology of craft production

Convenors: Dr Stephanie Bunn (University of St Andrews); Mr Ravi Shankar Mishra (Indian Institute of Technology Delhi) Thu 5th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 SSS-I Committee Room, Ground Floor Do craft have aesthetics? Through exploring this question this panel examines the relationships between the body, material, idea and object in the production of craft and domestic artefacts. This requires an exploration of the relationship between art and craft, between ideas and bodily practices and the social relationships involved in hand-making and other kinds of artefacts. The panel will address the interplay of material and cognitive operations in production processes, and how these emerge through peoples involvement with the various social and cultural agencies that constitute community dynamics. These are environment, religion, folk culture, tools and technology etc; community networks and communities of practice; interventions by government and non-government organizations; and local and global markets. Globalization, modernization and commoditization affect production of crafts in signicant ways, and aesthetics of craft manifest in a variety of social and cultural experiences, thereby contributing to understand these processes in turn. How social and cultural transformation, such as those experienced during current globalization, may impact upon craft aesthetics? How this in-turn may affect or constitute the making and unmaking of communities? An aesthetic of craft may thus be constitutive of its own moral and political economy of preservation, promotion and sustenance, and have signicance for core anthropological concerns, such as the relationships between production and consumption, local distinctiveness and homogenization, continuity and change. Anthropological insights will help us to know the aesthetics of craft through the above mentioned agencies that constitute the larger social world of craftsmen, anthropologists, craft61
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activists, and connoisseurs cum consumers. Making aesthetics: the hand-made perspective Dr Stephanie Bunn (University of St Andrews) This paper addresses the way anthropology has used the term aesthetics to dene art as opposed to craft and from the point of view of the observer rather than the maker. It explores this question through the transition from Kyrgyz hand-made felt craft production to textile art and fashion. Anthropology and aesthetics in production of Phulkari Mrs Anu H Gupta (Panjab University) Phulkari, a traditional craft of Punjab has undergone a great change in its social and emotional value, usage , production and design. It is also been produced for commercial reasons by women artisans of local community. Many organizations who are working in order to keep this craft alive feel a requirement of continuous ow of designs in terms of motifs,colour pallete,placement etc. Crafting the community together: an aesthetics of Lulesmi womens everyday crafts production in northern Norway Miss Anna Gustafsson (University of St Andrews) This paper examines motivations and skills of Lulesmi womens everyday crafts production as dialogues between multiple forms of relations such as the body, morality, and material. These relations will be of anthropological interests embodying particular values and actions interpreted as a form of aesthetic system. Where craft and aesthetics have no distinction: discussing some Japanese contributions to the global arena Prof Joy Hendry (Oxford Brookes University) The distinction between craft and aesthetics is alien to Japanese artists/ans who have reacted by producing some extraordinary exhibition pieces within the global community. This paper will discuss Japanese ideas that underpin the care and beauty passed on through generations of skilled craftspeople,
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sometimes designated as living national treasures, and attempt to assess them in a global context. Tisien eni atan: writing in the ground Dr Craig Lind (University of St Andrews) Sand-drawing is an evanescent art-form composed by the movement of a nger through sand. The most enduring qualities of this craft are the persons who recall them in moments of revelation, that evoke the lives of their ancestors while weaving their own existence inextricably into these designs. The politics of handloom as a craft: exploring the dynamics of cloth, society and social change in Manipur Mr Otojit Kshetrimayum (V.V. Giri National Labour Institute) Highlighting the signicance of culture of cloth in Manipuri society, this paper critically examines: i) the gender construction of weaving, ii) transition of handloom industry from a lineage based activity to the growth of women entrepreneurship and iii) the politics of dress highlighting how traditional costumes are used as a means for propagating the ideology of self reliance and cultural identity. Anthropological specicities in the study of the aesthetics of an artistic object: the problem of movement Dr Viviana Lebedinsky (CONICET) What would the anthropological specicity be in the study of the aesthetics of an artistic object? We examine the insignia, later called emblem, of the General Federation of Italian Industry, an artistic object conceptualized as a sign of social relationships considering Alfred Gells proposals. Taking the piss: the aesthetics of irony in Scottish craft Dr Kathryn Lichti-Harriman (University of Aberdeen) This paper proposal arises from my research, as both visual anthropologist and photographer, into craft in North-East Scotland. Instead of judging the value of Craft against Art, I strive to understand the social mechanisms that drive their respective makers. Rather than debating categories, I investigate how they
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work. It is from this vantage point that I propose to present a paper exploring the variety of ways in which members of craft groups deploy humour, not as a premeditated intention, but rather more uidly in the course of everyday activities as an interplay of the material and cognitive processes at work in the production of ideas and objects within the world of craft. Gods for tourists: stone carving and tourist arts in Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu Miss Sanni Sivonen (University of Eastern Finland) Explorations of the stone carving and religious sculpture tradition in Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu, and its current engagement with the international tourist market. On dialectics between art and craft: the case of taxidermy Dr Petra Tjitske Kalshoven (University of Manchester) In taxidermy, boundaries between art and craft are explored and challenged as skill and expertise meet with creative tension. Triumph of craft or appropriation by art, taxidermys recent revival calls for an ethnographic inquiry into an imitative skill and its relation to aesthetics and creativity. Jadupatias in the aesthetics of craft of jewellery making Mr Ravi Shankar Mishra (Indian Institute of Technology Delhi) The aesthetics of brass jewellery of Jadupatias of Jharkhand are not just about charm but the agencies that construct in the making of it and the community. It includes the various social and cultural agencies that construct the aesthetics of the craft which have multiple relationships with art.
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P09
The artistic imagination in ruptured landscapes

Convenors: Dr Jonathan Miles-Watson (Luther College); Miss Manpreet Kaur (St. Stephens College, Delhi University) Fri 6th Apr, 08:30-10:30 Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 003, SAA-II Global ows of people, products and ideas can be seen to cause tension within traditional cultural systems, potentially resulting in the formation of ruptures, which disconnect the present from the past. In this panel we are interested in the way that the arts (when taken in their broadest sense) can heal these ruptures. We seek to explore the ways that performative outpourings of the artistic imagination enter into the weave of contemporary landscape formation. In particular we are interested in ethnographic accounts of the way that these processes result in the generation of coping mechanisms against the traumas of globalization. The issues here cluster around several wider themes, which are themselves vitalized by this specic exploration, these include, but are not limited to, the reaction of the artistic imagination to postcolonial landscape transformation, artistic practices in the landscape of the megacity and the transformative power of artistic landscapes. Art InSight: abstract renderings of Caribbean landscapes as healing Dr Carlo Cubero (Estonian Institute of Humanities, Tallinn University) What kind of insights do Caribbean artists bring into understanding and coming to terms with collective trauma? I will examine a series of landscape paintings produced by local artists whose art reconciles different narratives of trauma and healing that are simultaneously invested on their island. Writing of home: the retrospective gaze of Attia Hosain and Imtiaz Dharker Mr Arjun Rajkhowa (University of Delhi)
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This paper will focus on two South Asian writers, Attia Hosain and Imtiaz Dharker. Hosain wrote her novel about India after her expatriation to England in 1947, and Dharker, a Pakistani Muslim brought up in Scotland, wrote most of her poems, after moving to Bombay in later life. O brother, Jugni speaks: listening the text and context of Jugni Miss Manpreet Kaur (St. Stephens College, Delhi University) The paper looks at the ways in which Jugni asserts, reinvents, or alternately struggles, given its glocal, post-colonial residence in exile. Jugni may loosely be called a kind of Punjabi qissa (folk-tale tradition), with its history and origins numerous and speculative.
P10 Consuming culture: the politics and aesthetics of cultural tourism in different national traditions
Convenor: Dr Soumendra Patnaik (University of Delhi) Thu 5th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 CSSS Class Room No.103, First Floor, SSS-II The growing expansion of tourism industry in the global market carries signicant consequences for the everyday life of the local communities. The commodication of cultural objects such as artifacts, handicrafts, art forms and performances is linked to creation of a class of entrepreneurs having no contribution to the aesthetic production but playing a decisive role in its economic and political circulation. Cultural spaces and physical places get permeated by market forces operating at national and global level further strengthen the monopoly of culturally non producing emerging elite and marginalization of the local artisans and cultural performers. The decision making process involving the production and circulation of cultural commodities through market linkages is a challenge posed to the traditional ritualised space of its production. Experiential tourism, ethnic/ rural tourism and other are important tourism products that are getting
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more and more integrated with market needs marking a shift from the plane of aesthetics to business mediated through power. Touristic relationships have differential levels of power dynamics and interests that get negotiated variedly .Relevance of place or space identity of the local community having exclusive control over the resources often clash between the host population and touristic interests. The panel seeks to examine these issues in the light of different national and regional traditions so as to understand the role of state policy and community negotiations in handling such issues of global magnitude. Consuming nature: cultural tourism in the mountains of central Spain Dr William Kavanagh (CEU San Pablo University, Madrid) The commoditisation of nature as a cultural object has implications for community identity. Declaring the Gredos Mountains in Spain a park has brought a sharp increase in a market-oriented tourism which has altered the relation of the villagers to their physical place and cultural space. The symbolic appropriation of privately owned nature landscapes Dr Hogne ian (Norwegian Institute for Nature Research) The paper explores how inhabitants of some rural communities of Norway, as a response to recent developments within angling and hunting tourism, engage in efforts of symbolic appropriation of privately and collectively owned nature landscapes. Culture as tourism product: state policy and identity politics in Nagaland of Northeast India Dr Soumendra Patnaik (University of Delhi) The paper explores the making of state policy on Tourism and its implications for new identity construction in Nagaland. A sensual delight in eating: exploring the aesthetics, ethics and politics of culinary tourism in Assam Dr Mini Bhattacharyya Thakur (Gauhati University) Food and cuisine are important ingredients of a societys cultural heritage and
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a valuable identity marker. Culinary tourism, which is a recent phenomenon in Assam has promoted a sense of unity among the diverse ethnic people of Assam leading to a transition of Assamese culinary ethics and values. Rural artists encounter with anthropologists and corporate professionals Dr Tamsin Bradley (University of Portsmouth) The paper explores the relationship between those involved in art livelihood projects, business professionals and anthropologists. It contextualises art as livelihood within the tourism industry and development process for social upliftment. Beyond boundaries: exploring hybrid heritage in Abu Dhabi Miss Sarina Wakeeld (The Open University) This paper suggests that by combining autochthonous and franchised heritage something new hybrid heritage emerges and enters the organisation of new global networks and cultural mobilities. The aesthetics and politics of cultural tourism in Iran Ms Ladan Ghahramani This paper argues that the manner in which cultural tourism is being promoted by identifying market for the artifacts, heritage monuments, prehistoric sites and the local festivals is rooted in the distinction between domestic and external tourists. This curio called Indian miniature circa 2000 Ms Varunika Saraf (JNU) The mass-produced copies of Indian court paintings now exclusively painted for the tourist market, seem as escapees from the realm of Indian art history. This paper examines the ways in which patrons got recongured as consumers and artists as producers.
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The role of improvisation in the success of a textile based public engagement project Ms Lynn Setterington (Manchester Metropolitan University) Based on a public engagement project to create a wedding quilt for Prince William and Kate Middleton in the spring of 2011; this study looks at the way implicit improvisation was employed in this artist led initiative. Ritual, tourism and sensorial dimension among the Catholic Gaudde in Goa, India Dr Cludia Pereira (ISCTE University Institute of Lisbon, CIES-IUL) Dances and songs with Hindu and Catholic references are performed by the Catholic Gaudde, a caste from Goa, in their religious rituals, transformed, nowadays, into an object of folklore to be consumed by tourists. The aesthetical dimension of their sound and visual performances is still to be explored.
P11 Publishing, prestige, and money in global anthropology (WCAA)

Convenors: Prof Thomas Reuter (University of Melbourne); Dr Gordon Mathews (The Chinese University of Hong Kong) Wed 4th Apr, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 SIS Appadurai Committee Room Anthropology has long transcended the era of Morgan and Tylor, where Americans and Europeans, secure in their sense of superiority, studied everyone else in the world. And yet, uncomfortable echoes of this political history of anthropology remain. Why is it that until today the most well known and widely cited anthropological books and journals in the world are those published in the United States and Western Europe, in English? Is this simply because anthropology rst developed in the United States and Western Europe, or is this a matter of latter-day intellectual hegemony? If it is simply a historical legacy, how and when will the rest of the world catch up? And if it is an actively maintained hegemony, how is this
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hegemony (re-)produced and what can be done to counter it? How can anthropologists throughout the world create a more level playing eld for a global anthropology? What is the role of commercial publishers, and various national journal-ranking schemes? The panel will explore these and other questions around the nexus of publishing, prestige and commercial interests from different national perspectives. The aim is to grapple with the problem of intellectual hegemony in anthropology, and to sketch out possible solutions. This panel is convened on behalf of the World Council of Anthropological Associations. Contesting Anglo-American Anthropological hegemony in publication Dr Gordon Mathews (The Chinese University of Hong Kong) Anthropologists across the globe are being penalized for not publishing in ISI top-ranked journals, which are usually American or British. This paper explores different ways in which international anthropologists may attempt to break this Anglo-American stranglehold. New hegemonic strategies in publication: research quality evaluation and corporate journals Prof Thomas Reuter (University of Melbourne) Many government have established systems for ranking journals in terms of their impact on the eld. We need to expose how such ranking systems increase hierarchy in an international publishing world that is already full of disparities, between the core and periphery of power/knowledge. Combating hegemony or leveling hierarchy in the production of anthropological journals worldwide Dr Vesna Vucinic-Neskovic (University of Belgrade) Starting from the assumption that each journal serves to the needs of a particular scholarly community, the anthropology journals at three levels of generality and status are considered. The question of the ways the articles are solicited, reviewed, edited, and published, are discussed in light of the targeted authors and dynamics of their professional advancement on the national, regional, and international level.
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Solving the anthropological double-standard: the role of technology in overcoming the Euro-American hegemony over knowledge Mr Gaurav Murgai (The Chinese University of Hong Kong) This paper discusses how technology, such as the Internet, may be used to overcome the Euro-American hegemony over what is published and read by anthropologists. Linkage between polyglot anthropology and publishing in India: step towards a solution Prof Ravindra Jain (Jawaharlal Nehru University) It is well known that there is both hegemony and dominance in the publication of anthropological works in the globalized world of today. I shall not repeat the many signicant and relevant observations by my co-panelists. Rather I suggest a small step towards a possible and feasible concrete way out of this impasse based on my knowledge of and participation in an enterprise based in India.
P12 The aesthetics of suicide

Convenor: Dr Tom Widger (University of Sussex) Thu 5th Apr, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 CSLG Conference Room Suicide is receiving increasing anthropological attention in South Asia (Staples 2012), as well as around the globe (Staples & Widger forthcoming). This panel explores the aesthetics of suicide: the various ways in which different visual portrayals of suicidal behaviour shape popular or scholarly understandings, and how such portrayals relate with the aesthetics of bodies, societies, and their problems more generally. While suicide is often understood as a problem of the mind, it is primarily a problem of the body. All suicidal acts begin and end with the material body: non-fatal self-harm may be destructive of only one part of the body; self-inicted death may destroy the totality of the body. But in either case, it
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is the physicality of the act that denes such behaviour. How do acts of selfharm relate to other kinds of body modication, and interplay with notions of beauty and disgurement? But the aesthetics of suicide extend well beyond the body. Rich traditions of suicide representations exist across art forms. Both old and new forms of news media, from television to Twitter, have the power to rapidly disseminate depictions of suicide, most recently leading to political revolution in Tunisia. Graphic depictions of suicide rates have since Durkheim been used to say something about the wellbeing of nations, encouraging forms of humanitarian assistance. In what ways might images of suicide and suicides images create suicide as human problem, across different places and epochs? Papers are invited that explore the aesthetics of suicide from these or similar angles. Farmer suicides: state narratives and representation in popular culture Mr Nanda Kishore Kannuri (Public Health Foundation of India); Dr Sushrut Jadhav (University College London) This paper problematizes the States position on farmer suicides. State narratives most often conate the phenomenon to statistics through creation of categories like genuine farmer suicides. State categorization operates through various criteria of exclusion. Apart from analyzing the States framework for classication of farmers death as suicides, we explore the aesthetics of representations of farmers suicides in popular culture. Administrating death: changing meaning(s) of suicide at the intersection of law, medicine and development discourse in India Ms Meghana Rao (University of Toronto) Attempt to suicide is a criminal offense in India (Sec 309 IPC). There have been several efforts among experts from law and medicine to decriminalize suicide and address it as a medical problem. The question of affect, which is integral to the act of suicide is absent from these discussions. My paper will study the implications of these changes and the role of affect in challenging the prominent medical discourse around suicide in India.
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Passing the buck: suicide, shame and the shifting of status in southern Sri Lanka Mr Maurice Said (Durham University) This paper looks at the effects of youth suicides on kin networks and shows how youth suicides act as a form of symbolic violence, playing an integral role in local denitions of shame and moral integrity, as well as acting as a tool for the shifting of status. Colonial encounters with the suicidal other: the British in Ceylon Dr Tom Widger (University of Sussex) This paper explores British encounters with the Ceylonese suicidal other, and discusses how colonial representations of suicide came to shape understandings and practices of suicidal behaviour in the local population. The (un)certain variation: the Palestinian artistic variation on suicide bombing Dr Esmail Nashif (Ben-Gurion University) This presentation aims to explore the manners through which Palestinian video artworks expose aspects of the hidden social contradictions of the colonial context in Palestine. It will do this by presenting Sharif Wakeds To Be Continued. This video, I will claim, tries to expose aesthetically the contradictory aspects of suicide bombing in Palestine.
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P13
Arts of memory: skilful practices of living history

Convenor: Mr Safet Hadzimuhamedovic (Goldsmiths, University of London) Thu 5th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 CSSS Committee Room No.013, Ground Floor, SSS-II What are the particular artful practices which preserve knowledge across temporal and spatial boundaries? How is past learnt and lived in specic contexts? This panel invites papers which expand the notion of art to include the lived mnemotehnics, whether embodied or consciously (re)produced. Specic examples of tangible and intangible arts of memory may be informed, inter alia, by discussions of politics, religion, oral and written histories, importance of place and sense of belonging, materiality, cultural destruction and arts initiatives. Knowledge survives despite obstacles and violence of grand narratives. It is channelled through human and non-human agencies, in practices, places, artefacts, images, sounds and smells. As a cultural process, memory also becomes modied (and commodied), reappropriated and contested. It may be unconsciously essential to daily practices, but at times it is the silent language of resistance or at the forefront of social changes. Explorations into these phenomena, usually scattered amongst disciplines, are grouped here to build upon the notions of art, investigate the different modes of remembrance and understand their role in personal and communal histories. This panel invites interdisciplinary approaches to the arts of memory, and encourages analyses of specic and contextualised examples. Discussant: Vanja Hamzic (Kings College London)
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Circumambulation and the embodied practice of memory of the Rgya nag ma Ni stones in Yushu Mr Timothy Thurston (The Ohio State University) This paper examines the evolving practices of Tibetan mani stone carvers and worshippers who circumambulate the Rgya nag mani pile in Western Chinas Yushu prefecture, and the ways that they have incorporated the memory of this violent past into the embodied memory of religious performance. Folk Performances and forms of public memory Dr Indira Chowdhury (Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology) Taking as a starting point a folk song by a Patachitrakar (a folk singer and scroll-painter who performs the story by singing and pointing to the scroll), this paper will look at the ways in which historical memory is represented in such traditional and timeless forms. I argue that we can only understand these forms of memory if we recognize the active and living intersection between ancient and modern worlds. Weaving the threat of memory: war rugs and the memorialisation of war in Afghanistan Dr Sophia Milosevic Bijleveld This study seeks to understand the articulation of war rugs as a production of memory in Afghanistan. This traditional craft has been re-interpreted by women, to include powerful imagery of war, thus conveying the interpretation of the past by a subaltern group, marginalised in the memory creation process. Remembering the unseen: images of heaven and earth in the Bosnian mosque Dr Amra Hadzimuhamedovic (International University of Sarajevo) This paper relates some representations of God, Heaven, holy places and prophets in Bosnian mosques to their potential reading as iconoclastic mnemonic devices. They depict the origins of reconstructive human nature: a need to establish the image of the inwardly perceived spiritual homeland as the authenticity criterion.
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Telling lives: the framing and reception of narratives in Yugoslav refugee families Ms Spela Drnovsek Zorko The transmission of memory in families implies a certain intimacy that can be juxtaposed on the wide brush strokes of grand narrative. But how can we approach the issue of creativity in these stories? I ask how children of refugees receive, interpret, and discuss parental narratives of Yugoslavia. Mapping Berlin: memories in the present moment Ms Holly Gilbert (The British Library) Photography is inextricably linked with loss and memory. The moment captured in a photograph is over as soon as the shutter closes and the enduring picture reminds us of this. My visual project uses photography to investigate how memories of the past can impact on our experience of the present. cartographical spaces of memory: between arts and lived experience Prof Kathleen Coessens (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) Humans link experience and space, memory and maps, identity and place. Cartographical expressions, both in life and art, create lines of remembrance and become part of identity and the own narrative of life. At the same time cartographies of power also erase remembrance and rewrite history. Production of social memories in the making of present and interpreting the past: narratives of an abolished labour institution in a highland region of Kerala, India Dr Vinod C.P. (Indira Gandi National Open University, New Delhi) Social memories are products of present while interpreting the past. Individuals use social memories in the reexive moments of their everyday living according to the structural demands stemming out of their multilevel social positioning and identities. This paper looks into the art of social memories around an `abolished labour institution called vallippani in a multiethnic village of highland Kerala region.
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Hierarchy, history and performance: critical comments on a nonbrahminical ritual Dr Cybil K V This paper explores how in the historiography of Kerala the performance of a particular ritual excludes itself from historiography of certain forms while remaining open to certain others Fiber-mnemonics Annika Capeln (Lund University) This paper explores ethnograhpically how wollen ber gures and recongures modes of rememberance. It suggests that ber, as it is skillfully worked and transformed, points in different directions of memory, and that this in turn affects emergent values in art and science. In and out of time: skilled memory, narratives performances and the construction of value among artisans in Old Delhi Dr Mira Mohsini (Goldsmiths) In this paper I discuss the use of different temporal frameworks in which narrative performances are enacted by artisans. I argue that these instances of skilled memory serve to dene meanings of value in artisans conceptions work and craftsmanship.
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P14
Social sense and embodied sensibility at the cinema: towards an aesthetics of lm-going
Convenor: Dr Stephen Hughes (SOAS) Thu 5th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium This panel invites participants to consider how the shared material spaces and embodied practices of lm viewing contribute to understanding the social dimension of cinema. In order to do this the panel proposes to go beyond the now common Kantian association of aesthetics with art, to interrogate an older and broader Aristotelian notion of aesthetics as the embodied sensual perception of the world as a way rethinking the relationships between popular lm and its audiences. While lm studies approaches have used the notion of spectatorship to theorize how lm viewers are constituted and positioned by the textual aspects of lms, this panel will instead consider how the institutions, practices and material spaces of lm exhibition help to articulate sensual and social experience of lm as a shared performative encounter. From an anthropological perspective the study of how lms address their spectators must also coincide with how audiences are constituted through the social space and embodied sensibility of lm viewing. Based on ethnographic research at sites of lm exhibition invited panellists will cover such topics as cinema architecture, the emergence of the multiplex cinema, the gendered and class organization of space and seating arrangements, and dcor amongst other related issues. Though the panellists already contacted will focus on South Asia, we are open to contributors with other regional interests. Discussant: Lotte Hoek Going to the movies at home and abroad Dr Anjali Gera Roy (IIT Kharagpur) Viewing cinema as a socially embedded set of practices, this paper traces the history of lm exhibition in Singapore from the colonial to postcolonial
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Singapore and the global city of Singapore today to demonstrate the social centrality of Indian cinema for Singapores diverse ethnicities. Watching Bhojpuri cinema with the indecent crowds in decrepit single-screen theatres: ethics of space, image and spectatorship versus aesthetics of homosocial masculinity Mr Akshaya Kumar This presentation tries to comprehend the aesthetics of lm-going in watching Bhojpuri cinema at the intersection of vulgarily and masculinity, in an abandoned space that is rejected as much as it rejects through its performative embodiment of a sensibility in tension with popular notions of cinema spectatorship. At a tent-theatre near you: exploring shared ritualistic viewing practices during the annual visits of traveling cinemas in Maharashtra Miss Shirley Abraham This paper explores the material, institutional and social dynamics in the annual settlement of cinema created in rural Maharashtra,and the tensions that shape these encounters. It will also examine how shared audience practices have constructed a distinct way of viewing and visualising lms here. Formations of lm-spectators as devotees Dr Uma Bhrugubanda (The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad) The spectator of the Telugu mythologicals and devotional cinema seems to be both a lm-spectator and a devotee. This paper argues that an anthropology of the shifts in, and diversity of, the embodied practices of Telugu lm-makers and viewers helps us understand the complex intersections between cinema and religious practice. Family movie-going, sociality and the negotiation of public settings Dr Lakshmi Srinivas (University of Massachusetts, Boston) Based on ethnographic eld research in India and the United States this paper examines the lived experience and sociability which shapes cinemagoing for
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the multigenerational family. I focus on the embodied and social practices which constitute the event and accomplish the family cinema outing, the ways in which audiences actively negotiate public settings. The paper raises questions for a cross-cultural understanding of cinema as public leisure. Automobility: architecture and cosmopolitanism in Chanakya Ms Ipsita Sahu The paper examines the auratic presence of the Chanakya theatre in the city of New Delhi.The paper will particularly focus on the architectural aspect of the experience of lm- going and look at how it provided a cosmopolitan identity to the audience of Chanakya. The spatial aesthetic of the multiplex Dr Adrian Mabbott Athique (Waikato) Multiplex theatres, like their single-screen predecessors, have become key sites in the long-running struggle over cultural legitimacy and the right to public space in Indian cities. This paper will provide a critical account of the spatial aesthetics articulated by this new leisure architecture. What might we learn from a historical phenomenology of lm going in colonial south India? Dr Stephen Hughes (SOAS) This paper considers a possible outline for a historical phenomenology of lm going in the cinema halls of Madras during the early decades of the 20th century. The paper re-evaluate historical materials about the early institutions, practices and material spaces of lm exhibition as a way of contemplating the embodied sensual and social experience of lm going. Film as infrastructure: information, circulation and exhibition practices in colonial and independent India, 1920s-1950s Prof Ravi Vasudevan This paper is part of a project to explore the truly remarkable elaboration of lm as an infrastructure of information, communication and exhibition in India in the rst half of the twentieth century. The aim is to research the policies,
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technologies, patterns of consumption, and the geographies of circulation and exhibition through which lm acquired this presence.
P15 In-between ction and non-ction: reections on the poetics of ethnography in lm and literature
Convenor: Mr Michelangelo Paganopoulos Thu 5th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 102, SAA-I In the past, the anthropology of art focused almost exclusively on collective works of traditional art, or on individual revisions of similar themes, traced back to the world of mythology and cosmology. In this sense, it distinguished between traditional (i.e. indigenous) works of art, from modern art, in terms of non-ction and ction respectively. Questions on authorship and modernism in anthropology challenged this distinction, highlighting a general afnity between ethnography and ction (Needham 1984, Clifford and Marcus 1986, Turner 1987, Deveraux and Hillman 1995, Foster 1996, Gell 1999, Thomas 2000 and 2003, MacClancy 2003, Paganopoulos 2007). This connection was further illustrated by ethnographic lm-makers, such as Maya Deren, Jean Rouge, and Robert Gardner, who blurred experiential avant-garde aesthetics with scientic principles of visual anthropology (Eaton 1979, Russell 1999, Barbash and Taylor 2007, Paganopoulos 2011). In respect to widening the scope of ethnographic theory, the papers proposed for this panel highlight the afnity between ethnography and ction, in order to articulate an anthropological perspective towards ction. Instead of avoiding the question of subjectivity, the panel will investigate the charismatic auteur as an ethnographer, a poet, a lmmaker, a traveller, or simply a participant observer (a role often avoided to be acknowledged). By comparatively using illustrations taken from monographs and novels, documentaries and lms from across the globe, the aim is to highlight some of the challenges raised in the path towards an anthropology of ction, including questions of personal experience and
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aesthetics, participation and perception, illusion and disillusionment, as the subjective means for articulating a political vision towards a diverse world society. Robert Gardners Forest of bliss: potentials of ethnographic lm beyond objectivism and deconstruction Prof Norbert Schmitz (Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts and Design) The lecture is about Robert Gardners Forest of bliss. The lm focuses on the problems of the relation between classical ethnograc objectivism and the potential of experimental articial documentary lm strategies in the perspective of an critical postmodern epistemology. Reecting on poetics of ethnography in literature Miss Prarthana Saikia (University of Delhi) Anthropological methods have been used by many ction writers to get a detailed account of their literary theme. Present focus in the eld of anthropological methodology is the way new anthropology is coming up reexively. We have anthropologists presenting their eld data in a ctional form. The representation of the data changes as the practices change accordingly with the position of the narrator. The paper tries to reect upon these issues and to bring out subjective understanding of this theme. Understanding multinational corporate culture in India through ction: an anthropological study Dr Geetika Ranjan (North Eastern Hill University) Anthropological analysis of two works of ction on corporate culture in India argues the ctional representation of a culture built on the pedestal of macro economic growth but inuencing other integrated , non separable dimensions of life. The construction of disability in popular Hindi cinema: an exploration of select lms Dr Shubhangi Vaidya (Indira Gandhi National Open University) The paper explores the construction of the disability experience in mainstream
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Hindi cinema through an examination of three lms, ;Black (2005),Taare Zameen Par(2007) and My name is Khan(2010)and attempts to show how global discourses of disablity intersect with local understandings,thus recasting the subject in new and interesting ways.These lms shape and are shaped by changing understandings of disability and personhood in contemporary Indian society. Archiving a cultural idiom: lm, ction, biography, art and document Dr Surbhi Goel (Panjab University) The blurring of lines between ction, personal and artistic responses, Mani Kauls SIDDHESHWARI deed any genre, which is at once a monograph, a document as well as poetic articulation, almost a painting. Yet, it involves archiving of a cultural idiom that is an ongoing gesture rather than a framed text. Toms Gutirrez Alea: mapping the rise of subversive slave consciousnesses in his lm The Last Supper (1976) Ms Ira Vangipurapu (The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India) Toms Gutirrez Alea: Mapping of the rise of the slave consciousness in Cuba from the time of the historic sugar plantations to the Great Sugar Harvest of Cuba in 1970 in his lm, The Last Supper (1976) The ction of anthropology: content without audience Mr Filippo Spreaco (UCL) Anthropologys unsuccessful performance in delivering social messages beyond the academic walls is due the rejection of its own literary character. Subjectivity, imagination and narrative are overlooked due to the retention of an obsolete notion of social science, as todays anthropology denies its artistry and stages its rigour. Fiction: a cultural mirror Dr Manisha Sharma (Virginia Tech) The proposed paper will analyze the relationship between ethnography and ction from the point of view of a creative writer.
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The changing world of Satyajit Ray: anthropological reections on authorship and history Mr Michelangelo Paganopoulos This paper investigates the complementary relationship between the charismatic auteur and the role of the anthropologist in an ever-changing world, through the realist cinema and world vision of Satyajit Ray.
P16 Field and lm aesthetics: sensory anthropology and the texture of documentary lmmakers practice
Convenors: Ms Cathy Greenhalgh (University of the Arts, London); Dr Nina Sabnani (IIT Bombay); Prof Anjali Monteiro (Tata Institute of Social Sciences); Prof KP Jayasankar (Tata Institute of Social Sciences) Wed 4th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 101, SAA-I This panel seeks to identify aesthetics of practice as well as art form; characterized in affective relations, collaborative dynamics and felt knowledge between lmmaker and participants, particularly when craft or art is the subject (John-Steiner, 2000). Ethnographic lmmaking has distrusted aesthetic positioning, but following Ranciere (2004, 2006), aesthetics is political and some lmmakers integrate it with participants, environment, story, sense of place, weather phenomena, specic texture of objects and the vibrancy of material culture (Pinney and Thomas, 2001, Bennett, 2010, Ingold, 2011). Aesthetics can anchor identity and meaning, mobility and creativity through tacit or explicit aesthetics of organization (Strati, 1999), a texture of knowing in practice (Gherardi, 2006). This develops through the performativity of the lmmaking process, as much as tactical use of lm sound, cinematography, editing, animation or storytelling. Haptic visuality and affective regimes observed in experimental, intercultural documentary and diasporic storytelling try to enhance memory, or reclaim loss, via use of textural layering and shifting chronotopes (Marks,
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2000, Nacy, 2001, Rutherford, 2011). The corporeal aspect of lmmaking addresses the moment of perception as experienced event and material capture (MacDougall, 2006). The vitality of this encounter, if understood, holds potential to integrate technological skill and ecological concerns (Abram, 1996). We encourage papers which present lm or documentation of lm work in process; and explore how sensuous and affective dimensions of reexive or collaborative lm work and non-text oriented artist eldwork practices (Schneider and Wright, 2006), inuence aesthetics and could be theorized in a broader research ethics, politics and practice. Chair: Stephen Hughes (SOAS) Colonial India: why does it matter to contemporary aesthetics of (documentary) lm practice in India? Ms Giulia Battaglia (SOAS, University of London) This paper investigates how and why colonial lms matter to examine sensorial aspects of lmmaking in contemporary documentary practices in India. Drawing on concepts of cultural performance (Singer 1972) and lm event (Hughes 2010), I investigate the performative way in which factual lms entered colonial India. In doing this, I will connect the colonial lm experience to the way contemporary lmmakers are (re)thinking of the sensorial aspects of lmmaking and the way this rethinking is overlapping with emerging debate in anthropology about art and lm. Frenzy of bandwidths: documenting technology Ms Pallavi Paul (JNU) This paper seeks to map the technological moment of 1970s in India. Located in a politically volatile decade, I will try and infer the range of experiences that the arrival of analog video technology brought to documentary practice and the formative tensions it unleashed within it.
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We found love in a hopeless place: aesthetics, technology, body in amateur production Ms Namita A. Malhotra (Alternative Law Forum) This paper maps the range of production and aesthetics in amateur video and lm production that is brought to the surface by new modes of production and transmission. My interest is in a phenomenological and philosophical exploration (relying on works of Massumi, L.Marks, L.Williams, Deleuze) Going through the mill: lming a sensory historiography of the cotton industry Ms Cathy Greenhalgh (University of the Arts, London) This paper explores the dynamics of a sensory historiography material culture ethnography expressed through making the lm Cottonopolis (2012). It addresses questions and ethics of sensory representation, consequences of affect, mobility and performativity in the eld, and reexivity in research. Imagining transience Prof KP Jayasankar (Tata Institute of Social Sciences) This paper explores the strategies adopted by the authors in their work with the Su musical traditions of pastoral cultures in Kachchh, which attempts to embed in the cinematic text their embodied encounters with physical and cultural spaces that afrm frailty, transience and non-difference. Animated ethnography Dr Nina Sabnani (IIT Bombay) In this paper we examine the potential of animation lm as a way of representing and interpreting non verbal (sensorial) texts produced by participants, from within their aesthetic space. Using excerpts from The Stitches Speak (2009) we discuss how the collaboration between the lm maker and participants leads to the production of tactile experience.
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Sensorial resonance as a key reading tool into migrants experiences Dr Monica Heintz (University of Paris Ouest Nanterre) This paper asks whether and why experiences of absence and presence of temporary migrants living between two worlds is best rendered through visual media rather than through written texts.
P17 Jewellery as property, jewellery as aesthetics

Convenor: Dr Nilika Mehrotra (Jawaharlal Nehru University) Fri 6th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30 Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 102, SAA-I Jewellery has attracted the attention of anthropologists and archaeologists for its material and symbolic value in across cultures through time and space. Often symbolic of status distinctions, jewellery and lineage linkage has been marked in royal families. On the other hand poor families often invest in some form of jewels, to ensure liquid savings to be used in rainy days. In the South Asian context, gendered aspects are revealed in gold jewellery has been given to woman as part of dowry to ensure her share from natal property. Religious/ Cultural value of gold and silver inform its consumption than just their aesthetic value. In tribal communities and jewels made up of local products have been used long to demarcate material culture, gender and community identity. Jewellery has served dual function of providing social security as well decorating womens bodies. In global times, new interesting patterns are emerging through commercialisation and burgeoning of fashion industry. Interestingly collapse of aesthetic and material, modern and traditional is visible in gender, marriage and jewellery as sites of contestation and compromise. New setups of beauty and its accessorization through diamonds point to emerging global trends. Economic recession across the globe necessitates rethinking about assets other than land and shares. Innovation, Consumption and investment are manifest trends that inform the lasting value of jewellery and its gendered aspects. This panel invites papers around these issues.
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Jewellery and techno aesthetic revolution Dr Veena Yadava (Govt College , Nahar) Jewellery today has witnessed unconventional experimentation blending conservatism with modernity leading to emergence of universalised tastes rooted in individuality and human experience. Jewellery as symbolic of cultural identity: tradition and inuences Dr Charu Sawhney This paper explores the function of jewellery as symbolic of cultural identity and the changing trends in jewellery adornment among the people of Jammu and Kashmir. Tribal beads and emerging realities: ethno-history, gender and identity in a frontier state of India Dr Sarit Kumar Chaudhuri (Rajiv Gandhi University) The paper explores how people desire to beautify the body and how one accounts for differences in adornment and attire based on gender and for their changes through time and space? The jewellery trail: interface between the old and the new tradition Ms Imtirenla Longkumer (Jawaharlal Nehru University) Jewellery has moved beyond bones and feathers to gold and diamonds among the Aos of Nagaland. However, when occasion demands the traditional prevails. Gendered Prestations And Property: Gold, Aesthetics And Social Identity in India Dr Nilika Mehrotra (Jawaharlal Nehru University) This paper examines the cultural and economic aspects of gold jewellery in relation to gender, aesthetics and social identity construction in India
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P18
Framing the northeast: visual practices in Northeast India in the 19th and 20th centuries
Convenors: Dr Joy L.K. Pachuau (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India); Mr Debojyoti Das (School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)) Thu 5th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 002, SAA-II Much of the studies on Northeast India, few and far-between as they may be, are written textual narratives based on different forms of colonial records. An aspect that has not drawn as much interest is the representation of the Northeast visually. Visual representation came through photographs, museum displays of native artefacts and other objects of material culture. While the materiality of these objects was important to feed the people back home of the various races they encountered and subjugated, such objects also became an important medium through which cultural difference was established. Visuals, unlike the written text, present a far more communicative text to readers and observers. In the North East visuals became part of colonial ethnographic tradition since the 1870s as topographic surveys become intense to establish control over the frontier. The panel aims to look at various forms of representation and the tropes of visuality through which colonialism was experienced in the region and how colonial coercion was exercised based on racial segregation and ethnic formation of the tribe and non-tribe. In the post independence period these have become established legal categories and have manifested ethnic difference and the construction of the other- hill people as communities without history vis--vis the plains. Thus visual tropes have played a critical role in colonial and post independence knowledge production in the region that remains understudied from cross-disciplinary perspectives. The panel will bring together a set of innovative papers that will try to
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unpack visual politics through photography, museum displays, new media technologies and digital dissemination. Framing the colonial encounter?: a discussion of non-British pictorial sources of the Naga created during colonial times Mr Alban von Stockhausen (University of Vienna) The paper examines visual sources on the Naga created by non-British travellers during colonial times. It discusses how these collections differ from the materials collected by British Administrators, and introduces the contexts in which they were created. Visual anthropology and the knowledge of the other: representing colonial subjects through photography in Naga Hills Mr Debojyoti Das (School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)) The paper focuses on visual representation of the Nagas sourcing from the colonial archives, popular newspapers and illustrated dailies of the late 19th and early 20 century. The search for idyllic places and wild people: visualizing Nagas through the prism of colonial photography Dr A.S. Shimreiwung This paper interrogates the politics of gaze in the photographic recording of the Nagas by colonial ethnographers during the early part of 20th Century. Folk-knowledge, sacred landscape and visual anthropology Dr Nava Kishor Das (Anthropological Survey of India) Here, we intend to project, through visual projections, the indigenous perspectives of Naga Apatani tribes as spread in folk-oral worldview, sacred beliefs, folk knowledge of agriculture, and resulting symbiotic relationships, which proved an impartial picture. Authors presentation includes depiction of still photos from black and white era and a ten-minute ethnographic lm. Film depicts insiders perspective on agriculture system, sacred landscape and indigenous knowledge, and peoples agenda of protection of their culture and language.
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Capturing the savage and the civilized: Seeing through the lens of the American Baptist Mission Dr Suryasikha Pathak (Assam University) Missionary images of the native as primitive and savage was constructed earlier in their writings and later through photographs. These photographs were sent home with letters, shown around and also published in missionary magazines and journals. They were evidence of the struggles of the mission and also results of such efforts. But they were also means to construct a dichotomy between the convert and the heathen and hence between the civilized and the savage. Framing indigeneity and environmentalism among the Lepchas of Sikkim, India Dr Vibha Arora (The Indian Institute of Technology Delhi) This paper relates the photographs taken by some British Political Ofcers of Sikkim and travellers in the 19th and 20th century with the contemporary visual representations of the Lepcha tribe residing in Himalayan Sikkim. An analysis of these visual representations traces the continuities and discontinuities in the imaging and imagining of the Lepchas. Displayed carcasses: a visual impact of Shillongs butchery stalls Dr Quinbala Marak (North-Eastern Hill University) Shillong the capital of the state of Meghalaya welcomes visitors into the city with butchery stalls that display carcasses of butchered animals. The rst reaction of any foreigner is one of revulsion. What is the idea behind such a show? Is it for reasons of aesthetics and functionality? Or, is it for more? This paper will look into the politics behind such an exhibit. Representations of biodiversity in Northeast India Ms Ambika Aiyadurai (National University of Singapore) This paper discusses how conservationists engage with visual representations to produce specic forms of knowledge. I argue that these representations not only produce new meanings of the northeast but are also problematic as an approach to conservation.
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Imagining the nation in Assamese cinema (1930s-1970s) Mr Anirban Baishya This paper examines the relationship of Assamese cinema from the 1930s to the 1970s with the role of the middle class. Through this it seeks to explore the articulation of an idea of the nationboth actively through cinematic practice, and retroactively, through the writing about Assamese cinema.
P19 Anthropology in the contemporary artworld

Convenors: Dr Clare Harris (University of Oxford); Dr Kavita Singh (Jawaharlal Nehru University); Prof Christiane Brosius (Karl Jaspers Centre of Advanced Transcultural Studies) Wed 4th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 102, SAA-I Since the 1960s the artworld has provided fertile territory for anthropological research because it encompasses physical spaces and institutions galleries, museums, art fairs, the art market as well as the individuals who visit and control them: artists, art dealers, critics, curators, collectors and viewers. However, most studies have yet to tackle the contemporary artworld: a world that has expanded enormously in the last two decades in terms of where it operates, the number of people it engages and the symbolic and economic capital that it generates. How should we address these recent developments? Are new theories and methods required in order to analyse them anthropologically? How do local and global factors intersect in this highly uid and networked terrain? The global artworld is now spoken of as a transnational and transcultural domain, traversed by the many nomadic gures who make, view, critique and purchase artworks. But it could also be said to have fostered the production of art made anywhere, so long as it conforms to global tastes. Beneath the rhetoric of a new universal aesthetic, the artworld remains a space of inclusions and exclusions, hierarchies and asymmetries. Should it therefore be characterised as another of Augs non-places of super-modernity or as a transcultural contact zone (Pratt, Clifford) and site of contestation? Since
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the ASA conference 2012 will be held in Delhi, one of the centres of the burgeoning contemporary artworld, we are keen to solicit papers focusing on Asia, but we also welcome contributions concerning other regions. Trouble in Shangri-La: Tibetan artists travels in the global contemporary artworld Dr Clare Harris (University of Oxford) This paper addresses the panel theme by examining a recent entry in the international artworld: Tibetan Contemporary Art. It questions the rhetoric of global contemporary art and investigates how the logic of particular artworld locations can be negotiated or not. Modes of marketing and commercialisation in contemporary Tibetan art M.A. Regina Hoefer (Bonn University) The lecture analyses how contemporary Tibetan art is marketed and which aspects constitute its success or failure. Examples of galleries and artists come from China, Tibet and the Western diaspora. Arts global stage: critical paradigms Dr Saloni Mathur (UCLA) This paper considers the intellectual challenges of the turn towards the global in contemporary art for the interdisciplinary practices of art history and anthropology. Articulating contemporary art in Iran: a view from two places Dr Leili Sreberny-Mohammadi In this paper I outline some preliminary themes explored through discussion with two contemporary art spaces inside Iran. Translocal art worlds in times of medialisation: Indias contemporary art world in transition Ms Jamila Adeli (Humboldt-University Berlin) To empirically study and theorize the deterritorialization and decentralization
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of the contemporary global art world, the recent changes have to be tackled from a local perspective. The contemporary Indian art world has become translocal and thus apt to investigate the impacts of globalization, liberalization and medialisation, and vice versa. Indias contemporary art on global highways Mrs Cathrine Bublatzky (Cluster of Exzellence Asia and Europe in a Global context) International survey exhibitions on contemporary art from India importantly shape the global mobility of agents and art objects in the international art world. With a focus on the Indian Highway exhibition, this paper will discuss the symbolic dimension of this mobility and asks how Anthropologists can approach the eld of contemporary art and the museum as a space of transcultural encounter. Ephemeral but eternal traces of Asia in the artworld Dr Fuyubi Nakamura (Institute for Art Anthropology, Tama Art University) This paper focuses on artists born in Asia who have moved between different countries and/or traditions. It explores how their uency as cultural translators in the global artworld is inuenced by interactions between the dynamics of local and global, and of traditional and modern. Anish Kapoor and his interpreters Dr Denis Vidal (IRD/Paris Diderot/EHESS) taking as a case study Anish Kapoor and his work, I will show how the gure of the great artist and of the universal artist, may-be redened and sustained in the contemporary world, sometimes with the help of the very people that one rather associates with the critique of such categories. Crossing the borders: Issues and input of a sociology of art perspective for a better understanding of artworks transcultural circulation Miss Lela Baracchini (University of Basel) One of the main issues regarding an anthropology of contemporary art productions concerns the ability to take into account the intercultural
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viewpoints that are crossing it. Using the example of contemporary San art, this paper offers to study what heuristic contributions can bring the use of sociology of art. Art festivals as laboratories of the postcolonial predicament in Africa Prof Tobias Wendl (Free University Berlin) As part and parcel of a transnationally connected postcolonial culture industry, art festivals have played a crucial role in shaping identities in the fabric of local and global cultural ows and in negotiating the contradictions of colonial pasts and a postcolonial present. The festivals under study in my paper include FESMAN (Dakar 1966), PANAF (Algiers 1969) FESTAC (Lagos 1977) the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale (1997) and the 1st Luanda Trienal (2006).
P20 Screening India through digital imagemaking

Convenors: Ms Giulia Battaglia (SOAS, University of London); Dr Paolo Favero (Lisbon University Institute (IUL)) Thu 5th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 101, SAA-I This panel seeks to initiate a dialogue between anthropologists interested in digital visual culture and artists entrenched in digital practices in India. Contemporary (visual but not only) anthropology is exploring the ways in which digital platforms and practices are critically intervening in the customary (linear) format of ethnographic lmmaking and also the ways in which art and lm do intersect with anthropological interests. Such new perspectives aim at going beyond the ethnographic lm tradition and are challenging conventional understandings regarding the meaning of visual anthropology as well as that of images at large. In parallel to this, India has recently witnessed to a boom of innovative digital experimentations. Ranging from the renowned activities of the Raqs Media Collective (New Delhi), to the experimental digital annotation of Pad.
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ma (Berlin-Mumbai-Bangalore), the open space for media(tion) of Khetro (Kolkata) digital practices are mushrooming across the country offering a critical revision to the representations and forms that have characterised conventional documentary lmmaking. Positioning ourselves in the interstices between art, lm and anthropology in the context of digital image-making, in this panel we encourage both practitioners and scholars to contribute with presentations which address issues concerning digital practices in contemporary India. Are such practices today offering novel ways of representing India? Are these practices subversive and marginal or are they becoming in a way a new form of hegemony? In particular, we are interested in exploring the triangular relationship between technology, aesthetics and politics. Multimedia or visual contributions are particularly welcome. Reecting upon the predicament of digital image-making in South Asia Dr Paolo Favero (Lisbon University Institute (IUL)); Ms Giulia Battaglia (SOAS, University of London) This paper aims to set the eld for a number of theoretical reections regarding the intersection between digital image-making and lm in the South Asian context. To what extent can the essence of digital images inuence the practices of lming and image-making at large? What are the politics of this process? How do such aspects reect themselves upon the specicities of the South Asian context? Interruptions in culture and history: media based art of(f) India Mr Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi (Jawaharlal Nehru University) By thinking through the concept of media interruption into the eld of culture and its history this paper shall broadly focus on institutions such as Sarai and KHOJ (International Artists Association) in New Delhi looking at them as active laboratories of artistic intervention. It further looks at its associated networks such as Raqs Media Collective (Sarai) based in Delhi and CAMP (KHOJ) based in Mumbai. The central focus of the paper would be specically highlighting the conceptual methodologies of these institutions and collectives. Further, the paper speaks of the directions in which these technologically driven interruptions pushed the horizons of cultural practice in India.
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Regeneration and multiplicity Dr Soudhamini Venkatnarayanan If Benjamin bemoaned the loss of aura and the original with mechanical reproduction, with the digital the copy too is dead, giving way to a slew of originals and even a new Originary. Querying the popular: digital photographic practices and trick photography of seventies Miss Sameena Siddiqui (SAA, JNU, Delhi) Theory w/out words Mr Matti Pohjonen (School or Oriental and African Studies); Mr Soumyadeep Paul (Breach Candy Group) Drawing on recent experiences in digital guerilla lm making and documentary lm, the paper looks at the challenges and promises creative experimentation and practice-based research holds for visual anthropological work interested in challenging classical modes of representation in India. 101 circles and 2 straight lines Mr Andy Lawrence (University of Manchester) This paper will asses the contribution made by lm-makers to anthropological knowledge and explore how human experience of birth and death may challenge a theoretical understanding of life. I will look specically at paradox and theory in my lm, The One And The Many, about Tantrism in India. Seeing double: is Old Delhi Modern? Mr Karl Mendonca (University of California, Santa Cruz) Scenes from Old Delhi is a short experimental lm that re-presents Old Delhi through a series of encounters. This paper uses the lm as a topic and resource to discuss the ethics of producing work for a transnational audience and the concept of alternative modernities.
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Citizen video producers changing Indian media Ms Paromita Pain (University of Southern California) Hundreds of citizens from disadvantaged communities are now using video cameras to report on issues that affect them and their neighbours. With training from the Video Volunteers, local video producers are changing the dominant model of media in the country to make it more democratic and diverse. The uid identity of the other: Italian documentaries on India Prof Maysa Gabrielli The paper will discuss and analyse a given corpus of lms, from the point of view of the encounter between the Italian artist and the people of India. Weaving lms, shooting cotton: the cinema making fabric of Malegaon Mr Subhashim Goswami (Delhi School of Economics) This paper in talking about the cinema making impetus of a working class town would like to argue how local working class cinema is as much a question of work as a lm making aesthetic and one cannot separate the two.
P21 Music, digital media, and ontological politics: from piracy to intellectual property
Convenors: Dr Aditi Deo (University of Oxford); Prof Georgina Born (Oxford University) Thu 5th Apr, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 SIS Appadurai Committee Room Digital technologies are rapidly being adopted across the world for the production, distribution, and consumption of music, transforming how music is made and experienced, how it is propertized and commoditized, and how it is affectively imbued. The transposability of musical sounds and bytes of data in the digital age, and its implications for musical creativity and circulation, raise ontological questions about music as expressive culture and
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inaugurate an ontological politics concerned with how different agents and institutions conceive of and operationalize music as intellectual property. In light of debates over the limitations of the paradigm of piracy (Hayden, Larkin, Liang, Sundaram), this panel examines how notions of music as intellectual property are being mediated by digital technologies in a range of locales. Papers will focus ethnographically on the role of digital technologies in solidifying, challenging, and/or fracturing existing legal and vernacular conceptions of music as property. Presenters will excavate propertizing impulses in the digital distribution of popular musics, the digital recording and archiving of vernacular musics, and various manifestations of extra-legal music creation and circulation (or piracy) in diverse parts of the world, as well as exploring tactical resistance to these developments. Turning to practices embedded in everyday life to understand how music is propertizedas art, commodity, or heritagewill allow us critically to address questions of authorship, ownership, the nature of the musical object and of the musical commons, piracy and the imputation of illegality in transacting music, and other pressing questions as they arise in digital contexts. Discussant: Ravi Sundarum, Lawrence Liang M-commerce and the (re)making of the music industry in Kenya Dr Andrew Eisenberg (University of Oxford) This paper explores emerging m-commerce business models in the Kenyan music industry, how they are being developed and implemented, and the responses they are engendering from those involved in reforming Kenyas music copyright law and royalty collection protocols. Mobile media and piracy in India Ms Neha Kumar (UC Berkeley) Our paper discusses the consumption of digital music on the increasingly ubiquitous multimedia-enabled mobile phone platform, largely enabled by a rich infrastructure of media piracy. The users we focus on come from lowincome households in three sites located in rural, semi-urban, and urban India.
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The pirate DJ Ms Vebhuti Duggal (Jawaharlal Nehru University) This paper shall attempt to look at the gure of the neighbourhood DJs of Delhi. This gure is one that is embedded within the structures of aspiration that pirate culture participates in. Pirate state: music circulation in late socialist Cuba Dr Alexandrine Boudreult-Fournier (The University of Oxford) This paper proposes an original understanding of digital music piracy when the state is complicit in practices understood, outside Cuba, as legally problematic. What is music? Ontological politics of experimental digital music in the UK Prof Georgina Born (Oxford University) With reference to eldwork on experimental digital music scenes in Britain, and following Humphrey and Verdery (2004), I address how intellectual property norms are reconceptualized in novel practices across a spate of genres, noting the diverse ontological politics that they entail. Folk music in the digital realm: shared commons or cultural property Dr Aditi Deo (University of Oxford) Drawing upon ethnographic research of audio-visual archiving and commercial publication of folk music in India, this paper explores how digital technologies are mediating the ontology of folk music as part of public commons, and as cultural commodity. Music in protest, music as property Dr Arjun Ghosh (Indian Institute of Technology Delhi) Music for protest is often collectively created and shared and reused freely. This paper studies the implications of the cultures of protest music for the practice of intellectual property.
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P22 Taste
Convenor: Dr Will Tuladhar-Douglas (University of Aberdeen) Wed 4th Apr, 17:00-18:30 Sankskrit Conference Room Traditional Indic medical texts draw careful links between specic savours, such as bitter or salty, and the efcacy of foods or medicines. Yet the perception of taste is a product of cultural training- the number and character of taste categories varies widely from culture to culture. A key Sanskrit term for intense aesthetic experience- rasa- refers both to the immediacy of gustatory experience and the discipline of exceptional discrimination. Nowhere is this more apparent than among gustatory elites such as sommeliers or the wholesalers of medical plants, whose tongues decide the worth of substances upon which less sensitive lives and livelihoods depend. In this panel we invite contributions that link the disciplining of the taste buds, aesthetic evaluation of ingested substances, and the power that comes from expertise. The cosmopolitan and the regional: understanding Bengali cuisine Dr Utsa Ray Making a claim to a Bengali cuisine was integral to the project of selffashioning of the middle-class in colonial Bengal. This paper argues that the lack of commercialization of Bengali cuisine actually became a marker of its cultural capital that went into the making of the Bengali middle-class. Remember the old masters: the musical and social practices of memory in Hindustani music milieu Miss Ingrid Le Gargasson (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) Focusing on the context of Hindustani music tradition and its transmission, I propose to examine the relationship of music, memory and history.
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Taste guided therapy in traditional Indian system of medicine Dr Eugene Wilson (Central Council for Research in Siddha) Food as well as medicine is identied by six tastes namely sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent and astringent. Taste plays a vital role in determining the diet regimen. Moreover, the taste of a drug / formulation is considered in selecting the specic formula/therapy. In addition, taste is mandatory for identication of raw drugs and quality control. Translating substances: brokering sensory agreement across boundaries Dr Will Tuladhar-Douglas (University of Aberdeen) The Bania of Kathmandu are expert wholesalers of materia medica whose real skill is negotiating sensory agreement across cultural boundaries.
P23 Elite art in an age of populism: sowing monocultures?

Convenors: Miss Emilia Terracciano (Courtauld Institute of Art); Dr Deborah Swallow (Courtauld Institute of Art); Prof Julian Stallabrass (Courtauld Institute) Fri 6th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30 Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium Today, most artists would admit that globalisation has penetrated all sectors of society, including that of contemporary art. But with the advent of globalisation we have witnessed the patronisation of multicultural work, t for the enjoyment of predominantly western viewers. Over the past two decades, there has been a growing debate on whether a Biennale Aesthetic is leading to the production of glossy work which slots easily into a novel consumerist orientalism. Are artists providing viewers both at home and abroad reassurance that the world is becoming more comfortably monocultural? Although in the West some of the most successful boom art appealed to popular taste- Hirst, Koons, Murakami, Kapoor and Gupta being the major gures; others oated an art world reputation out of popular
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approbation, and this was especially true of Banksy and other street artists. Do we see here a reworking and intensication of a postmodern populism? And if so, does it pose a deeper threat to elite culture than previously? In an age when there are millions of cultural producers with a potentially global audience, how do the art world and the museum respond? The panel welcomes papers which explore the fading of national and local dominance and traditions in art in the light of a new global mega-culture built in part on social networking sites. Taking art back: select artistic offensives, tactics and strategies Ms Annie Paul (University of the West Indies) The paper will discuss the rise of new forms of artistic practice as exemplied by Alice Yard and Australian artist Hazel Dooney, who sideline the traditional Gallery-Dealer art circuit by using social media and blogging platforms. Exhibiting India: the opportunity cost of a global art history Mr Rattanamol Singh Johal The paper examines recent exhibitions of contemporary art from the Indian subcontinent on the global stage and suggests that the resulting democratisation and homogenisation of works is the price paid for the blurring of borders in conguring a Global art history through exhibitions. La n des voyages: some recent developments in Indian ne art photography Miss Emilia Terracciano (Courtauld Institute of Art) The paper explores recent documentary photographic trends that have emerged in India that attempt to discard both history and by extension, ethnic slotting. Being glocal? Art in the age of the survey Ms Zehra Jumabhoy (Courtauld Institute of Art, London) The paper will analyze four concepts which swim below the surface of the contemporary Indian art survey: the national, international, global and local. Do the terms complement or compete with each other?
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All that is solid melts into air: Indian contemporary art in global times Dr Arshiya Lokhandwala (Lakeeren Art Gallery) This paper draws and expands on the key issues explored in the exhibition of the same title All That Is Solid Melts into Air: Indian Contemporary Art in Global Times held in Mumbai in December 2010. Elite art in an age of populism Prof Julian Stallabrass (Courtauld Institute) How do social media, the popularisation of the museum and the changing character of art collecting put pressure on the character of elite culture? This paper examines a new wave of transnational populism in contemporary art.
P24 Accommodating the primordial: the function of myth in a globalising world

Convenor: Dr Leon Burnett (University of Essex) Fri 6th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30 CSSS Committee Room No.013, Ground Floor, SSS-II Myth informs and invigorates the arts. It provides a basis for an aesthetic appreciation of the world by engaging in a unique way with many of the most pressing global concerns. The operation of myth is best understood in its function as techne, that is to say there is always a practical aspect to the creation and transmission of myth, which grounds it in the cultural realia of the present moment, while it endeavours at the same time to reach back to an imagined original source to recover an awareness and an understanding of life that is archaic, sacred and ultimately irretrievable. Nevertheless, the attempt of myth to accommodate the primordial appeals directly to and draws upon the will of the community. The panel will explore specic instances from across the arts of what accommodating the primordial means. It will be concerned, at a theoretical level, with the question of what myth communicates and how it renews itself in order to underpin its interpretation of myth as fundamentally the property of the people.
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Aimer et mourir/Au pays qui te ressemble: representations of love and death in poetry and myth Dr Leon Burnett (University of Essex) Nothing is more central to the meaning of human existence than love and death, but just as fundamental is the urge to give artistic expression to these two primordial preoccupations. This paper considers how love and death have been represented across the ages as inter-related topoi. Deconstructing the Rama consciousness: appropriation of the Ramayana and its variations across India Mr Rohit Dutta Roy (Jadavpur University) This paper sees Rama consciousness and multiplicity of versions as inseparable, critiques political attempts at homogenization; analyzes changes in story and structure. It traces Buddhist and Jain versions, eulogizing Ravana, Ramas journey from Purushottama to divinity, Sitas characterizations. Accommodation of the primordial in Ra.One Dr Kopal Gautam (University of Essex) The repetition of the primordial theme of the defeat of evil by good in Hindi cinema indicates that mythical themes have the ability to hark back to the past to redene the present. This paper will analyse the signicance of the retrieval and representation of the myth of the defeat of Ravana by Rama in the lm Ra.One. Creating a new real-topia from the teachings of the ancient Maya: Mayanism and the reappropriation of myth Miss Suzanne Nolan This paper will explore how the myths of the Maya, of the creation of the world and the Gods, have been manipulated by the Mayanism community in order to react both against and with the modern, globalising world.
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P25
Transformations in contemporary South Asian ritual: From sacred action to public performance
Convenors: Prof Geoffrey Samuel (Cardiff University); Dr Santi Rozario (University of Tasmania) Thu 5th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 CSSS Class Room No.104, First Floor, SSS-II The panel will examine the evolution and transformation of large-scale public ritual performances in a variety of South Asian contexts. It includes three papers on a newly-created, State-sponsored ritual dance performance at Dochula in Bhutan, intended to memorialise a politically sensitive episode in recent Bhutanese history. The Dochula event is the most recent stage in a long history of appropriation of large-scale Tantric Buddhist ritual for State purposes, and involves complex and self-aware symbolic messages relating to religion, citizenship and national identity. The increasingly international and global context of the performances has also led to the heightening of the aesthetic dimension. Both organisers and participants are increasingly aware of this context, with Bhutanese ritual dance performances in particular developing a signicant tourist dimension. The remaining papers present case studies relating to India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, and the Gurung diaspora in Europe. All deal with recent transformations of public performance and State ritual, involving international and global connections, and we hope that the panel as a whole will provide the basis for a sophisticated theoretical analysis of these processes. Tibetan ritual dance as public performance and state ceremony: the evolution of the Tshe bcu in Bhutan and the 2011 Dochu La festival Prof Geoffrey Samuel (Cardiff University) The paper examines recent transformations of Tibetan ritual dance (cham) and attempts to assess its meaning in contemporary Bhutan. It also discusses a recent attempt to update and further transform the cham tradition in the context of the commemoration of a complex and problematic episode in
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modern Bhutanese history, the 2003 campaign of the Royal Bhutanese Army to drive out several Indian separatist groups which had set up encampments in southern Bhutan. Dance, ritual and thunder dragons: exploring cultural politics and national identities Dr Ann David (University of Roehampton) This paper compares elements of embodied Hindu ritual and Bhutanese Buddhist danced ritual in todays globalised conditions, questioning their place in public performance and asking whether they are still able to speak to todays cosmopolitan audiences in periods of rapid social, political and economic change. Benets and blessings: perceptions of Tibetan ritual dances (cham) in modern Bhutan Ms Dawn Collins The paper explores contemporary perceptions of historically attested benets and blessings accorded Tibetan ritual dances (cham) as they are currently experienced in Bhutan. It does so in terms of aesthetic choices, intent and appreciation, both in the context of a modern state commissioned cham, and of more traditional Bhutanese Tse bcu. On sacred ground: constructing an ancient tradition for Tibetan Buddhism in Spiti Ms Latika Gupta (Jawaharlal Nehru University) The paper explores the complex relationship between the Tashilhunpo monastery in Tibet and the Kye monastery in Spiti through the Chham, an annual performative Buddhist ritual.It studies the transformations that occur when the Chham is performed in non-sacral spaces and contexts. The state of theatre in Bhutan and the role of Happy Valley Theatre as an advocate of change Mr Tshering Dorji This presentation tells about the state of theatre in Bhutan. After giving an
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overview on the history of theater in Bhutan it will present the view of a theater companys struggles with contemporary modernization and development processes while trying to keep a balance between theatre as a creative art form for sustaining local traditions and as a means of advocacy for social change. Transformation of the cult of St Anthony of Padua in a popular centre of pilgrimage in rural Bangladesh Dr Santi Rozario (University of Tasmania) The paper examines the transformation of the cult of St Anthony in a popular centre of pilgrimage in rural Bangladesh. Christian and non-Christian devotees both make manots (vows) to St Anthony and take part in the annual festival. The paper discusses the rapid growth and transformation of the cult of St Anthony which has similarities to that of Muslim saints and Hindu deities in the region. Between the divine and demotic: the mela at Shergarh, Okara, Pakistan Dr Virinder Kalra (University of Manchester) The ve day mela of Daud Bandegi at Shergarh, Pakistan is an example of a public ritual that embodies the many disjuncutres in the social sphere, without resulting in conict. The contrasting rituals of Sunni, Shia and Punjabi are played out without resulting in tension even when at close quarters. Attukal Pongala: conation of sacred and secular in popular imagination and public culture Miss Darshana Sreedhar (Jawaharlal Nehru University) This paper attempts to ethnographically place the practice of Attukal pongala and the related rituals within the framework of popular participation and map out how the practice which was initially an intrinsic religious practice located inside the temple premises has now transcended spatially and in popular imagination the religiosity and emerged within a community-participatory mode of discourse.
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The performance of ritual identity among Gurungs in Europe Dr Sondra Hausner What kinds of ritual performance bring about a particular political stance? Which identities emerge in which settings, and what determines the preeminent category? This paper looks at Nepali Gurungs in Britain, for whom two opposing religious categories split an otherwise unied ethnic identity.
P26 Cultural dimensions of ecology

Convenor: Ms Hoineilhing Sitlhou (Hyderabad Central University) Fri 6th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30 Convention Centre Auditorium I Humankind social systems, culture, religious values and economic pattern grew around the land. This is especially true in the case of societies which are more dependent on nature or whose source of sustenance is immediately from the forest produce. Sociology and anthropology has as a discipline studied the interdependence between the concept of culture and ecology in diverse ways. Environmental inuence on the cultural life of the people has been widely studied. The ecology inuences not only human geographical locations and settings but also human relations, their mode of patterning everyday existence and practices. On the other hand, humankind also impact upon their surrounding nature. This can be of two extreme forms. Firstly, humankind acknowledges their dependency on nature by attributing various rituals to it as a means of appeasement or reciprocity, or organise collective action or movements with a cause to protect nature from the destructive tendencies of human beings in the name of development. Secondly, there are studies of the adverse effect of this relationship in which man impose and manipulate nature to his selsh gain. There are activities which lead to alienation of humans from nature like deforestations or the ramications of colonialism or the state. The panel welcomes paper which will throw more light in understanding the diverse ways in which one can study the discourse between culture and ecology in different parts of the world especially in societies which experiences colonial rule.
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Chair: Dr. Savyasaachi, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi Cultures and communities: the distinct life-worlds of peasants and forest-dwellers in Andhra Pradesh Mr Neredimalli Annavaram (University of Hyderabad) The Present paper proposes to examine the life-worlds of peasants and forestdwellers the communities who purely dependent upon, and are completely immersed themselves with, ecological sphere in which they work and sustain upon. The metropolitan in environmental narratives : nationalist agendas & the Changthang Landscape Ms Alka Sabharwal (Univeristy of Western Australia) The presence of the multivocality of environmental narratives in India adds nuanced understanding to the discourses between culture and ecology in India, and also informs the manner of its production, and its claims to ethical preeminence to a particular imagined constructed nature. Of guns, fences, and wire: experiencing forest governance in Wayanad, Kerala, South India Dr Ursula Muenster (Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich); Ms Suma Vishnudas This paper explores the ways in which indigenous communities in Wayanad, Kerala, South India, have experienced state control, law and forest governance over time. It shows how in this process human-forest relationships have been co-produced. Politics of ecology with relation to caste and community in the Kumaon hills of Uttarakhand Ms Shruti Joshi An inquiry into the manifestation of caste inequalities and hierarchies through multiple spaces of ecologythe everyday ecological spaces and the more universal forest spaces of the Kumaon region. The colonial aspects of the regions ecology will be juxtaposed against the ecology of the everyday.
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Political ecology of transhumance and change among the Bhotias of Kumaon, Uttarakhand Ms Nisthasri Awasthi (Jawaharlal Nehru University) The paper aims to comprehend and explore the practice of transhumance as it exists among the Bhotias of the Himalayas, with respect to present state policies and the attitude of the community. Culture and ecology in the hills of Northeast India Ms Hoineilhing Sitlhou (Hyderabad Central University); Ms Shruti Joshi The paper studies the social discourse between spirits and human as portrayed in the land rituals to understand the interdependence between humans and nature, and subsequently land and identity relationship in the Kuki Society. It will contribute to the study of culture ecology. Jhumming as dening feature of Kuki identity in Northeast India Dr Vibha Arora (The Indian Institute of Technology Delhi); Mr Ngamjahao Kipgen (IIT Delhi) Jhumming has traditionally been the basis of subsistence and practiced among the Kukis for the past few hundred years. Is it a form of sustainable landuse? We document and trace the continuities and discontinuities in jhumming practices in the contemporary period.
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P27
Cinema matters: the changing lm object in a globalizing world

Convenors: Ms Kuhu Tanvir; Ms Debjani Dutta (JNU); Miss Ramna Walia (JNU); Mr Shaunak Sen (JNU) Fri 6th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30 Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 101, SAA-I This panel proposes to map the changes in the cinematic object at a moment of ux when digital technologies and the experience of globalization are threatening to replace celluloid as the material of cinema. The contemporary as we know it today is marked by a proliferation of technology that has effected far reaching changes in the global landscape of media practices and institutions. As media technologies converge, cinema also undergoes a drastic shift not just in production but also in its exhibition, distribution and consumption. Digital platforms allow viewers the chance to manipulate and appropriate images, leading to new forms of sensuous exchange and virtual travel. This sensuous change alters the idea of cinematic materiality, as objects of everyday use and desire such as cell phones, television, and computers assume newer affective and symbolic charge on screen. The changing nature of cinematic circulation via the internet also alters the archive of cinema as evident in the way popular cultural memory gets stored on YouTube and other such sites. With the community of users at the centre of this ever-expanding archive, the history that emerges is not merely institutional, but encompasses more anecdotal forms of knowledge. The panel seeks to bring together diverse sites where cinemas transformation can be located. The sites can include lm practice, lm culture, the lm object and the lm archive. Techno-materiality in cinema: the skin of the televisual Mr Shaunak Sen (JNU) This paper attempts to chase the techno-material culture primarily in its movement through the cinematic. For this it focuses exclusively on the object of the Television and a larger predicative idea of televisuality.
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Screen substances: the mediatized object of the Korean Wave Ms Debjani Dutta (JNU) This paper charts the circulation of Korean Wave merchandise as it moves from the textual world of lms, TV and pop music to virtual and ofine networks. The new Marathi lm Dr Aarti Wani (Symbiosis College of Arts & Commerce) As the global trafc of ideas, images and objects lters into the Marathi sensorium, the new Marathi lm is the surface that registers, absorbs and reects its effects. This paper examines some of the textual strategies and tropes of this cinematic moment in Maharashtra. The materiality of memory: digital dispersion and the Bombay lm remake Miss Ramna Walia (JNU) This paper will trace the material displacement and virtual dispersion of the past object through the category of a remake in order to map the complexities of Bombay cinemas tryst with the technological transition from celluloid to the digital. Digital days: the unstable archive of cinema Ms Kuhu Tanvir This paper will argue that the shift from celluloid to digital changes the access and the archive of cinema. Unlike the traditional archive, this non-material archive is mobile as the lm-object and its paraphernalia move between users resulting in the creation of a network of archives. Re-thinking lm curatorial practice in India: a few examples Ms Ananya Parikh (JNU) This paper seeks to explore the shifting trends in lm curatorial projects vis-vis the changing nature of lm cultural and archival practices in India.
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P28
The aesthetics of governance

Convenors: Dr Maya Dodd; Dr Dalia Wahdan (Foundation for Liberal and Management Education) Thu 5th Apr, 08:30-10:30 SIS Appadurai Committee Room This panel will discuss the emerging aesthetics of democracy as (dis)played through spectacular narrations of corruption, the decentralization of opinions and the outbreak of popular mass movements aided and shaped by the advent of new media. Thematically, it opens debates on how the state structures public culture through governance and ownership of media; how citizens seek to activate dissent through varying technologies of witness; how diverse practices of governance and modes of state-civil society interactions emerge and how public cultures are impacted aesthetically. Papers in this panel seek to historicize modalities of governance and modes of improvisation and reconstruction of individual freedoms. Chair: Maya Dodd Discussant: Dalia Wahdan Commemorating the bhadralok: a study of culture as governance in the context of West Bengal Ms Diksha Dhar How has the Kolkata Book Fair achieved an aura of pilgrimage among the people of Bengal? Can this be seen to reinstate the image of the bhadralok on citizens? I want to read such spaces of commemoration that generate within the domain of governance higher overtones of political subject formation. Picturing the environment: mapping technologies in the coastal regulatory zone in India Ms Chitra Venkataramani (Johns Hopkins University) This paper examines how globally available mapping technologies and satellite
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imagery are used as representations of our environment and as a means of promoting different claims by both state agencies and other organizations. Curatorial governmentality: discourses on air-conditioning in contemporary India Mr Anirban Gupta-Nigam (JNU) This paper maps discourses on the idea of air prevalent in India, considering state attempts to control rain and drought patterns and coming down to the installation of air-puriers in Delhi during the Commonwealth Games 2010; and the parallel development of air-conditioning in malls. In both cases, discourses of life develop around the central principle of design, where aesthetics becomes central to the comprehension of the contemporary. Designing (counter) culture: politics, CARIFESTA, and self-making in the Caribbean Dr Nicolette Bethel (College of The Bahamas) This paper examines the response of the Bahamian cultural community to their governments cancellations of the Caribbean Festival of Arts (CARIFESTA). It considers the resilience of their initiatives in a world where citizens manipulations of new media undermine politicians mastery of the old.
P29 Art & religion: beyond-representation in the representation of the beyond

Convenors: Dr Douglas Farrer (University of Guam); Dr John WhalenBridge (National University of Singapore) Thu 5th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 CSSS Class Room No.104, First Floor, SSS-II What basis does artistic enchantment provide for understanding the numinous? What are the implications for theories of agencyor skillin opening the gateways to unseen realms? Where artists infuse mystical power into their artworks to transform these mediums of expression into
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a vehicle for indigenous mysticism and the celebration of god(s), beauty may captivate, inspire, enthrall, and empower the artist, viewer, audience, bearer or wearer. Powers of sorcery, witchcraft, and magic; religious, and shamanic power can be regarded through such frames as artistic (depending upon aesthetics, agency or skill); cognitive (informed by symbol, myth, and perception); performative and charismatic (with liminal ritual harnessed to mystical power); and embodied (viz. mana and tapu). The technology of enchantment and the enchantment of technology, from the anthropology of art, may be augmented from the anthropology of performance with the performance of enchantment and the enchantment of performance. The performance of enchantment refers to techniques du corps, hexis, or skills, honed to such a degree through practice, rehearsal, and execution that they take on a magical appearance, to create an uncanny effect upon the audience. Correspondingly, the enchantment of performance refers to mystical procedures used to draw power from the unseen realm. How do artistic practices and artworlds, not limited to architecture, painting, sculpture, music, literature, poetry, calligraphy, incantation, jewelry, weaponry, martial arts, dance, theater, puppetry, body-paint, tattoos, wood and shell carving, mazes, and sand drawings operate as forces of domination or as sites of spiritual resistance to hostile or colonial forces? Aesthetics of space: Delhi and the su view Dr Sameena Siddiqui (Jamia Millia Islamia) The paper aims to examine the concept of space and ethical experience from a su perspective and analyze its impact on Delhi as an urban landscape.It seeks to discover the dynamics of this legacy in the spiritual as well as the temporal sphere. The paper examines the impact of Su ethical experience in redening aesthetically conceived territoriality and in reinventing collective identities of pre-colonial and colonial Delhi . Mary at the ethnic frontier: Marianism among Vietnamese in Vietnam, the U.S., and Cambodia Dr Thien-Huong Ninh This paper traces the dissemination of various forms of Marianism (in terms of beliefs, practices, and visualization) and how it has mediated ethnic collectivity among Vietnamese living in Vietnam, the U.S., and Cambodia.
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It argues that Marianism was not synonymous with ethnic identity until reconnections among Vietnamese Catholics in these countries within the past 15 years. The paper reveals that the trajectory of this shift was uneven across the three places because of local ethnic reception and global economic forces. Empty your cup: anti-colonial humor in Khyentse Norbus The Cup Dr John Whalen-Bridge (National University of Singapore) This presentation looks at the orchestration of only apparently disjunctive topicsreligious devotion, comic materialism, and political activismto show how Khyentse Norbus The Cup combines them into satisfying whole. Politics in miniature: a reconguring of practices and perspectives Miss Nicoletta Fazio (University of Heidelberg); Ms Fiza Ishaq (Heidelberg University) The names of Shahzia Sikander, Saira Wasim and Soody Sahri are quite renowned in the Western art scene. This paper analyses in what ways these artists manage to bend the highly codied language of Islamic miniature painting to make it their own to deploy statements which are simultaneously aesthetic and political. Representation to re-presentation : a sociological analysis of the Santhal scroll paintings and performance, and their relation to the world of magic and religion Ms Urmi Bhattacharyya (Jawaharlal Nehru University) This paper explores the depiction of religious and supernatural themes as found in the picture-storytelling tradition of the Santhals, in parts of West bengal and Jharkhand, and the power of this art form to dene religious beliefs and practices in the tribal society. Religious devotion and the political: the honour dispute revisited Dr Aya Ikegame (The Open University) This paper examines the possibilities for re-valuating certain devotional expressions as political. By investigating several cases of honour disputes amongst Hindu mathas in Mysore princely state in the early 20th century, it will question the construction of community and democratic representation.
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Reading and writing in absence: the donors plaques Dr Baishali Ghosh (University of Hyderabad) The donors plaque in the religious architecture is the sign whose visit is present in absence. The writings on the stone slab, as visual provoke a dialogue that allow the dead (in whose name donation is made) and the donor to be launched into a discourse. The paper discusses the ethnography of memory in relation to the researcher, the donor, the dead person, viewers and so on. Chants of re-enchantment: Chamorro spiritual resistance to colonial domination Dr Douglas Farrer (University of Guam) Resistance to centuries of Spanish, Japanese, & American colonial power is anchored in Chamorro cultural continuity, albeit ostensibly fragmented & augmented. To dene & lead the continued reproduction of Chamorro culture, contemporary Chamorro Spiritualists put the chant back into reenchantment.
P30 Insideout: art crafting substance, (bio)graphy and circulation

Convenors: Dr Manuela Ciotti (Aarhus University); Dr Aditya Bharadwaj (University of Edinburgh) Fri 6th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30 Sankskrit Conference Room This panel explores emerging artistic constellations crafting new tropes of being and belonging through an array of aesthetic expressions. These range from artistic experiments and representation of biogenetic substance like human DNA, embryos and cells as reconstituted transection of molecular life as inherently aesthetic; territorialised ritual painting and its winding career between the compulsions of commodication and the intimate relations of its making; to objects being circulated, bought and sold within the realm of auction houses, international exhibitions, biennales, and art fairs.
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The panel illuminates cosmologies of being through stories of creativity, liberating imaging of the body/mind, and of the turbulent mnage between neoliberal capital and (postcolonial) cultures. From the standpoint of art production as aesthetic aspiration to belonging, the panel charts the unexplored avenues of local, global and universal imaginations and their incessant co-constitution. The panel invites papers on aesthetic expressions across regions, and in particular those contributions which seek to destabilise art taxonomies around the adjectives of the native, the indigenous, and folk and recast the above expressions transcending xed notions of place, identity, and nexuses between forms and belonging. Moreover, the panel wishes to explore the productive tension between the commodity form and the innite possibilities, and unintended consequences, opened up by this very status at times, but not only, the aesthetic expressions actual raison dtre with the new media enlarging their life-spaces. Overall, the panel wishes to contribute towards the anthropological rethinking of the agency of maker and object. Chair: Roma Chatterji Discussant: Roma Chatterji Visible disappearances: aesthetics of anatomical erasure and biogenetic representation Dr Aditya Bharadwaj (University of Edinburgh) The paper takes as its point of departure erasure of the anatomical form from the cohabiting domains of the artistic and bioscientic. Drawing on feminist technoscience, spearheaded by Donna Haraway, the paper explores the artistic and tropic representations of biogenetic substance such as DNA and embryos. The paper argues that aesthetic and epistemic expressions are as much about visible disappearances and erasures as they are about (re)creation and expression. The paper describes aesthetics of erasure as multivariate and explores a constellation of conceptual interpolations ranging from life and death, movement and stasis, space and temporality, form and content.
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Points, lines, segments: topological representations of kinship Dr Venetia Kantsa (University of the Aegean) In this paper I am interested in geometrical and topological representations of kinship. Drawing on Euclidean geometry I argue that descent and alliance relations rely on geometrically and topologically perceived spatial relations. Furthermore, I examine how new assisted reproduction technologies may imply the re-imaging of new kinship topologies. Making claims to tradition: poetics and politics in the works of young Maithil painters Dr Mani Shekhar Singh Departing from the representation of Maithil painting as a folk art form, I explore how young Maithil artists engage with tradition and nd their own voice within that tradition. Thereby demonstrating their awareness of aesthetic choices in positing their work as art and not as craft. Slaps, beatings, laughter, adda, puppet shows: Naxal women prisoners in Calcutta and the art of happiness in captivity Dr Atreyee Sen (Manchester University) This paper will explore the ways in which Naxal women political detainees in 1970s Calcutta gathered objects within prison compounds (buttons, sari borders, pieces of paper, needle and thread, shards of glass and pieces of wood) to craft together items for entertainment and secret communications. I argue that the performance of collective happiness related the creation and circulation of these objects resisted the smell of death, desolation and despair in incarceration. A postcolonial renaissance: Indianness, contemporary art, and the market in the age of neoliberal capital Dr Manuela Ciotti (Aarhus University) This paper analyses the exhibition The empire strikes back: Indian art today held in 2010 at the Saatchi Gallery in London as an entry-point into the analysis of how neoliberal capital produces culture in a postcolonial setting.
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Adda at Davos: aesthetics and art of exchange in a global market place Dr Ravinder Kaur (University of Copenhagen) The notion of adda is etched within the 20th C nationalist imaginary as a marker of quintessential India. While its gradual disapperance is yet a subject of constant nostalgia and melancholia, it has recently begun reappearing in new forms and new locations. The most prominent adda, sponsored and celebrated by the Indian state, is now held at the annual gathering of big businesses and governments. This paper explores the new formations of global Indian adda woven in the logic of free market and cultural commodication.
P31 Healing arts? The arts and aesthetics of medical display

Convenors: Dr Helen Lambert (Bristol University); Dr Harish Naraindas (Jawaharlal Nehru University) Wed 4th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 Convention Centre Lecture Hall-II Ritual practices directed at healing are often described as having aesthetic appeal; and across Asia, religious performances involving divine possession and healing rituals are often packaged and enacted for tourist consumption as examples of local cultural and artistic tradition. Among anthropologists, successful treatment has been interpreted as essentially related to the aesthetic dimensions of therapeutic practices, through the symbolic enactment of harmony designed to restore order to fractured bodies and selves. The decline of such traditional modes of therapy in favour of biomedicine is frequently lamented as a form of reductionism to the material. In popular culture however, the accoutrements of science become important vehicles for repackaging therapy as modern and efcacious; the handwritten signboards of folk practitioners give way to laminated placards and medical technologies supplement the laying-on of hands for diagnosis. Conversely, images of nature and visual signiers of ancient wisdom serve as tasteful testimonials of authenticity for new traditional remedies aimed at global markets. This panel invites contributions that
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explore modern transformations in the relations between therapeutic interventions, arts and aesthetics. We interpret display widely to include everyday medical practices, public performances, product marketing and material representations. Contributors may wish to focus on new varieties of therapeutic performance rebranded as folk art; the essential relations between therapeutic efcaciousness and aesthetic sensibility; the shifting aesthetics of mundane clinical spaces from the contemporary shrine to the private hospital; or visual signiers in the advertisement, marketing, display or practice of therapeutic interventions and medical products. Waiting for the womb: representing reproduction in the infertility clinic waiting room Miss Anindita Majumdar (Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi) This paper analyses the infertility treatment clinic waiting room in terms of the projection of varied cultural notions regarding reproduction. The waiting room comes to be projected as the face of the infertility clinic, and is actively used to market it. I wish to look at this space in terms of how the personnel, patients and visitors perform within it, including acts of trespassing and subversion. Art of creating designer babies through ART Dr Sunita Reddy (Jawaharlal Nehru University) Looking at Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) in Hyderabad, this paper addresses, how surrogacy, through the innovations in genomic knowledge and techno-science is countering gender stereotypes, patriarchy, contesting traditional family structures, forming newer forms of relationships and yet having serious implications of possible incestuous marriages. of medical specialities and spaces: the therapeutic aesthetics of renal transplantation Ms Sinjini Mukherjee (University of Heidelberg) In this paper, I will present a description of the different medical spaces involved in renal (kidney) therapy and how they combine to provide relief to patients by specically situating the analysis within a framework of the aesthetics of location, therapy and the body.
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The sybaritic as therapeutic: the therapeutic pleasures of art and architecture in German rehabilitative medicine Dr Harish Naraindas (Jawaharlal Nehru University) This paper questions the tacit assumption that healing and pleasure are invariably opposed categories by examining the central place that art, aesthetics and architecture occupy in German Rehabilitative Medicine. Exploring self-healing process through expressive art work in children with brain tumor: an ethnographic method Prof Pei-Fan Mu (National Yang-Ming University) This study used ethnographic method to explore the mechanism of self healing process throughout the expressive art work. Six school-age children with malignant brain tumors participated in this study. During the expressive art work, motor intentionality lead children to be aware of their internal experience toward integrating their self healing. The interpretive ethnographic analysis method was used to explore the self-healing process. Using the therapeutic arts in research Prof Susan Hogan (University of Derby) The Representing Self Representing Ageing initiative has been funded by the ESRC as part of the New Dynamics of Ageing cross-council research programme. It has consisted of four projects with older women using visual research methods, and participatory approaches, to enable women to articulate their experiences of ageing, and to create alternative images of ageing. Complex research processes are interrogated. Innovative methods have included the use of art elicitation, photo-diaries, lm-booths, and phototherapy. Therapeutic iconography: visual imagery in a marginal medical tradition Dr Helen Lambert (Bristol University) This paper analyses the medical iconography used by north Indian bone doctors (haad vaidya) to represent and advertise their work.
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Shrubs, seeds and foxskulls: the art of Narikuravar folk healing Prof Gabriele Alex (University of Tuebingen, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology) This paper deals with the healing practice of a formerly peripatetic South Indian community, called Narikuravar. It describes and illustrates the modes and contents of the healers performance and marketing and investigates how these different aesthetic and artistic elements are linked to the therapeutic dialogue.
P32 The ethnographic framing of the migrant subject

Convenor: Ms Anita Bressan (University of Sydney) Wed 4th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 CSSS Class Room No.104, First Floor, SSS-II Judith Butlers concept of framing can be applied to the study of migrants, to uncover how the gaze of the dominant culture articulates the possibilities that they are offered in their new country. The framing imposed on the migrants contributes to the formation of the intelligible subjects by establishing the possibilities of self expression one is left with: in order for colonized subjects to become recognizable ones, they must adhere to the normative scheme upheld by the recognizer, which (inevitably?) rearranges meanings by interpreting cultures, their performances and artistic manifestations. Parallel to this, as exposed by authors such as James Clifford and Paul Rabinow, ethnography, inescapably imposes on the subject the epistemological framing entailed in the power position from which it is carried out: subjectivization recreates and reinstates the same conditions of power imbalance that it often seeks to overcome, rendering vane the attempts to give voice to the other(-ed). With reference to the study of migrations, this panel will investigate the way in which the interlacements between national, cultural and gender
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belonging produce subjectivities (and their other), and how such process affects (self)recognition. Moreover, it will exemplify the ruses implied in ethnographic work, for which it will try to propose pragmatic, contextualized solutions. With the purpose of highlighting the expedients that can help rendering (progressively) intelligible the cultural excesses otherwise relegated to the world of the unspeakable, it will illustrate the possibilities offered by selfreexivity, and by the inclusion in the eld of the research of (the unearthing and disentanglement of) the power hierarchies that differently position the agents involved. Chair: Anita Bressan, Ghassan Hage, Meenakshi Thapan Indian migrants in Australia: beyond the middle class framing Dr Sukhmani Khorana (University of Queensland) In Indian and Australian television news accounts of the allegedly racist student attacks in Melbourne and Sydney during 2009-2010, the gure of the migrant was constructed as that of one hailing from the nations assertive (yet homogeneous) middle class. I made a documentary in early 2009, just before the attacks, that challenges the homogeneity of such framings by mainstream media across the world. Understanding constructions of otherness in migration: the case of northern Italy Prof Meenakshi Thapan (Delhi School of Economics) Migrants or settlers on colonized lands? Mr Nishant Upadhyay (York University, Toronto) Immigrants with varying histories and journeys become complicit, knowingly or unknowingly, in the ongoing processes of colonization of indigenous peoples and lands in Canada. By looking at how they negotiate and live on colonized lands, this paper seeks to decolonize postcolonial theory.
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Framing cultures: the multicultural and ethnographic hijacking of the voice of the (1950s Italian women) migrants (to Australia) Ms Anita Bressan (University of Sydney) Migrant cultures are rendered (un)intelligible through the framing imposed on them by the hegemonic subjectivity, which they hence start to reect. Can the moulding gaze of the dominant voice ever be done away with? Finding space for the migrant voice: a Ladakhi migrants short story and its awkward reception Ms Elizabeth Williams-Oerberg (Aarhus University); Mr Mohd Shabbir (Jawaharlal Nehru University) A collaborative attempt between an ethnographer and a migrant to tell a story that necessitates telling; and their cumulative reections on the difculties faced regarding dispersion, framing and authority in nding space for this story. Life historical narrations and the framing of the subjectivity and identity of the rural immigrants in East Guizhou (1930-2010) Prof Mei-Ling Chien (National Chiao Tung University) This paper aims to describe and discuss how the different generations of Hmub migrants in eastern Guizhou, Southwest China frame their subjectivity and identity through speaking their life histories. Narratives of migrant women agricultural labourers in rural Punjab: mapping the experiences of female migrants work, well-being and changes in migrant-native relationship Miss Sabina Singh (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi) The present paper is based on an ongoing ethnographic research in Punjab. The narratives of migrant women agricultural labourers in Punjab are used to deal with the holistic understanding of factors related to work, wellbeing and migrant-native relationship. The narratives are being used so as to corroborate the lived experiences of migrant women agricultural labourers in an ethnographic study.
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P33
The art of improvisation

Convenors: Dr Amanda Ravetz (Manchester Metropolitan University); Prof Kathleen Coessens (Vrije Universiteit Brussel); Prof Anne Douglas (Robert Gordon University) Wed 4th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 SSS-I Committee Room, Ground Floor This panel is driven by an interest in understanding embodied, experiential knowledge through the lens of experimental arts practice. Taking an expanded notion of improvisation as a state of being alive (Ingold 2011), the panel will explore trajectories between improvisation in life and improvisation in art as follows: In life, asserts Tim Ingold, there exists no script. The primacy of experience is a form of trying out. We might think of this then as a movement from an indenable and undifferentiated state to one of feeling our way through creating direction. In art we cast a critical eye on the givens, the predetermined structures of social, cultural, material experience while recognising that freedom and constraint are profoundly interrelated. Improvisation in art across cultures is a specic approach to form making that centres the imagination (of the creator/ performer/spectator) precisely on managing the interplay between freedom and constraint. In artistic research, the artist/researcher places him/herself at the sharp point of the inquiry, re-imagining, re-conguring, intensifying and scrutinising practice to create insights within and beyond the arts. How might a revisiting of improvisation as a condition of life open up approaches to improvisation in art, challenging its current formulation as a specic formal approach? In what ways might such an inquiry inform new understandings of embodied knowledge within and beyond artistic practice? How might such knowledge sit beside anthropological formulations of improvisation and creativity?
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Improvisation in anthropology and art: habitus and movement Dr Amanda Ravetz (Manchester Metropolitan University) Anthropology often allies improvisation with agency and change; musicians have challenged this. Cage found it too predictable, favouring chance instead. The paper takes an ethnographic approach to improvisation through a drawing experiment exploring the relationship between habitus and movement. Thinking freedom: the balance between autonomy and care Dr Gaelyn Aguilar (University of Maine Farmington) Our presentation will aim to share the conceptual and practical grounding of our latest work, and how improvisation has presented itself as a kind of purposeful, social practice in which there is no spectatorial distance and no antagonistic imperative other than to create what Gomez-Pea would characterize as free zones for intercultural dialogue. Art tactics and indeterminacy Dr Mick OKelly (National College of Art and Design Dublin Ireland) Nomadic Kitchen as a transversal eld of operation invests in a desiring production that is exible, uid, nomadic and adaptable to different occasions and contexts of informal urban practices. Subjectivity and agency is produced as a spatial encounter to how we create and occupy cultural complexity and an aesthetic-spatialpolitics. Altering a xed identity: thinking through improvisation Prof Anne Douglas (Robert Gordon University) Improvisation can be a self-conscious handling of the conditions of choice. Improvisation can also be an unselfconscious process of being inside the duration of an experience. In what sense can this apparent contradiction provoke a state of creative mobility or play that counters a xed identity? Improvisation through collaboration - two photographic projects: Pictures of Linda and Country Girls Prof Anna Fox (University For The Creative Arts) This paper examines the role of the author/s through collaborative experimental
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photographic practice. The two portrait projects, Pictures of Linda and Country Girls examine and question authorship in documentary photography by subverting the power relation between photographer and subject, giving power to the subject through co-authorship. Where you end and I begin: cognition and culture in experimental improvised music and dance Mr Christopher Williams (University of Leiden); Prof Martin Sonderkamp (University of Music and Dance Cologne) In improvised music, dance, and life, ones thoughts, perceptions, and actions are dynamically coupled to external actors and environments. Borrowing from embodied and situated cognition, we explore this phenomenon in our own work, and invite the audience to perform these connections themselves. Certainty, contingency and improvisation Prof Gary Peters (York St John University) Drawing upon Kant and Hegels aesthetics, as well as the latters Phenomenology as starting points, an attempt will be made to articulate the improvisatory not in terms of the new, unforeseen or unexpected but, rather, in relation to the contingency emancipated (Luhmann) by art practice and the felt certitude of aesthetic judgement, both put to work by improvisation. Creating freedom: the story of healing through dance in Kolkata Miss Nayanee Basu (Jawaharlal Nehru University) This paper explores how healing is being carried out through the medium of dance in Kolkata.Every level of such healing endeavor is marked by creative improvisation--on the part of artist-healers,beneciaries and by facilitating bureaucrats. Humans, heroes and artists: (re)creating the unexpected situation Prof Kathleen Coessens (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) Improvisatory acts in everyday life are the result of unexpected situations. In music improvisation, the unexpected situation is (re)created, but inside there can still be unexpected unexpectedness. Tensions between urgent action and play, loose of control and situation of choice, ethics and esthetics, humans, heroes and artists, will be explored.
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P34
Aesthetics, politics, conict

Convenors: Dr Nayanika Mookherjee (Durham University); Dr Tariq Jazeel (University of Shefeld); Dr Malathi de Alwis Wed 4th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 CSSS Committee Room No.013, Ground Floor, SSS-II Drawing upon critical theoretical resources, anthropological studies of late have shown how political interventions in their various forms have sought to trigger, and regulate multiple senses through various aesthetic manifestations of conict (Mookherjee and Pinney 2011). Though such work has engaged the arts, aesthetics mobilized in such terms can stretch beyond the purely artistic and grasp the material processes of apprehension that comprise the social as well as its contested nature. For Ranciere the aesthetic domain refers to a distribution of the sensible (2009), into which (legitimately) political articulations must intervene. For Deleuze and Guattari, aesthetics can be seen as an affectuation (1988) - a sense event which is nonrepresentational and hence disruptive. Building on such politico-intellectual lines of ight, this panel seeks in broad terms to explore the relationships between aesthetics, politics and conict. We seek papers that explore how aesthetics (and art) work through the register of politics to offer ways of grasping interventions in the space of conict, as well as those that position aesthetics as a way of staging conictual articulation. We also seek papers that push at the potential that aesthetics offers as a way of making visible and thus open to critique forms of pervasive political and cultural hegemony. Broadly speaking, the panel invites papers which theoretically and ethnographically explore how the arts comprehends events of conict, how these violent events might be constituted by art, and the value of thinking with broader notions of aesthetics to delineate spaces of hegemony and conict. Chair: Dr Nayanika Mookherjee Discussant: Prof. Christopher Pinney, UCL
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A country of hearsay and rumor: the aesthetic politics of rumor publics in urban Nepal Dr Sepideh Bajracharya (University of Michigan) The historical and anthropological literature tends to posit rumor as a sociological phenomenon effective of predicated acts of popular violence the unconscious medium for violence already enacted. In this article, I discuss a case where rumor becomes the referent of its own expression: the thing people heed, discuss, and trace as capable of inciting violence as an imminent, but as-yet unformed condition of rumors possibility. I argue that this way of engaging rumor and violence leads to a realm and method of public interaction where events of political consequence are anticipated beyond, despite, and in excess of the publics associated with political events proper. The Ayodhya dispute: demolition, damage and the emergency imaginary Dr Deepak Mehta (Delhi School Of Economics) The paper examines the legal judgments that deal with the demolition of the Babri mosque in December 1992. It shows that the demolition is informed by a circuitry of damage that is at once part of the imagination of emergency and part of a political ethic that constitutes notions of friend and foe. Memorizing home: art as place making Dr Thamotharampillai Sanathanan (University of Jaffna) In social calamities aesthetic gain a new political and functional meaning. Based on my three art projects; History of Histories, Imag(e)in home and The incomplete Thombu, this paper foreground the changing role of an art as an eye witness and facilitator. It also talks about how the anthropological tools and museum techniques are employed in making individual pain aesthetically appealing. Intense proximity: the spatial grammar of social conict Dr Chris Barry (University of Melbourne) In the township of Alice Springs (Central Australia) the intense proximity of Aboriginal residents and their counter-hegemonic cultural life-worlds, creates spaces of contestation and social conict. This paper will posit an everyday
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visual ethnography of how and where Aboriginal life ways are conducted, embodied, and brokered, in everyday exchanges and in public utilities in spite of on-going hegemonic structures to remove this Aboriginal presence. Embodied aesthetics: sung protest in post-apartheid South Africa Ms Omotayo Jolaosho (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey) This paper examines how political identication and collective solidarity are cultivated through the embodied aesthetics of song. I elaborate activists attempts to adapt the singing legacy of anti-apartheid struggles to changing political challenges of the post-apartheid neo-liberal dispensation. Event, image, memory: speculations on politics and visuality in India Dr Arunima G (JNU) This paper is a preliminary attempt to engage the question of violence and visuality through the domain of photojournalistic practice in modern India. By using examples from certain key moments of political violence in India (communal conict, Operation Green Hunt, and so on) I will attempt to complicate the relationship between aesthetics and politics. Violence, memory & the politics of reconciliation in Sri Lanka Dr Malathi de Alwis This paper will unpack the urge to remember, to commemorate and also, to forget, in Sri Lanka while also attempting to offer a framework within which an alternative politics of reconciliation could be envisioned. Building monuments in a world class city: aesthetics and politics in contemporary Delhi Ms Sushmita Pati (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi) This paper looks at two monuments- Qila Rai Pithora and 108 Foot Sankat Mochan Dham which have come up in Delhi in the last decade. It tries to understand the contemporary mode of monument building, both by the state and the people through issues of myths, histories, sacrality and governance.
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Building distributions of the sensible: architecture, modernism and the politics of Sri Lankan nationhood Dr Tariq Jazeel (University of Shefeld) This paper explores the connections between modernist architectural productions of space in post-independent Sri Lanka and the ethnicization of everyday life in the context of the countrys civil conict and postcolonial politics of nationhood. Towards a just aesthetics: contesting the sensible city in Delhi Dr Asher Ghertner (London School of Economics) This paper examines how slum residents in Delhi use street theatre and clay tableaus to challenge privatized and slum-free visions of the world-class city. Contrasted with the sanitized aesthetics of the world-class city, these acts of aesthetic counter-conduct aim to redistribute the sensible, reimagining the sensible city. De-colonial aesthetics: violence and political sensibilities in the late Portuguese empire Mr Caio Arajo (Central European University) This paper interrogates the politics of violence and aesthetics in late Portuguese colonialism in Africa, particularly Mozambique. I argue that aesthetics was a privileged eld in which colonial hegemony and de-colonial contestation were negotiated and political sensibilities were re-assembled. Participatory architectures (archive, memory, revolution) Dr Paula Roush (London South Bank University) The paper presents eld work in Meia Praia, Portugal, part of an investigative art project focused on SAAL the participatory housing programme initiated after the Portuguese revolution of 1974- and the development of a spatial aesthetics that led the community from its ownership to its current state of eviction.
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The poltics of esthetics and the esthetics of politics in Barcelona Dr Roger Sansi (Goldsmiths College, University of London) In the last decade, MACBA (Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona) has promoted itself as a center for political activism. Rancires politics of aesthetics have been very inuential. But the local art activist community has accused MACBA of reducing the politics of esthetics to the esthetics of politics.
P35 Imagining Bangladesh and forty years of its aesthetic trajectory

Convenors: Dr Manpreet Janeja (University of Cambridge); Ms Lala Rukh Selim (University of Dhaka) Fri 6th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30 SSS-I Committee Room, Ground Floor Bangladesh is imagined and imaged as a country which is orientalised and symbolised by its lack. Alongside the prevailing image of grinding poverty, oods and cyclones, internationally, the study of Bangladesh is linked to policies relating to population control, development and now climate change. It is also imagined as an Islamic country, ruled by military governments and dominated by NGOs. At the juncture of celebrating forty years of Bangladesh the panel seeks to map its aesthetic trajectory. How do these aesthetic registers enable a decentring of the orientalising tropes of lack through which Bangladesh is predominantly imagined in South Asia and in the West? This panel endeavours to bring together original and innovative research in the eld of the aesthetic trajectory of Bangladesh studies that critically investigates some of the popular and scholarly frames by which Bangladesh is imagined. What are the intellectual and political implications of these aesthetic frames? We welcome papers that study the visual, literary, phenomenological and sensual cultures of Bangladesh. Inviting papers that imaginatively approach the aesthetic study of Bangladesh, we aim to create a cross-disciplinary debate about research themes, agendas, and methods in the contemporary study of Bangladesh. Discussant: Nayanika Mookherjee
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Imagining Bangladesh through the aesthetics of food Dr Manpreet Janeja (University of Cambridge) Drawing on ethnographic eldwork in Dhaka and London, this paper focuses on the aesthetics of normal food as integral to Bangladeshi national and transnational congurations of belonging and not-belonging. Staging Bangladesh: a journey through theatre Dr Mara Matta (University of Rome La Sapienza) Journeying through the last forty years of the Dhaka Theatre movement, this paper aims to shed some light on the great contribution of Bangladesh to the world of theatre. Folk, food and folly: Bangladeshi folk dance and the Bengal famine of 1943 Miss Munjulika Rahman (Northwestern University) This paper analyzes frequently performed pieces of the most common Bangladeshi dance genre, called folk dance by practitioners, to elaborate how and why it became a popular choice as a representation of Bangladeshi people during the Pakistan period and after independence in Bangladesh. Moner Manush: travelling of Faqir Lalon Shah in the world of Hindu saints and the imagination of Bangali nation Mr Mamun Abdullah (University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh) This paper deals misconceptions of Faquir Lalon grounding on the politics of Bangali nation through interrogating Gautam Ghoshs latest lm Moner Manush (2010), which bagged the Golden Peacock award at IFFI, Goa and Best Film on National Integration at the 58th Indian National Awards. Art of Bangladesh: the changing role of tradition, search for identity and globalization Ms Lala Rukh Selim (University of Dhaka) This paper places globalization within a continuum of historical inuences that have created particular hybrid artistic forms in Bangladesh. Artistic ideals are contrasted with popular and folk art to draw out an aesthetic ideal that dees globalization and the image of Bangladesh as a country of wants.
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The future that did not happen: recollections of the project Mr Delwar Hussain (University of Cambridge) This paper examines the programme of modernisation instigated by the postindependent East Pakistani and later Bangladeshi states, told through the aesthetics of industrial failure and decay. The aesthetic process of imagination of Bangladesh and the politics of Bengali and indigenous identity Ms Sayema Khatun (Jahangirnagar University) What is the aesthetic process of imagination creating collective identities in present day Bangladesh? How indigenous identity has been constructed aesthetically as the essential other of the Bengali self and how it has been contested, felt to be revealed through systematic inquiry in this paper. Hair and clothes: the senses and styles of a British Bangladeshi identity Dr Benjamin Zeitlyn (University of Sussex) This paper discusses ideas about hairstyles and clothing among British Bangladeshi children and young people. The paper shows how through wearing and interpreting styles the children and young people learn to identify, and construct their own identities as British Bangladeshis rather than Bangladeshis in Bangladesh and as more or less British, Bangladeshi or Muslim in London depending on the context.
P37 The aesthetics and ctions of science

Convenors: Dr Raminder Kaur (Sussex University); Mr Saif Eqbal (Jawaharlal Nehru University) Thu 5th Apr, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 Convention Centre Auditorium I The panel seeks to explore the dynamics between science and its percolation through representations in popular culture such as science ction/fantasy, superhero comics, media and other outlets intended for the broader public.
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We consider to what extent there is a fundamental epistemological gap or, conversely, areas of afnity across the domains of specialised and lay knowledge. What kinds of circuits of power and knowledge are implied in this exchange? How are aesthetics to be conceptualised, either in terms of scientic domains and practices and/or their ltration through various sites in popular culture? How does gender, culture, race, nationality and age affect the universalist assumptions of science? How are imaginaries to do with the nation and/or state introduced and how may modernity/ies be understood when considering the interface between science and culture? How is science rationalised or mystied through its representations in popular culture? How is the idea of divinity incorporated to represent and/or justify science or magic? How might even currents in popular culture inuence practices and inventions to do with science and technology? We invite panellists to consider some of these and other questions related to the topic. Forensic ctions: rst thoughts on media representations of forensic science Prof Marcus Banks (Oxford University) Drawing upon initial ndings from eldwork in forensic science laboratories in the UK and South India, this paper examines the so-called CSI effect (by which trial juries are thought to be swayed by popular television representations of forensic science) as a mode by which routine science practice becomes aesthetically t for purpose. The ctions of science and cinema in India Dr Raminder Kaur (Sussex University) I consider the content and contours of speculative ction that engages with the imaginative potential of science (as opposed to actual scientic developments), and that nowadays manifests itself as a distinctive form in terms of the speculative ction masala in India. Chronicles of a disappearance: P K Rosy and contemporary Malayalam cinema Ms Bindu Menon (Lady Shri Ram College) The paper tries to understand the multiple intersections of the new technology
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of cinema with the social and how it became crucial sites and technologies in reordering caste end gendered bodies by examining a series of violence events against the rst Malayalam lm Vigatakumaran and the dalit actress Rosy in 1929. The dialectics of tradition and modernity in Indian superhero comics Mr Saif Eqbal (Jawaharlal Nehru University) Indian superhero comics had to face the challenge of engaging with both the modern and tradition. The paper seeks to study the nature and extent of this engagement and the treatment of superheroes/heroines, their powers and geographical spaces. Media of desire? Olfactory aesthetics and olfactory agency in an exhibit on human sexuality Dr Susanne Schmitt (University of Munich) This contribution focuses on the representation of sexual attraction in a Science and Medical History Museum in Germany. Based on ethnographic eldwork it interrogates the conicting meanings, agencies and aesthetics of odors that are (or have once been) considered to be aphrodisiatic within a western-European context.
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P38
Art worlds and the city: perspectives from India and beyond
Convenor: Dr Amit Desai (The Queens University of Belfast) Wed 4th Apr, 08:30-10:30 Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 003, SAA-II The growth of contemporary art institutions and markets in a number of cities all over the world in the past twenty years has had the effect of reshaping space. Museums, galleries, and art education centres are often centrally present in urban regeneration projects and cities promote themselves as cultural destinations by highlighting the vibrancy of their scenes. The increased consumption of Chinese, Indian, African, and South American contemporary art has led to altered ows of capital that reshape the spaces of the city where such art is produced and exhibited. This panel considers how the development of art worlds has transformed artists and others understandings and experiences of the cities in which they live. Cities lend themselves to utopian visions. Artists produced and supported by a newly emerged art world infrastructure may offer critical commentaries on these very processes of change, which are regarded as adversely affecting the existing sociality of neighbourhoods or marginalising already marginalised citizens. Or do these new spaces enhance creativity? What kinds of cities do artists desire? Do these desires lead to conict with local government or art institutions? We also explore the visibility or invisibility of contemporary art actors in the life of the city. Might the development of a private network of galleries and collectors highlight the marginal status of contemporary art in a city where traditional forms of art are more highly valued by citizens and/or by government? The panel therefore considers questions at the intersections of anthropology, art, and critical geography.
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The cultivation of creativity and the management of chaos at an artists village in Chennai Dr Amit Desai (The Queens University of Belfast) Reecting on the status of chaos and civilization in the cultivation of creativity among contemporary artists in Chennai, India, I explore the ways these ideas are expressed through the establishment of the Cholamandal Artists Village, located on the outskirts of the city. Resisting being uber-cool: an artists encounter with Bengaluru Ms Rashmi Munikempanna This paper explores the active creation of Bengaluru as a cultural hub and the possibilities for an arts practice to negotiate these terms of access to the city. Populating architecture with community: the symbolic integration of stark concrete with everyday life in Chandigarh, India Dr Abhik Ghosh (Panjab University) Chandigarh has been seen as a modernist architecture which may also translate as an art form. When it began to create homes within, the people began to modify this art to suit individual requirements, an issue which is illustrated, discussed and theorised in this paper. Atlantic movement in art of the Indo-Caribbean: casting shadows and throwing light in Surinam and the Netherlands Dr Leon Wainwright (The Open University) This presentation will explore patterns of art patronage, curating and reception that recently ensued in two urban contexts, in Suriname and the Netherlands, throwing light on the intersections between art discourse and a right to the city.
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P39
Art and activism in contemporary Dalit and Adivasi movements

Convenors: Dr Alice Tilche (School Of Oriental And African Studies); Prof David Mosse (SOAS) Wed 4th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 002, SAA-II The growth and diversication of social movements and civil society activism for empowerment among those historically marginalised and subordinated as untouchable (dalits) or tribal (adivasis) has been accompanied by an effervescence of cultural production. Visual art, music, dance forms, artefacts, religious or heroic iconography and mythic representations all connect to a politics of recognition and of rebellion. Assembling semiotic elements (artefacts, images, dance, mythologies) in recongured settings special events and new audiences specically decontextualizes them from former relationships of exploitation and caste or gender subordination. As art these performances break the nexus of social relationships and ritual structures, generating new meanings and changing the semiotic process itself in ways that the panel will explore. Dalit or Adivasi art then becomes a eld of meaning, authorship and political intent. The processes of cultural production are differently oriented among Adivasi and Dalit groups and have different social effects, which the panel will consider. Common to all is the production of art (in the broadest sense) as a means (intentionally or otherwise) to forge new non-local relationships, to connect to power through works that travel within national and increasingly international elds of consumption, as well as within local social activism. But if art is a means of forging effective political identities, it is also implicated in the complex internal group and gender dynamics of Dalit and Adivasi movements in ways that have been subject to ethnographic description.
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Dalit performance art, cultural politics and the renegotiation of identity Prof David Mosse (SOAS) This paper examines the social and semiotic processes involved in producing and performing Dalit art, especially dance-drumming. New meanings and modes of signication indicate changed social relationships, but ethnographic work reveals the relationship between Dalits and their art as ambivalent. Everyday aesthetics and refashioning of selves Dr Rajan Krishnan (Loyala College) The paper explores how the capacity of Dalit communities to undertake assertive political action rests not only on their becoming conscious of their social situation but also their potential to effect changes in their life with creative refashioning of selves through every day aesthetic practices. Dedicating dalit women: gender, caste and cultural politics of development activism in rural Tamilnadu Dr Anandhi Shanmugasundaram (Madras Institute of Development Studies) A ritual practice of dedicating women to local goddess among a dalit caste in Tamilnadu mediates the caste relations and development politics in a village. This paper elaborates on this to understand its implications for caste and gender rights. Politics of recognition and rebellion: an ethnographic account of changing power dynamism among Arunthathiyars of Tamilnadu Dr Sundara Babu Nagappan (Vikas Adhyayan Kendra) The Dalit movements in South India have also traveled with an effervescence of cultural production. This paper attempts to understand the power dynamics and politics of assertion involved in the habitats of the Arunthathiyar community in contemporary Tamilnadu. Dancing across the thresholds of caste: enacting transcendence and egalitarianism in the western Himalaya Mr Lokesh Ohri (South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg) Caste, generally bracketed under the umbrella of exclusion, is enacted in
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remote Himalayan regions through forced inclusion. Efforts of a group of performing folk artistes from the Kolta community and their attempt to break barriers of caste, while media and communication ows emerge as the nonintentional actors, are analyzed here. Pithora and the making of tribal art Dr Alice Tilche (School Of Oriental And African Studies) This paper focuses on the re-evaluation of Pithora paintings, from a divinity with the power to cure, to a form of Tribal art with representative and symbolic function. It interrogates the ethical and political consequences of this shift for Adivasis struggles for equality and recognition. Feeling of loss: ethnicity, ethnographic imagination and identity work of Mandi youth in Dhaka Mr Mahmudul Hasan Sumon (Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka, Bangladesh) The paper explores the festivity of wanna, its revival in newer settings of Dhaka and its import among the urban Mandi youth of Dhaka. It focuses on how such organizing is bringing about a consciousness of identity among the Mandis. The case presents us with the opportunity to explore theories of ethnicity, ethnographic imagination and identity in the wake of transnational discourses of indigenous rights in Bangladesh. Between the market and Comrade Mao: Newar cultural activism and ethnic/political movements Dr Ingemar Grandin (Linkpings universitet) Based on ethnographic research from the 1980s into the present, this is a study of cultural activism among the Newars of Nepal as an artistic, aesthetic practice that works from song texts, musical resources and non-verbal statements in dress and dance to voice both political and ethnic concerns.
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Kamlari voices and movements: repositioning Tharu indigenous artistic knowledge into global activism Dr Monica Mottin (London Metropolitan University) The paper explores how drama, songs and dances objectify Tharu ethnic cultural identity and how it is synthesized in kachahari natak (forum theatre) to raise awareness against the kamlari pratha (child-labour) among diverse audiences.
P40 Shards of memory: memorials, commemorations, remembrance

Convenor: Dr Radhika Chopra (University of Delhi) Wed 4th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 Convention Centre Lecture Hall-I Dreadful times produce special stories. Even when remembrance of a dark past is a burden too heavy, stories told in different narrative and visual modes enable groups to recall some of the details of dread while simultaneously burying other aspects of their dark histories. Monuments, museums, shrines, cenotaphs and rituals around them become set apart and sacred objects because they represent a place to recall the past and in the telling and re-telling of what they are about, they enable different memories and forms of remembrance. The panel will focus on contemporary political turmoil and the politics of remembrance. Precisely because conicts are thought of in the present continuous, the past is a uid terrain; but it is exactly this uid character of a not-quite-past event that generates different modes and sites of remembrance and commemoration, ranging from the seemingly temporary and impermanent roadside shrines to more enduring modes of the museum. Events, people, and political identities may be remembered through a series of different memorials, spread across space. Each may present the facade of completeness but in fact be a fragment, a shard that emerges as connected or contested within different modes and politics of remembrance.
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The intent of the panel is to explore the claims to tell stories about events, mourn people or assert identity through representing the past in the present. Mahteen Mai Ka Mandir: gender, caste and contested history in rural Bihar Mr Sumit Srivastava (University of Allahabad, Allahabad) The present paper locates Mahteen Mai ka Mandir, a temple in rural Bihar as a case of reclaiming the past taking caste and gender as important factors. How do the people who are associated with it in the present times analyse and debunk others history is the essence of this paper. The widow of the martyr Ms Soibam Haripriya (Delhi School of Economics) This paper explores the ways of memorialising by entering into/acquiring pre-existing meanings as well as resisting and creating news ones. Through two gures -the martyr and his widow I look at ways of remembering the martyr and the present self of the subject as a witness Recasting the ofcial: narratives as sites of unsettling memories, troubled pasts Dr Rukmini Sen (Ambedkar University Delhi) Taking two moments in South Asian history this paper will discuss how narratives, photographs and documentaries (re) create the troubled times from the survivors memory. Displacing commemoration: memory work and spatial and performative politics among Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu and Kashmir Dr Ankur Datta (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies) This paper explores commemoration in the case of displaced Kashmiri Hindus who recreate the past by constructing replicas of Hindu shrines from Kashmir. Through an ethnographic engagement with these replicas I argue that such projects are symbols of the future related to a new political community.
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Heroic memories: the inscription of power and gender into social memory through virakals Miss Malavika Binny (Jawaharlal Nehru University) This paper seeks to explore the complex intersticing of power, memory and gender through an analysis of the virakals (hero-stones) which are found along the western coast of India and also in Tamil Nadu. . It will be argued that the hero stones were not merely sepulchral in character, but were nodes in a larger network of ritual and societal practices using literary evidence as well as ethno-archaeological and historical evidence. Composing the memory: N T Rama Rao and performing identity Mr Santhosh Kumar Sakhinala Focusing on the statues installed by the founder of Telugu Desam Party N T Rama Rao in Hyderabad, this paper engages with how memory and past is congured in the present, for the contemporary politics, through monuments and particularly statues. Its not my story to tell: violence, memory and story-telling in Mocimboa da Praia, Mozambique Dr Ana Margarida Sousa Santos (Brunel University) This paper explores memories and counter-memories of the liberation struggle (1964-1974) in northern Mozambique, and the ways in which these are brought to the forefront at times of political and social tension. (Un)witnessing the event: testimony as poesis Mr Debaditya Bhattacharya (Jawaharlal Nehru University) Taking the Holocaust as a symptom-event of traumatic-testimony, this paper seeks to explore ways in which the witness-account can no longer be considered an act of mimetic historiography but of active poesis. Longing for nature: the role of nostalgia in urban living Ms Luciana Lang (University of Manchester) This paper investigates how nature, as a concept and as representation, informs the way people recall the past, and is expressed as an art of memory. It
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will explore the sense-driven and place-mediated experience of remembering, both as a personal and as a collective strategy in urban living.
P41 Ethnic by design: creative agency, aesthetics, and community in the global marketplace
Convenor: Dr Nicolette Makovicky (Oxford University) Wed 4th Apr, 08:30-10:30 SIS Appadurai Committee Room Commonly dened as handcrafted commodities for the global market which advertise (and are advertised by) their indigeneity, tribal, folk, or ethnic arts and artefacts are often construed as the embodiment of the authentic, exotic Other of capitalist modernity. Recently, traditional artefacts and techniques have also begun making their way into the discourse, practices and spaces of contemporary design. From the newly established Etno-Dizaijn Festiwal in Krakow, Poland, to the African & African Caribbean Design Diaspora Festival in London, design is being harnessed to re-think traditional techniques, patterns, materials for contemporary visual culture, interiors, and fashion. Conversely, under the terms ethically traded or sustainable, programmes such as Thailands OTOP (One District One Product) and projects such as Contemporary Souvenir (Ulster, Northern Ireland) promote collaboration between craftsmen and academically trained designers to develop new income streams for artisans, creating a mutual exchange of design concepts, tools and media. Such crossovers and interventions, however, exist as part of specic commercial and ideological regimes of power with corresponding notions of creative agency, aesthetics, and community which must be negotiated by participating actors. This panel invites scholars to reect critically on the growing interface between ethnic arts and design, and its place in the geopolitics of the global marketplace. Amongst the themes welcomed are the challenges of sustainability and recycling; the introduction and impact of new technologies and digital media on craft production; the commercialization of pattern
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and design; as well as issues of copyright and changing discourses of authenticity. Chair: Dr Bodil Olesen Discussant: Prof Marcus Banks Textile jewelries: fetishisation and defetishisation of Andean designs Dr Olivia Ang (University of Oxford) By exploring Andean fabrics regimes of value, this paper distinguishes different modalities of fetishisation, and defetishisation, arising during their social life. Drawing on this analysis, an aesthetic economy of indigenous designs is outlined; and the political tensions shaping this tournament of value are teased out. Worldmaking in an ethnic corner: designing a distinctively Malay space Dr Ivan Kwek (National University of Singapore) This paper explores the politics and poetics of designing a public space with a distinctive cultural identity. This space is to be a civic centre that reects the Malay community in Singapore, to be used for Malay arts, heritage, performances, businesses and events. Tie and dye: production, consumption and circulation of Sungudi textiles Dr Kala Shreen This paper critically analyzes the Sungudi project of World Crafts Council in the context of the dynamics of production, consumption and circulation of the ethnic crafts of Tamilnadu.
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(Dis-)Locating the political: the aesthetics of self-making in postcolonial India

Convenors: Mr Uday Chandra (Yale University); Ms Atreyee Majumder (Yale University) Wed 4th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30 Sankskrit Conference Room Anthropological engagements with the political have attempted to move beyond reied precincts of the state and its institutions to more textured explorations of how individuals fashion, perform and style ideas of community, collectives and citizenship. Yet popular perceptions of the political persistently seek to narrow its scope by pitting it against apparently apolitical notions of ethics. How can we better negotiate these competing representations of the political as they are mutually constituted with everyday practices of postcolonial self-making? These are registers of the self that throw light on many complications in the subaltern canvas of postcolonial theory. The aesthetics of postcolonial self-making are thus brought into conversation with creative performances and practices of contemporary publics. Drawing on four disparate contexts in postcolonial India, the papers on this panel explore the location of the political and its relationship to the aesthetics of self-making. Rather than focusing on how people inhabit or adopt existing political ideology in order to serve their interests, the papers examine how ideas of civic humanism, duty, adivasi resistance and gender are creatively fashioned in everyday life. In particular, the papers reveal the relationship between processes of self-making, creativity and individuation and the formation of collectives and community. Chair: Devika Bordia Discussant: Lawrence Liang Being human in Howrah: life of voluntarism on the peri-urban Ms Atreyee Majumder (Yale University) This paper narrates the life of voluntarism of the citizens of a small town
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Howrah, in eastern India, where engagement with politics is co-terminous with participation in the arts, philanthropy and various community activities. Bad atmosphere? Negotiating politics, personhood and place in a lowincome Delhi neighbourhood Dr Cressida Jervis Read (University College London) A resettlement colony (slum clearance neighbourhood) is a site suffused with politics. This paper examines the politics and non-politics of personhood and place through the everyday spatial practices of residents, as they have rebuilt their lives in a Delhi neighbourhood settled 35 years ago. The ethics of duty: visions of community and political action in Rajasthan Dr Devika Bordia This paper examines how a Gandhian ethics of duty and conceptions of a noncentralized polity governed by panchayats inform the styles, sensibilities and dispositions of political leaders in the tribal regions of Southern Rajasthan. The making of the self in the conicted border zones: a study of the enclave zones of Bengal Ms Sanghita Datta (JNU) How do people living on the disputed margins of the Bengal borderland negotiate with their self? Remnants of revolution: Naxalbari Movement, revolutionary subjectivity and the cultural legacies of middle-classes in Bengal Mr Samrat Sengupta (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta) In this paper I would talk about the very notion of the ethics of resistance looking into the construction and conceptualization of a revolutionary subjectivity in cultural representation of Naxalbari Movement in Bengal which I would illustrate through a few examples of some cultural productions of the contemporary period.
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Negotiating the class subject: Marxist-Leninist politics and the iconization of the rural poor in Bihar Dr Nicolas Jaoul (CNRS) Focusing on the All India Agricultural Labourers Association (AIALA) main stronghold in the countryside of Bihar, this article analyses the way the economic struggles, social aspirations and aesthetic values of the rural proletariat are being articulated with the partys political goal of producing a revolutionary class at the subjective level. Revolutions within revolutions: women in extreme left movements Miss Lipika Kamra (University of Delhi) This paper examines the ethics and aesthetics of self-making among female insurgents in the Naxalite and Maoist movements, and its dialogic relationship with elite and popular representations of these extreme left movements in postcolonial India. Beyond subalternity: the political aesthetics and ethics of adivasi resistance in contemporary Jharkhand Mr Uday Chandra (Yale University) Based on ethnographic eldwork in contemporary Jharkhand, this paper probes into the myriad tropes and strategies by which the modes, mechanisms, and meanings of modern state power have been reworked and resisted in two apparently opposed moments of resistance: the peaceful Koel-Karo antidam movement of the 1980s and the ongoing violent Maoist movement.
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P43
Aestheticisation: artefacts and emotions in diasporic contexts

Convenors: Dr Anne Sigfrid Grnseth (University College of Lillehammer); Dr Maruska Svasek (Queens University Belfast) Fri 6th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30 CSSS Class Room No.104, First Floor, SSS-II This panel is interested in papers that explore the ways in which migrants and their offspring value objects and images through intensied embodied, affective and multi-sensorial engagement and hypercognition. We argue that the notion of aestheticisation, conceptualised as a process by which people interpret particular sensorial experiences as valuable and worthwhile, can be used as an analytical tool to explore the signicance of material culture in diasporic settings. The approach rejects the Kantian understanding of aesthetics as inherent quality of art, as the latter perspective ignores the impact of outside forces on peoples experiences of material realities and fails to critically examine the social, political and economic dimensions of art and object appreciation. Aestheticisation, in other words, explores the evaluation of and intensied affective engagement with artefacts within and outside artistic elds, and analyses object transition, the changing value, meaning and efcacy of artefacts as they are moved through time and space. Taking a view that forms and imageries are experienced in themselves, we will explore how aestheticisation shapes life itself. Particular things, from paintings to religious items, may for example be appropriated, approximated and displayed in diaporic settings as emotionally-evocative signiers of family property, creating links to relatives in the homeland; as national heritage, expressing loyalties to states of origin; or used as important ritual tools, vital to migrant wellbeing. What are the political and emotional dimensions of such transitions, and to what extent do they generate personal transformations? Discussant: Amit Desai
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Everyday aesthetics in a refugee camp: material culture and Karenni forced migrants on the Thai-Burma border Dr Sandra Dudley (University of Leicester) This paper draws on the authors long-term ethnographic research with Karenni refugees living in camps on the Thai-Burma border. Emphasising womens clothing in particular, it explores aspects of the materiality of everyday life in the camps, and asks how far the quotidian practices described can be said to comprise a refugee aesthetics. A hope for change: ritual artefacts as agents of transgression Dr Anne Sigfrid Grnseth (University College of Lillehammer) This paper explores how Tamil refugees and their offspring engage with Tamil ritual objects and imagery in Norway. It addresses the ways in which objects in diaspora can take on new and shifting values and meanings that create new senses of identity, expressing and generating hopes for the future. Refraining and longing: ambiguous relationships to Kolam in the Tamil diaspora Dr Anna Laine (Dalarna University, Sweden) This paper explores how the kolam practice, a central phenomenon of popular visual culture among Tamils in India and Sri Lanka, mediates identity and belonging within the Tamil diaspora in the UK. It discusses aesthetic effects in the homelands and their transformations in diasporic existence. Aestheticisation and Improvisation: encountering absence in Indian diasporic settings Dr Maruska Svasek (Queens University Belfast) The paper will use the concepts of improvisation and aestheticisation to explore how Northern Irish Indian families mediate relationships with absent people, places and the Divine.
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Threads of diasporic attachment and ambivalence: visibly Muslim dress in Britain Dr Emma Tarlo (Goldsmiths) This paper explores the role of cloth and clothes as retainers and expressions of ambivalence and attachment in the case of visibly Muslim women in Britain who trace diasporic relationships both to their countries of origin and to the imagined community of the global Islamic uma. Aestheticisation of artefacts in the lives of western lifestyle migrant children in Goa, India Dr Mari Korpela (University of Tampere) The paper discusses how certain artefacts become aestheticised in the mobile lives of lifestyle migrant children in Goa. Toys and clothes gain particular meanings when they travel back and forth between India and the West and children have vital affective, bodily and sensory engagements with them. Little Black Sambo: a creative project Dr Abdul Hakim Onitolo Helen Bannerman a migrant Scot lived in Madras India for over three decades communicating with her family via written illustrated letters. The legacy of one these letters and its impact will be addressed and discussed in light of the Little Black Sambo project. This paper will address the scope and legacy of the letter as contemporaneously cathartic.
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P44
Cosmopolitanism, politics, and the (performing) arts

Convenors: Prof Georgiana Gore (Blaise Pascal University, Clermont University); Prof Andree Grau (Roehampton University, London) Wed 4th Apr, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium If the cosmopolitan is understood as that which is of the world in other words that which is free from national, regional or local limitations and prejudices how might we think of cosmopolitanism in relation to aesthetics? The history of the arts testies to the existence of masterpieces with universal aesthetic appeal, not only because of their commercial value or status as fashion icons, but because they seemingly engage with universal truths. In literature, Soyinka and Tagore won the Nobel Prize, Chinua Achebes Things Fall Apart and Salman Rushdies Midnight Children are references for understanding transition and change in the colonial/postcolonial worlds. In the performing arts, Shakespeares plays, kathakali, bharatanatyam tour internationally, while hip hop, amenco, and tango are practised daily across the globe. What enables these aesthetic genres to traverse cultural boundaries and gain universal acclaim? Is it merely the globalisation of Western canons of artistic creation and of capitalist production and circulation that creates the frame for intercultural dialogue? Is the distinction between genres of cosmopolitanism useful: for example, between elite cosmopolitanism referring to pre- and postindependence aesthetics produced by the aristocracy of former colonies, and subaltern cosmopolitanism referring to the popular aesthetics of Bollywood, salsa, or rap? Do we need to rethink cosmopolitanism beyond any opposition between high and low art, hegemonic constructions, and so on? Proposals engaging with these issues or others such as artistic pillaging or cosmopolitanisation through, for example, UNESCOs conventions on masterpieces and intangible cultural heritage are welcome.
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Flash mob dance: embodied cosmopolitanism in the age of digital communication networking Prof Georgiana Gore (Blaise Pascal University, Clermont University) In this paper, I shall explore, through mainly online ethnography, how ash mob dancing constitutes a form of embodied cosmopolitanism since performance enables participants to be involved in a singular event and simultaneously to connect to the global through online broadcasting on You Tube and identication with an international genre. Aladdins Indian adventures: cosmopolitan modernity and Indian fantasy lms Ms Rosie Thomas (University Of Westminster) Arabian Nights fantasy lms were staples of Indias silent cinema and drew large popular audiences until the 1960s. Focussing on Aladdin and Alibaba, both remade often by Indian lmmakers, I explore the complex appropriations involved in reworking these transnational tales for Indian audiences. The popular meets the classical: new cosmopolitanism in hip-hops dialogue with Kathak Dr Stacey Prickett (University of Roehampton) New conceptualisations of cosmopolitanism are explored in Kathakbox by Birminghams Sonia Sabri Company, moving beyond a performative otherness through use of popular (hip-hop) and classical (kathak) dance styles to challenge hegemonic representations of race, religion and nationality. Cosmopolitanism and hegemony: the forging of new tastes in India Dr Kalpana Ram (Macquarie University) This paper seeks to argue for a version of caste and class formation which is consonant with cosmopolitanism. Ballet in Japan: ballets cosmopolitanism reconsidered Miss Sayako Ono (The School of Oriental and African Studies) In the globalised world, ballet represents aesthetic cosmopolitanism. In its consumption in Japan, however, ballet becomes a vehicle for the assertion of
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both western hegemony as well as local aesthetics. This paper explores the twin processes of accommodation and adaptation of ballet in Japan. Mrinali Sarabhai, nationalism, and cosmopolitan aesthetic Prof Andree Grau (Roehampton University, London) The paper examines the artistic cosmopolitanism of dancer-choreographer Mrinalini Sarabhai and her engagement with social movements in India prior to and after independence. It shows how with her husband the scientist Vikram Sarabhai they promoted a new India marrying modernity and tradition.
P45 Interdisciplinary approaches to wellbeing and anthropological perspectives

Convenor: Dr Sarah White (University of Bath) Fri 6th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30 CSLG Conference Room Increasing interest in wellbeing in academic and policy circles has drawn heavily on psychology and/or economics and largely ignored the anthropological tradition. The construction of well-being in any culture and community depends on historical, socio-economic and subjective understanding of wellbeing which varies in different communities and societies. It may be important to examine how meaning and manifestations of wellbeing change across societies and across times. This may help us in developing a better understanding of wellbeing from cross-cultural and sub-cultural perspectives. This panel invites papers which present anthropological research grounded in particular experiences of wellbeing and reections on the politics of discourses on personhood. The panel will discuss how local perspectives challenge or conrm apparently global, universalist constructions, and the implications of taking wellbeing as a focus for anthropological enquiry.
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Mixed method research and the social construction of wellbeing in India Dr Sarah White (University of Bath); Ms Shreya Jha (University of Bath) This paper uses mixed method research in Adivasi villages in India to describe how universalist approaches to wellbeing are challenged by local ways of understanding and narrating the self. Theoretically, it links current quantitative research on wellbeing to anthropological accounts of the person. Inventing boundary of wellbeing and development:a response to integrating Action Plan for the Naxal affected tribal districts in India Dr Govinda Chandra Rath (G.B.Pant Social science Institute, Allahabad) The concept of wellbing is very much close to Escoberian view on anthropology of development, which deconstructs the centralizing planning process. Individual choice is gaining ground in its place. the Integrated Action Plan, which the Government of India has recently introduced to check the Naxal radicalism needs to be modeled with such perspectives. Belief systems: forgotten component in well being Ms Mahima Nayar (Jawaharlal Nehru UNiversity) Explanations of well-being either come from individual approaches or are related to the social structures. Religious or spiritual beliefs are often left out; this paper emphasizes the importance of these beliefs in determining the well being of women living in a slum community in Delhi, India. On the logico-poetics of Francis Zimmerman Ms Roshni Babu (IIT) This paper analyses how Francis Zimmerman invalidates the concept/precept binary, in the context of its consequences for the denition of wellbeing and illness, and philosophy as a system of thought. Wellbeing in polluted conditions: anthropology in an industrialised Chinese village Dr Anna Lora-Wainwright (Oxford University) What is wellbeing for those who live with the constant threat of industrial pollution? Drawing from anthropological research in an industrialised
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Chinese village, I trace the rise of subjects for whom industry is as much part of wellbeing as it is an obstacle to it, against universalist denitions. The aesthetics of rural life or manifestations of wellbeing in Latvias small-holder economies Miss Agnese Cimdina (University of Latvia/ University of Bergen) The aim of this paper is to examine manifestations of wellbeing in the lives of Latvian farmers under the conditions of growing economic recession and disquiet in Latvias rural areas. It also aims to challenge the understanding of economic activity as based on economic efciency. Belonging to ones place as condition of a good life: understandings of well-being in rural Latvia Dr Ieva Raubisko (University of Latvia) The proposed paper discusses how the concept of well-being is applied in the research project on changing development strategies and cultural spaces of Latvias rural inhabitants,* focusing on the ideas of belonging to ones place as an important aspect of well-being among rural people. *This paper complements the presentation proposed for this panel by Agnese Cimdina, another researcher of the mentioned EU-funded interdisciplinary project.
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P46
Aesthetics of healing and the body in a globalising world

Convenors: Miss Alison Macdonald (UCL); Dr Serena Bindi (University Sophia Antipolis, Nice) Fri 6th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30 Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 002, SAA-II This panel seeks to explore aesthetic dimensions of different healing systems as they intersect and/or relate to the aesthetics of embodied experiences of health and illness. In the current anthropological literature, some attention has been paid to the way in which aesthetics associated with different healing treatments contribute to the healing process by affecting the embodied experience of the patient. In particular, how does engaging the patients senses and/of/or aesthetics (odors, colors, sight, music, and all kinds of sensory stimuli) affect the embodied experience of the patient? Conversely, we also seek to explore how certain aesthetics of the body intersect with these wider systems of healing including biomedical technologies, and consider the wider implications of such intermingling of the body and body politic. For example, how might modes of bodily visibility be pragmatically managed by patients and healers in response to different healing systems and / or as a consequence of illness? Finally, in what ways might globalizing medical practices impact the specic aesthetics of bodily materialities and local systems of healing in nuanced and unexpected ways? We invite contributions from ethnographic research that deals with the embodied experience of patients on these two fronts, offering critical reection upon the ways in which aesthetics of healing systems and/ or aesthetics of the body illness speak to wider variants of well being. Chair: James Staples
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Aesthetics, healing and embodied experience in Dehradun: a comparative approach to healing and aesthetics in a north Indian urban context Dr Serena Bindi (University Sophia Antipolis, Nice) This contribution adopts a comparative approach to healing and aesthetics in different healing systemsin Dehradun (Uttarakhand). The aim of this paper is to explore the complex ways in which ritual healing and biomedicine in two different settings engage the senses and aesthetics of the patient and its family in order to affect their embodied experience. Altered states of embodiment as a construct for medical efcacy Dr Kevin Anderson (University of Massachusetts-Amherst) This paper explores the aesthetic dimension of acupuncture treatments and the experience of altered states of embodiment, for the role they play in patient denitions of efcacy. Research was done in Ireland, where attention to the body, especially for women, is culturally contested. Understanding the notion of social body: a critical study of scientic medicine and religious healing in Mizoram Miss Lalhmangaihi Chhakchhuak (University of Hyderabad) The concept body of the indigenous tribe in Mizoram, North East India eventually acknowledges a new dimension with the entry of western rule and Christian missionaries. The eradication of traditional ritual healing, introduction of scientic medicine and Christian divine healing by western culture in Mizoram will be discussed in this paper. Scepticism as healing art Dr Helen Macdonald (University of Cape Town) Drawing on Taussig (2003) this paper argues that a self-conscious performativity is an expected part of local healing practices in Chhattisgarh. Techniques often rely on the aesthetics of sight and touch, thereby provoking skeptical responses. This paper calls for an analysis of the sceptical style that allows for the immersion of modernist criticisms of healers, healing systems and interventionist strategies.
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Seeing as surviving: the aesthetics of visibility in experiencing breast cancer in Mumbai Miss Alison Macdonald (UCL) This paper considers the ambiguities of the aesthetics of visibility in breast cancer in Mumbai, exploring how patients and their families pragmatically manage cancers visibility, whilst simultaneously locating hope in the very act of seeing other survivors. The arts and aesthetics of popular healing among the Santals of rural West Bengal, India Mr Kamminthang Mantuong (Jawaharlal Nehru University) This paper examines the aesthetic dimensions associated with popular healing ritual as performed by the Deyashis of Santal tribal village. It also explores how the intersection of Santal cosmology with the sacred cosmology of the Hindu cure deities has implication on illness experience and the practice of healing itself. Rwanda: healing and the aesthetic of poetry Miss Andrea Grieder (University of Zurich & EHESS Paris) My presentation explores the aesthetic of poetic writing/speaking in Rwanda as a way of dealing with Genocide destruction.
P47 Traditional and modern art forms in protests and movements

Convenor: Dr Srinivas Gurram (Jawaharlal Nehru University) Thu 5th Apr, 15:00-16:30, 17:00-18:30 Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 003, SAA-II In this panel, varied patterns, trends and consequences of usage of traditional art forms and community specic repertoirs, cultural symbols in contemporary social and political movements will be discussed. It primarily
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focuses on the way in which various political protests and social movements are articulated, communicated and are carried out through such uasage of art forms. While few papers analyze such processes and thereby the consequences of approapriation of traditional art forms of marginal communities by social and political movements and few others would focus on articulation of protest using new symbols within specic institutions and organizations. Who were the people in IPTA?: revisiting the history of Marxist cultural movement in India Mr Binayak Bhattacharya (The English and Foreign Languages University) This paper tries to interrogate the historical tendency of the Marxist Cultural Movement in India, especially IPTA tradition in Bengal in 1940-50s to ideate the congenital contradiction between the middle class and the folk and traditional cultural practices within its organizational paradigm. Jana Natya Mandalis Gaddarian approach to theatre and performance: the development of a revolutionary aesthetic Mr Brahma Prakash (Royal Holloway, University of London) The paper will attempt to understand why the performance of Gaddar and Jana Natya Mandali of Andhra Pradesh made thousands of people to join the movement and participate in armed struggle, a phenomenon which does not see a parallel in the history of theatre and cultural movements across the world? Transformation of tribal identity and culture: a study of Savara-Lodhas of West Bengal Miss Proggya Ghatak (NISWASS) Identity Politics has become a prominent subject in the Indian politics in the past few years. This is primarily a modern phenomenon because some scholars feel that emphasis on identity based on a central organizing principle of ethnicity, religion, language, gender, sexual preferences, or caste positions, etc, are a sort of compelling remedy for anonymity in an otherwise impersonal modern world.
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Invoking caste and occupation in a political movement: the case of separate Telangana State movement Dr Srinivas Gurram (Jawaharlal Nehru University) The present phase of Telangana movement has helped revive various art forms conventionally associated with castes and traditional occupations and display the same and it has been interpreted variedly as identity assertion; aspiration; backwardness, etc. Rethinking Satyagraha in the context of environmental movement in India: a study of Kashipur block of Orissa Dr Iswar Chandra Naik (NISWASS) The purpose of the this paper is to study the Gandhian way of non-violent environmental movement in India for protecting natural resources against big dams and mining industry and their major concerns about the land, water, and forests (Jal, Jamin, Jangal) and all the natural resources of the locality, which are the only sources of their livelihood. It examines poor peoples dependence on limited forest products and to what extent people are losing their basic rights on sources of traditional livelihood due to the process of industrialization and developmental projects. Political socialization through grafti Dr Krishnakali Majumdar (Ferris State University) We propose to explore ethnographically how grafti on college campuses around the cities of Kolkata and Delhi, India, make visible the spaces of hegemony and conict. This paper asks how grafti on college campuses socialize students to a particular political ideology. Drawing, painting and writing resistance: texts of Eduardo Galeano and grafti in JNU Mr Pathak Kumar Mangalam (Jawaharlal Nehru University) This paper dwells on two texts, grafti in JNU and selected texts of Eduardo Galeano which use the grafti form of narrative. Anecdotes, popular beliefs along with poetic and visual languages inform these texts. It attempts to understand possible overlapping between the two. This overlapping can be
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seen both in their forms and issues they highlight. Grafti in JNU contain revealing phrases and slogans much like the texts of Galeano with both working to bring forth voices of differences and contestations unsettling xed narratives of discourses of power.
P48 Weddings: identity and aesthetics in a globalising consumer world

Convenor: Dr Gabriele Shenar Fri 6th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30 CSSS Class Room No.103, First Floor, SSS-II Weddings feature signicantly in contemporary global consumer culture, underlining symbolically the notion to be explored at the conference aesthetics. A whole industry, based on an economy of mutual obligation and exchange, but equally a desire for conspicuous consumption, for indulgence and sensuous display has evolved around weddings. Amongst the inuences of folklore, the events script mainstream popular mass cultural texts that are taken as a yardstick against which to measure ones good taste and thus position oneself in society and beyond. It seems that weddings increasingly are sites where individuals and groups reect on aesthetic sensibilities, celebrating, dismissing and re-dening social and cultural identities. Traditionally, anthropological studies have focused on weddings as rites of passage or more specically as transactional systems. Ethnographies often contain symbolic and interpretative accounts of weddings, expounding these as rituals and more specically transformative processes that are constitutive of both the person and the community. While acknowledging these earlier approaches, the panel invites contributors to show the potential for an exploration of identity in an increasingly globalising world where both people, goods and cultural texts transcend regional or national boundaries. More specically their relation to differing conceptions of modernity and visuality or more broadly, through the essentials of music and food, sensoriality, - has not as yet been sufciently acknowledged in studies of wedding culture. The aim here is in particular to emphasise the
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ways in which identity as taste and imagery has an impact on processes of negotiating, planning and staging weddings. Chair: Dr Tiplut Nongbri Between the couple and the videographer: ritual, identity and aesthetics in marriage videos in North Kerala, India Dr Janaki Abraham (Delhi University) In focusing on weddings and wedding videos in North Kerala, India, this paper explores the newness brought in with the presence of the photographer and videographer? How do wedding videos bring together the cultures of aesthetics of both the couple getting married and the videographer? From ballroom dancing to the ghoonghat: Indian weddings and the aesthetics of negotiating identities Ms Parul Bhandari (University of Cambridge) From youngsters night to western dress codes for engagement ceremonies and traditional dress and music at weddings; the aesthetics of wedding celebrations in India are undergoing signicant changes and in turn reect on changing identities. The paper analyses these negotiations. For loves sake? Sonic and visual aesthetics of weddings in contemporary Nepal Prof Christiane Brosius (Karl Jaspers Centre of Advanced Transcultural Studies) This presentation explores Hindu wedding rituals in contemporary Nepal by analysing sonic and ethnographic data from marriage processions accompanied by wedding bands and by studying wedding photography and videography from the perspective of their producers. Umabo in contemporary Kwazulu-Natal: art, grace and skill in performing a Zulu wedding Dr Antonadia Borges (Universidade de Braslia) Umabo is the closing ceremony of traditional Zulu weddings. Focusing on an Umabo performed for a living man by his late wifes relatives, the paper
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discusses how weddings become sites in which aesthetics, dispersion, social ties and cosmological location conate into a mutually shared concern. Identity and aesthetics of food culture: the Dogra weddings of Jammu, India Prof Abha Chauhan (University of Jammu) Food builds the identity and culture of individuals, communities and nations that is best reected during wedding occasions. This paper explores how the Dogras of Jammu region in northwest India maintain their identity in the changing globalised world through food culture at their weddings. Re-scripting Ahom identity: the politics and aesthetics of Chaklong marriage Miss Mehzabeen Hussain (Jawaharlal Nehru University) Chaklong is the traditional Ahom marriage ceremony. This paper focuses on the aesthetics and politics of performing Chaklong marriage rites as part of a wider process of revitalizing and asserting Ahom identity within contemporary Assamese society. The Aesthetics of weddings and the consumerist craze among the Sumi tribe Miss Lovitoli Jimo (Ambedkar University, Delhi (AUD)) Since colonial times the Sumi tribe of Nagaland has been known for its lavish weddings. This paper looks at the different aspects of wedding practices, rituals and celebrations; the socio-cultural, economic and the political impact they have on the individual and Sumi society at large.
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P49
Aesthetics of ritual performance

Convenor: Ms Sumbul Farah (University of Delhi) Thu 5th Apr, 08:30-10:30 Convention Centre Lecture Hall-II Religious practice and performance is seldom random or arbitrary. All ritual performance follows a predictable, familiar form because the idiom that it employs to express itself, is circumscribed by an aesthetic that is unique to its context, having been instituted through specic social and religious mores over a period of time. Expression of reverence or abhorrence, humility or fear, penitence or deliverance, or such emotions that are inspired by varying aspects of religion must draw upon the aesthetic of a particular tradition in order to articulate themselves appropriately. Aesthetics offer the linguistic means, so to speak, in terms of which acts must speak in order to be interpreted correctly. An analysis of both the form and content of ritual performance, therefore, offers the interesting prospect of exploring the aesthetic in terms of which the ritual expresses itself and which must, in turn, speak of the ordering principles of the faith. Aesthetics of devotion: Barelwi practice in the everyday Ms Sumbul Farah (University of Delhi) Barelwi belief must be embodied, enacted and put forth in the form of explicit performance in everyday life. This practice draws on the aesthetics underlying Barelwiyat in order to express itself and in the process, reies these aesthetics as Barelwi practice itself. Karbala imagery in the contact zone: the making of Shia devotional art Ms Fiza Ishaq (Heidelberg University) The production and consumption of Karbala imagery in the transcultural space of the city will be presented. The role of anthropology in theorizing the ow and circulation of imagery, their appropriation by community members
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and the resultant shaping and production of locality will be theorized. The classication of imagery, space and ows through methods of participant observation and multi-sited ethnography will also be analyzed. Aesthetics and rhetoric in religious therapeutic agencying by a holy man in Bahia, Brazil Prof Ftima Tavares (Universidade Federal da Bahia); Prof Carlos Caroso (Universidade Federal da Bahia) This paper accounts for the presence of religious healing agencies and agents in the State of Bahia, Brazil, and explores how their reputation is constructed through agencying processes constituted by mediators from various religious and healing traditions.
P50 Narratives of coping with marginalization: impact of state policies on natural resources and tribal lives
Convenors: Dr Eswarappa Kasi (National Institute of Rural Development); Ms Smita Yadav (University of Sussex) Fri 6th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30 Convention Centre Lecture Hall-II Aesthetic dimensions of tribal communities experiences and narratives in India represent a constant state of neglect and ignorance of their everyday lives as they are forced to cope with policies of natural resource and forest conservation. For a long-time, the tribal communities who have been completely forest-dependent and living in harmony with nature nd themselves in hand-to-mouth existence as they are forced to cope with a life dependent on illegal mining, migration, as well as seasonal livelihoods. After the process of liberalization and globalization, the role of the state has become minimal and this opens the doors to large scale establishment of companies in the tribal heartlands. There are huge projects for instance Vedanta, Tata and mining giants etc, which are directly affecting the tribal
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communities lives. These MNCs are targeting the poor and marginalised sections and threatening them with state forces. This has become politicised and everyday affairs in the areas of tribal areas of India. Thus, these situations have forced tribal people to migrate to other areas in search of livelihood. How far tribal communities have cope up with this scenario aesthetically is the central concern of our panel. The tribal communities narratives and consequences portrayed empirically so far gives us an idea to revisit on these critical issues. Further, to get the attention of the academicians, there should be forums like ASA, which passes the message to the state as well as people through our deliberations, discussions and interactions. Keeping these broad issues into the fore our panel invites scholars and academicians to contribute and disseminate their knowledge into the practice on our theme of enquiry. Narratives of marginalization of dalit and tribal women in Bengal and Jharkhand: a study of the ctions of Anil Gharai Dr Indranil Acharya (Vidyasagar University); Prof Bibhas Chand (Raja N. L. Khan Womens College, Midnapore, WB) The ctional world of Anil Gharai speaks of the struggle for existence of the downtrodden dalit and tribal women. These women suffer tremendous ignominy in their attempt to protect nature and protest against the misconduct of the police and administration.Supreme courage in acute crisis is their hallmark. Tribes after three displacements: a challenge to survival in Sonebhadra district Uttar Pradesh Ms Prema Tiwari (G B Pant Social Science Institue Allahabad); Mr Vinay Tiwari (G.B.Pant Social Science Institute Allahabad) The development programme made the tribal people of Sonebhadra district of Uttar Pradesh displaced three times in a row. Adjustment becomes troubles some in the new resettled areas. The paper will highlight the details of this adjustment process.
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Governing the conicted commons: democracy in the Indian tribal belt Mr Siddharth Sareen (Indian Institute of Technology Madras) How can democracy be inclusive of concerns of indigenes and the environment in resource-rich but poverty-stricken central eastern India? Impacts of resource expropriation and processes of exclusion on tribes, and institutional changes required for democratic resource governance, are addressed. Natural resources versus tribal lives: State policies and their impact Mr Vincent Ekka (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi) The natural resources meant for progress and development of a nation and people have proved to be a curse for tribal lives regulated by the defective policies of the states. In the name of development and national interest the tribals suffer from untold misery of marginalization, displacement and thereby become victims of the lack of political will power, lack of compensation and settlement. The curse of the tiger: a study of Gonds daily struggle with the Panna Tiger Project, India Ms Smita Yadav (University of Sussex) Stories of livelihoods of Gond households in Panna district, India, reveals how dealing with the Tiger Conservation policies are shaping the world of Gond as they deal with hardships and violation of their right to forests. My ethnographic study is on the Gonds experiences and coping strategies.
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P51
Art workshops for children with autism

Convenors: Dr Arun Mehta; Ms Manasi Dash (Bidirectional Access Promotion Society) Fri 6th Apr, 08:30-10:30, 15:00-16:30 SIS Appadurai Committee Room Autism Spectrum Disorder, a neurological condition is caused due to short circuiting with the interconnections between different parts of the brain, resulting in impairments in social interaction, communication and imagination. A child with Autism could be anywhere on the spectrum from mild symptoms to a savant. Due to lack of social skills they, however, remain excluded from the society. Art has been found as a way to help them learn, develop cognition and sensory integration, visual perception and get included in the society. Drama, music, painting, dancing, poetry, gure making etc. are ways which are being used to help children with autism develop social skills, identify and develop their hidden potentials and interests to nd a livelihood option, besides a list of emotional and physical benets. Research reveals that children with Autism are usually good with computers. Though new in the Indian context, some experts are using technology in innovative ways to help children learn without constant support of a caregiver. The panel proposes to discuss various forms of art being tried with children with intellectual challenges taking a broad view, and share experiences. Art therapy and autism Ms Shaloo Sharma (Pallavanjali) When working with persons with ASD, Art Therapy and its entire process the art materials, the therapeutic relationship between the student and mediator and the end product, can provide a visual, concrete format which develops abstract thinking skills, expresses creativity, increases exibility, helps develop socialrelationships and provide a novel way or sensory integration therapy.
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Reading poetry: Suzuki method for autistic children Miss Arpeata Sharma (English and Foreign Language University) Audio-visual attracts the child. Repetition helps a child to memorize. Rhythm makes the reading enjoyable. The combination of these three for a young autistic child helps him to learn poetry effectively. Suzuki method is about maximum exposure of a child to the area of learning. Online singing training for persons with autism and their caregivers Dr Arun Mehta Internet telephony lets music instructors offer their services internationally. This is particularly useful for persons with autism, who nd it difcult to travel and take time getting accustomed to new locations. This paper discusses the benets of this approach for them. One sense at a time workshops for children with autism Ms Manasi Dash (Bidirectional Access Promotion Society); Dr Arun Mehta Children nd it harder to learn when multiple senses are involved. For persons with communication or social challenges, this is a bigger problem. One sense at a time approach, focuses on technologies and tools related to one sense at a time to reduce sensory overload. Drama for autism Dr Ramamoorthi Parasuram (MKUniversity) Drama can be of help in three areas of concern for autism. 1. Improve the eye contact and personal bonding. 2. Social Skills by group work and peer interaction. 3. Communication skills by soundscape method.
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P52
Vernacular perspectives on arts and aesthetics

Convenor: Ms Sanjukta Sunderason (University College London) Wed 4th Apr, 15:00-16:30 CSLG Conference Room This panel wishes to draw together a string of visual material, frames, and narrative tropes that activate the notion of the vernacular. By discussing a range of visual and performative genres from paintings, graphic art, photographs and lms, the panel wishes to consider questions of the ofcial, the hegemonic, the dominant, as well as those of the partisan, the subversive or the marginal. Some of the questions that will be discussed are: Is the vernacular the material, the frame/optic or the narrative? Can it be both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic agency? How does the vernacular speak to the politics of authenticity, of identity and constituencies? How can the vernacular be positioned in cultural productions in a globalizing world, both in its capacity to disrupt or reorganize historical understanding? The panel invites papers that think about the modes in which politicality can be projected, retrieved or reinstated through markers of partisan art, normative and counter-normative principles, alternative aesthetic strategies and locations of otherness. Papers exploring dialogues between visual cultures of the global, the national and the local are welcome. Making un-reformed: family, gender and class in Islamic charity images in South India Mr Manaf KK (Jawaharlal Nehru University) This paper will look at the charity photographs that appear in the vernacular newspapers in Kerala. Black & White Images of Mappila Muslim families seeking help appears mainly in those news paper run by Muslim organizations. It can be seen that the representational modes of charity images throughout the globe travel to local newspapers. These photographs mediate between the realm of art, and family photographs. These images help us to understand the ways in which Muslims of Kerala demarcate their distinct identities vis-a174
vis Islamic practices and debates on correct Islamic practices in their daily life since Muslims in Kerala divide themselves into various religious sects. They also divide them as traditionalists and reformers. The photographs of charity can be used as a prism to locate the ways in which charity images create distinct identities for the giver and the receiver of charity; they inform the normative form of family, and gendering; and they also converse with the family photographs, journalistic photographs and Mappila Muslim womens art works. The Good Man of Shanxi : the post socialist aesthetics of Jia Zhangke Ms Ishita Tiwary (JNU) This paper will examine the ethics and aesthetics of documentation and memory in Postsocialist China through the works of the lm maker Jia Zhangke. The socialist vision and the photographic eye in the 1940s Ms Sonam Joshi The paper looks at the intersection of of politics and aesthetics in colonial India during the 1940s through a close reading of the photographs which were published in the newspapers of the Communist Party of India (CPI). Taking a historical approach, it argues that the images of the time were framed and presented through several visual tropes that drew from a international socialist aesthetic. It will also suggest that as photography became a signicant part of the political debates within the public sphere, there were several tensions generated in the use of photography as a visual language to convey political messages. Contesting frames: locational ideologies and a national-modern aesthetic in India, 1940s-50s Ms Sanjukta Sunderason (University College London) My paper studies the tensions between partisan and secular art discourse in India during political transition from the mass politics of the 1940s to the Nehruvian Consensus of the 1950s, while probing the new nation-states articulation of a de-radicalised national-popular aesthetic.
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Whos behind the ASA conference, and its website, online forms and numerous emails? Thats NomadIT: a freelance team that combines approachability with technical knowledge, years of experience with purpose-built software, and an ethical stance with low prices. Conference organisation Our online conference software takes panel/paper proposals, registrations and funding applications; we design and produce conference websites and books; we draw up budgets, run conference nances and facilitate online payment; we liaise with institutional conference ofces and caterers; and we manage volunteers and run the front desk during events attended by between 50 and 1200 delegates. Association administration We administer academic associations ranging in size from 200 to 1700 members (e.g. SIEF, ASA and EASA), running association websites, journals, email lists, nances, online surveys/elections and online membership directories. Website design We also set up affordable websites for individual academics or projects not assisted by an institution. We design and host Open Access online journals.
Ethos We provide a high level of service at an affordable price, while trying not to compromise our principles about quality of life and the environment. This book is printed on recycled paper, using vegetable-dye inks and wind-generated energy; we use a green web host; and we reuse conference badges and advise clients against the ubiquitous conference bag. If you are interested in who we are, what we do, and how we might help you, please visit our website, email us, or come and talk to Megan or Rohan at the NomadIT desk near reception. E: rohan@nomadit.co.uk W: www.nomadit.co.uk
List of presenters and convenors, alphabetical by surname, giving panel number

Abdullah, Mamun -- P35 Abraham, Janaki -- P48 Abraham, Shirley -- P14 Achari, Premjish -- P04 Acharya, Indranil -- P50 Adeli, Jamila -- P19 Aguilar, Gaelyn -- P33 Ahuja, Naman -- Plen2 Aiyadurai, Ambika -- P18 Alex, Gabriele -- P31 Anderson, Kevin -- P46 Ang, Olivia -- P41 Annavaram, Neredimalli -- P26 Arajo, Caio -- P34 Arora, Vibha -- P18, P26 Awasthi, Nisthasri -- P26 Babu, Roshni -- P45 Baishya, Anirban -- P18 Bajracharya, Sepideh -- P34 Banks, Marcus -- P37 Baracchini, Lela -- P19 Barry, Chris -- P34 Basu, Nayanee -- P33 Batool Syeda, Farida -- P07 Battaglia, Giulia -- P16, P20 Behl, Benoy -- Film Bethel, Nicolette -- P28 Bhandari, Parul -- P48 Bharadwaj, Aditya -- P30 Bhattacharya, Binayak -- P47 Bhattacharya, Debaditya -- P40 Bhattacharyya Thakur, Mini -- P10 Bhattacharyya, Urmi -- P29 Bhrugubanda, Uma -- P14 Bindi, Serena -- P46 Binny, Malavika -- P40 Bordia, Devika -- P42 Borges, Antonadia -- P48 Born, Georgina -- P21 Boudreult-Fournier, Alexandrine -- P21 Bradley, Tamsin -- P10 Bressan, Anita -- P32 Brosius, Christiane -- P19, P48 Bublatzky, Cathrine -- P19 Bunn, Stephanie -- P08 Burnett, Leon -- P24 C.P., Vinod -- P13
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Campbell, Ben -- P06 Capeln, Annika -- P13 Caroso, Carlos -- P49 Chand, Bibhas -- P50 Chandra, Anuradha -- P03 Chandra, Uday -- P42 Chatterjee, Sria -- P02 Chattopadhyay, Dhrupadi -- P05 Chaudhuri, Sarit Kumar -- P17 Chaudhuri, Shubha -- Plen3 Chauhan, Abha -- P48 Chhakchhuak, Lalhmangaihi -- P46 Chien, Mei-Ling -- P32 Chopra, Radhika -- P40 Chowdhury, Indira -- P13 Cimdina, Agnese -- P45 Ciotti, Manuela -- P30 Coessens, Kathleen -- P13, P33 Collins, Dawn -- P25 Cubero, Carlo -- P09 Dalakoglou, Dimitris -- P04 Dalal, Ajit -- P45 Das, Debojyoti -- P18 Das, Nava Kishor -- P18 Dash, Manasi -- P51 Datta, Ankur -- P40 Datta, Sanghita -- P42
Dave Mukherji, Parul -- Plen1, P02 David, Ann -- P25 de Alwis, Malathi -- P34 Deo, Aditi -- P21 Desai, Amit -- P38 Dhar, Diksha -- P28 Dodd, Maya -- P28 Dorji, Tshering -- P25 Douglas, Anne -- P33 Drnovsek Zorko, Spela -- P13 Dudley, Sandra -- P43 Duggal, Vebhuti -- P21 Dutta Roy, Rohit -- P24 Dutta, Debjani -- P27 Eisenberg, Andrew -- P21 Ekka, Vincent -- P50 Eqbal, Saif -- P37 Ermel, Marje -- P05 Farah, Sumbul -- P49 Farrer, Douglas -- P29 Favero, Paolo -- P20, Film Fazio, Nicoletta -- P29 Fox, Anna -- P33 Frembgen, Juergen Wasim -- Plen3 Froerer, Peggy -- P05 G, Arunima -- P34 Gabrielli, Maysa -- P20
178
Garcia, Gloria -- P03 Gautam, Kopal -- P24 Gera Roy, Anjali -- P14 Ghahramani, Ladan -- P10 Ghatak, Proggya -- P47 Ghertner, Asher -- P34 Ghosh, Abhik -- P38 Ghosh, Arjun -- P21 Ghosh, Baishali -- P29 Gilbert, Holly -- P13 Goel, Surbhi -- P15 Gore, Georgiana -- P44 Goswami, Subhashim -- P20 Grandin, Ingemar -- P39 Grau, Andree -- P44 Greenhalgh, Cathy -- P16 Grieder, Andrea -- P46 Grnseth, Anne Sigfrid -- P43 Gupta, Anu H -- P08 Gupta, Latika -- P25 Gupta, Toolika -- P01 Gupta-Nigam, Anirban -- P28 Gurram, Srinivas -- P47 Gustafsson, Anna -- P08 Hadzimuhamedovic, Amra -- P13 Hadzimuhamedovic, Safet -- P13 Hage, Ghassan -- Firth
Haripriya, Soibam -- P40 Harris, Clare -- P19 Hausner, Sondra -- P25 Heintz, Monica -- P16, Film Hendry, Joy -- P08 Henley, Paul -- Plen2 Hoefer, Regina -- P19 Hoek, Lotte -- P07 Hogan, Susan -- P31 Hughes, Stephen -- P14 Hussain, Delwar -- P35 Hussain, Mehzabeen -- P48 Ikegame, Aya -- P29 Ishaq, Fiza -- P29 Ishaq, Fiza -- P49 Jadhav, Sushrut -- P12 Jain, Ravindra -- P11 Janeja, Manpreet -- P35 Jaoul, Nicolas -- P42 Jayasankar, KP -- P16, Film Jazeel, Tariq -- P34 Jervis Read, Cressida -- P42 Jha, Shreya -- P45 Jimo, Lovitoli -- P48 Jolaosho, Omotayo -- P34 Joshi, Shruti -- P26 Joshi, Sonam -- P52
179
ASA12
Joshi, Vibha -- P05 Jumabhoy, Zehra -- P23 K, Cybil -- P13 Kalra, Virinder -- P25 Kalshoven, Petra Tjitske -- P08 Kamra, Lipika -- P42 Kannuri, Nanda Kishore -- P12 Kantsa, Venetia -- P30 Kasi, Eswarappa -- P50 Katriel, Tamar -- P04 Kaur, Manpreet -- P09 Kaur, Raminder -- P37 Kaur, Ravinder -- P30 Kavanagh, William -- P10 Khan, Shabnam -- P03 Khatun, Sayema -- P35 Khorana, Sukhmani -- P32 Kipgen, Ngamjahao -- P26 KK, Manaf -- P52 Korpela, Mari -- P43 Krishnan, Rajan -- P39 Kshetrimayum, Otojit -- P08 Kuldova, Tereza -- P01 Kumar Mangalam, Pathak -- P47 Kumar, Akshaya -- P14 Kumar, Neha -- P21 Kumar, Vikrant -- P06
Kwek, Ivan -- P41 Laine, Anna -- P43 Lambert, Helen -- P31 Lang, Luciana -- P40 Lawrence, Andy -- P20, Film Le Gargasson, Ingrid -- P22 Lebedinsky, Viviana -- P08 Levell, Nicola -- P02 Lichti-Harriman, Kathryn -- P08 Lind, Craig -- P08 Lokhandwala, Arshiya -- P23 Longkumer, Imtirenla -- P17 Lora-Wainwright, Anna -- P45 Mabbott Athique, Adrian -- P14 Macdonald, Alison -- P46 Macdonald, Helen -- P46 MacRae, Graeme -- P06 Maddipati, Venugopal -- P03 Majumdar, Anindita -- P31 Majumdar, Krishnakali -- P47 Majumder, Atreyee -- P42 Makovicky, Nicolette -- P41 Malhotra, Namita A. -- P16 Manoukian, Setrag -- P04 Mantuong, Kamminthang -- P46 Marak, Quinbala -- P18 Mathews, Gordon -- P11
180
Mathur, Nita -- P01 Mathur, Saloni -- P19 Matta, Mara -- P35 Mazumdar, Ranjani -- Plen2 Mehra, Diya -- P04 Mehra, Smriti -- P06 Mehrotra, Nilika -- P17 Mehta, Arun -- P51 Mehta, Deepak -- P34 Meier, Janne -- P01 Mendonca, Karl -- P20 Menon, Bindu -- P37 Miles-Watson, Jonathan -- P09 Milosevic Bijleveld, Sophia -- P13 Mishra, Ravi Shankar -- P08 Mohsini, Mira -- P13 Monteiro, Anjali -- P16, Film Mookherjee, Nayanika -- P34 Mopidevi, Srinivas Aditya -- P20 Morelli, Camilla -- P03 Mosse, David -- P39 Mottin, Monica -- P39 Mu, Pei-Fan -- P31 Muenster, Daniel -- P06 Muenster, Ursula -- P26 Mukherjee, Madhuja -- P07 Mukherjee, Nilanjana -- P01
Mukherjee, Sinjini -- P31 Munikempanna, Rashmi -- P38 Murgai, Gaurav -- P11 Nagappan, Sundara Babu -- P39 Naik, Iswar Chandra -- P47 Nakamura, Fuyubi -- P19 Naraindas, Harish -- P31 Nashif, Esmail -- P12 Nayar, Mahima -- P45 Ninh, Thien-Huong -- P29 Nolan, Suzanne -- P24 Ohri, Lokesh -- P39 ian, Hogne -- P10 OKelly, Mick -- P33 Onitolo, Abdul Hakim -- P43 Ono, Sayako -- P44 Pachuau, Joy L.K. -- P18 Paganopoulos, Michelangelo -- P15 Pahwa, Sonali -- P04 Pain, Paromita -- P20 Panini, Mysore Narasimhan -- P06 Parasuram, Ramamoorthi -- P51 Parikh, Ananya -- P27 Pathak, Suryasikha -- P18 Pati, Sushmita -- P34 Patnaik, Soumendra -- P10 Paul, Annie -- P23
181
ASA12
Paul, Pallavi -- P16 Paul, Soumyadeep -- P20, Film Pereira, Cludia -- P10 Peters, Gary -- P33 Pinney, Christopher -- Plen2 Pohjonen, Matti -- P20, Film Prakash, Brahma -- P47 Prickett, Stacey -- P44 Rahman, Munjulika -- P35 Rajkhowa, Arjun -- P09 Ram, Kalpana -- P44 Ranjan, Geetika -- P15 Rao, Meghana -- P12 Rath, Govinda Chandra -- P45 Raubisko, Ieva -- P45 Ravetz, Amanda -- P33 Ray, Utsa -- P22 Reddy, Sunita -- P31 Reuter, Thomas -- P11 Roush, Paula -- P34 Rozario, Santi -- P25 Rycroft, Daniel -- P02 Sabea, Hanan -- P04 Sabharwal, Alka -- P26 Sabnani, Nina -- P16, Film Sahi, Jyoti -- Plen1 Sahni, Rohini -- P01
Sahu, Ipsita -- P14 Said, Maurice -- P12 Saikia, Prarthana -- P15 Sakhinala, Santhosh Kumar -- P40 Samuel, Geoffrey -- P25 Sanathanan, Thamotharampillai - P34 Sansi, Roger -- P34 Saraf, Varunika -- P10 Saraiva, Clara -- P05 Sareen, Siddharth -- P50 Sawhney, Charu -- P17 Scharrer, Tabea -- P05 Schleiter, Markus -- P07 Schmitt, Susanne -- P37 Schmitz, Norbert -- P15 Schroer, Sara Asu -- P03 Selim, Lala Rukh -- P35 Sen, Atreyee -- P30 Sen, Rukmini -- P40 Sen, Shaunak -- P27 Sengupta, Samrat -- P42 Serani, Paula -- P04 Setterington, Lynn -- P10 Shabbir, Mohd -- P32 Shanmugasundaram, Anandhi -- P39 Sharma, Arpeata -- P51
182
Sharma, Manisha -- P15 Sharma, Sanjana -- P01 Sharma, Sarbani -- P04 Sharma, Shaloo -- P51 Shelke, Ashwini -- P05 Shelton, Anthony -- P02 Shenar, Gabriele -- P48 Shimreiwung, A.S. -- P18 Shreen, Kala -- P41 Siddiqui, Sameena -- P20, P29 Singh Johal, Rattanamol -- P23 Singh, Kavita -- P19 Singh, Mani Shekhar -- P30 Singh, Sabina -- P32 Sinha, Gayatri -- Plen1 Sitlhou, Hoineilhing -- P26 Sivonen, Sanni -- P08 Sonderkamp, Martin -- P33 Sousa Santos, Ana Margarida -- P40 Spreaco, Filippo -- P15 Spyer, Patricia -- Plen1 Sreberny-Mohammadi, Leili -- P19 Sreedhar, Darshana -- P25 Srinivas, Lakshmi -- P14 Srivastava, Sumit -- P40 St Clair, George -- P05 Stallabrass, Julian -- P23
Staples, James -- P05 Sumon, Mahmudul Hasan -- P39 Sunderason, Sanjukta -- P52 Svasek, Maruska -- P43 Swallow, Deborah -- P23 Tanvir, Kuhu -- P27 Tarlo, Emma -- P43 Tavares, Ftima -- P49 Terracciano, Emilia -- P23 Thapan, Meenakshi -- P32 Thomas, Rosie -- P44 Thurston, Timothy -- P13 Tilche, Alice -- P39 Tiwari, Prema -- P50 Tiwari, Vinay -- P50 Tiwary, Ishita -- P52 Troche, Ursula -- P02 Tuladhar-Douglas, Will -- P22 Turaga, Janaki -- P01 Upadhyay, Nishant -- P32 V, Kalyan Shankar -- P01 Vaidya, Anand -- P04 Vaidya, Shubhangi -- P15 Vangipurapu, Ira -- P15 Varma, Meher -- P01 Vasudevan, Ravi -- P14 Venkataramani, Chitra -- P28
183
ASA12
Venkatnarayanan, Soudhamini -P20, Film Vidal, Denis -- P19 Vishnudas, Suma -- P26 Visvanathan, Susan -- P06 von Stockhausen, Alban -- P18 Vucinic-Neskovic, Vesna -- P11 Wahdan, Dalia -- P04, P28 Wainwright, Leon -- P38 Wakeeld, Sarina -- P10 Walia, Ramna -- P27 Wani, Aarti -- P27 Webb, Martin -- P04 Wendl, Tobias -- P19 Werbner, Pnina -- P04 Wettstein, Marion -- P01 Whalen-Bridge, John -- P29 White, Sarah -- P45 Whitehouse, Andrew -- P03 Widger, Tom -- P12 Williams, Christopher -- P33 Williams-Oerberg, Elizabeth -- P32 Wilson, Eugene -- P22 Yadav, Smita -- P50 Yadava, Veena -- P17 Zeitlyn, Benjamin -- P35
184
NIHFW CSMRS
Aravali International
Aravali Guest House USO NIPFP NUEPA
Art & Aesthetics
CSSS I
CSSS II
Convention Centre Qutab Hotel
ASA12
is a proud member of
Cover photo: Jagannath Panda,The Cult and the Appearance-III (detail), 2012 Acrylic, fabric, plywood, aluminum, paper, glue and gems on canvas 81 x 165 inches Asia Art Museum, San Francisco Image courtesy: Nature Morte, New Delhi.
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ASA12

Arts and Aesthetics in a Globalising World

Tue 3rd April

Tea & coffee

Arts and aesthetics in globalising world

Arts and aesthetics in a globalising world

From the conference convenors

Mark Aldenderfer, Editor

Ranked #5 out of 75 Anthropology journals Impact Factor: 2.449

Arts and aesthetics in a globalising world

Tuesday 3rd April

Arts and aesthetics in a globalising world

Wednesday 4th April

Arts and aesthetics in a globalising world

Thursday 5th April

Arts and aesthetics in a globalising world

Wednesday 4th April

Arts and aesthetics in a globalising world

Thursday 5th April

Arts and aesthetics in a globalising world

Arts and aesthetics in a globalising world

Friday 6th April

Start Time 11:00

Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 003, SAA-II

List of plenaries and panels

30 Thu 08:30 Wed 08:30

Exploring aesthetic experiences and practices

CSSS Class Room No.103, First Floor, SSS-II

Moral economy of agriculture in the global era

Convention Centre Lecture Hall-I

The artistic imagination in ruptured landscapes

Arts and aesthetics in a globalising world

SIS Appadurai Committee Room

Start Time 15:00

Michelangelo Paganopoulos (Unknown)

Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 102, SAA-I

Jewellery as property, jewellery as aesthetics

Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 002, SAA-II

Anthropology in the contemporary artworld

Screening India through digital image-making Thu 15:00

Arts and aesthetics in a globalising world

Elite art in an age of populism: sowing monocultures?

Start Time 08:30

Cinema matters: the changing lm object in a globalizing world

The aesthetics of governance

Sankskrit Conference Room

Convention Centre Lecture Hall-II

The ethnographic framing of the migrant subject The art of improvisation

Aesthetics, politics, conict

CSSS Committee Room No.013, Ground Floor, SSS-II

Convention Centre Auditorium I

Arts and aesthetics in a globalising world

Arts and Aesthetics Lecture Hall No. 003, SAA-II

Start Time 08:30

Sankskrit Conference Room

Cosmopolitanism, politics, and the (performing) arts

CSLG Conference Room

Convention Centre Lecture Hall-II Convention Centre Lecture Hall-II

Arts and aesthetics in a globalising world

Vernacular perspectives on arts and aesthetics

Plenary, panel and paper abstracts

Arts and aesthetics in a globalising world

Arts and aesthetics in a globalising world