PAST AND FUTURES: READINGS IN A CONTEMPORARY WORLD- Call for Papers

Brief Note:
PASTS AND FUTURES:READINGS IN A CONTEMPORARY WORLD
The end of the twentieth century has seen momentous shifts both in
production and in production relations, now visible in new clusters that
dominate physical and intellectual landscapes. This has substantially
changed the way we perceive ourselves, as well as the world around us.
And yet, this transformation is only partial, visible in some landscapes.
Old theories are inadequate to address the rapidly unfolding changes. The
question rises: how do we relate past experience-and conventional
disciplines-with contemporary realities? How do those ‘left behind’
perceive themselves and the world around them? How do the humanities
and the social sciences cope? What is the position, and function, of
archaeology, a science that deals exclusively with the human past, in this
new shift? What role do disciplines, citizens, communities, states and
nations play in this new society? How do we negotiate this new world?
Are we living only in a networked society?
Language, anthropology, history and historical sociology become, in this
context, absolutely relevant once again. How can past experience help us
engage with this new world? What are the processes through which the
past is forged? What are the optics through which the past is perceived, the
tropes through which the present is negotiated, the lens which represents
the past and foretells the furure? The negotiation between the past and the
present is never more robust than now, in this neo liberal age, when
historical memory plays a critical role in defining identity: linguistic,
religious, and racial. Paradoxically, nationalism, far from being under
stress, is facing a resurgence. The communities we forge are still
imagined, but they now embrace cyberspace as well.
The power of ICT is enabling a new kind of communitas. Just as the
invention of printing and the coming of the book created a group of
readers in sixteenth century Europe, just as the newspaper in nineteenth
century Asia created a political group anxious for democracy , so too the
blog in the twenty first century offers multiple platforms for global
citizens to voice their alarm and despondency over world affairs. Older
clusters of activity transform into nodes in networks that are transnational.
Citizenship is redefining itself. As new productive relations materialize, as
new methods of organising skills and workspaces occupy centre stage, as
technology increasingly dominates our lives, as old hierarchies disappear
and new ones are reconfigured spatially, citizens forge new links through
networks, rather than in clusters, within and across nation states.
The phenomenal growth of the knowledge economy has, therefore,
changed the way we live our lives. Two examples come readily to mind:
the awesome reach of the internet media which forges new communities
and the transformation in work culture that is steadily eroding the
conventional distinction between blue and white collar jobs. Cultures are
no longer in transition; they are being reconstituted.
Silently, traditional disciplines are forging new bridges with technology:
the transformation of GIS applications into a new discipline-digital
geography-is a case in point. There is a novelty here that we often ignore:
in this fast changing technology dominated world: the new relations that
dominate our lives are both omnipresent and at the same time invisible.
How these changes reconfigure our negotiation with the past is the focus
of Pasts and Futures: Readings in a Contemporary World, an initiative
launched by concerned faculty and research scholars in the Schools of
Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad,
India.
ABOUT THE SERIES EDITORS
Prof. Rila Mukherjee, Professor of History, School of Social Sciences,
University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India, specializes in the early
modern world and is the author of Strange Riches: Bengal in the
Mercantile Map of South Asia and Merchants and Companies in Bengal:
Kasimbazar and Jugdia in the Eighteenth Century, both out in 2006. She
is a member of the editorial board of Rethinking History (Routledge), of
OMNES: Journal of Migration and Society (Seoul, South Korea) and book
review editor of the latter. She is also an Associated Partner in the
European Science Foundation Project on The Evolution of Copperation
and Trading (TECT) called Dynamic Cooperative Networks in the First
Global Age 1400-1800 (DynCoopNet).
Dr. M.N. Rajesh is faculty, Department of History, School of Social
Sciences, University of Hyderabad, and the author of numerous
publications including The Buddhist Monastery (1999) and Gompas in
Traditional Tibetan Societies (2002). His interests lie in technology,
strategic studies, Tibet and Central Asia.
Dr. Eswarappa Kasi is Guest Faculty in the Department of
Anthropology, School of Social Sciences, University of Hyderabad. He
has published extensively in peer reviewed journals in India and abroad.
He guest edited a Special Issue of Man in India on developmental
anthropology with Dr. R. Siva Prasad. He is the co editor of a forthcoming
volume: Theory and Practice of Ethnography: Readings from the
Periphery with Ramesh C. Malik and co editor of Ethnographic Discourse
of the Other: Conceptual and Methodological Issues (Cambridge Scholars
Publishing, 2008), with Ramesh C. Malik and Prof. Panchanan Mohanty
of the Centre for Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies (CALTS),
University of Hyderabad. His interests include the anthropology of
livelihoods and natural resource management, marginal communities and
development. E-mail: kasieswar@gmail.com, kasieswar@yahoo.com
Ramesh C. Malik is Senior Research Fellow (UGC), Centre for Applied
Linguistics and Translation Studies (CALTS), School of Humanities,
University of Hyderabad. His areas of interests are ethnography,
translation studies and literary criticism. He has published extensively in
peer reviewed national journals. He is the co editor of a forthcoming
volume Theory and Practice of Ethnography: Readings from the
Periphery with Eswarappa Kasi and co editor of Ethnographic Discourse
of the Other: Conceptual and Methodological Issues (Cambridge Scholars
Publishing, 2008) with Eswarappa Kasi and Prof. Panchanan Mohanty of
CALTS, University of Hyderabad. He is passionate about Oriya literature.

Views: 23

Comment

You need to be a member of Open Anthropology Cooperative to add comments!

Comment by ESWARAPPA KASI on July 18, 2009 at 7:30am
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK, is publishing this series.
Its a nice location to expand your ideas with the wider audience.

Translate

OAC Press

@OpenAnthCoop

Events

© 2019   Created by Keith Hart.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service