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Third Critical Studies Conference on Empires, States, and Migration in Kolkata, 11-12 September 2009) 1. The Theme In much of the era of twentieth century industrialism and capitalism the phenomenon of migration seemed as an exception to human societies and development. Societies and states, particularly after the Second World War, seemed to have taken on the shape of stable nation states with their defined citizenries, territories, laws, economies, and geographies. While multinational corporations (MNCs) worked in a frame of global operations, yet the structure of these operations were mostly territorially bound, and encouraging trans-national migration was not a complaint lodged against them by powers of global governance. Even if peasants were migrating, or various migrant populations were very much present on earth shaping all through the century as earlier the pattern of human settlements, yet history appeared as one of the sacred territories of the national societies. Partitions appeared as exceptions, and the reproduction of the method of partition as a way of stabilising societies and forming states notwithstanding provoking population flows and creating unclean futures was ignored. As if the sacred history of settled societies had little to do with these messy presents and pasts. Of course migration is not something new; it is as old as human history. Indeed, a whole science had meanwhile grown up around the phenomenon of migration – geography and economics being the two most pursued disciplines of knowledge in the task of understanding migration. Settlements, wages, remittances, and several other issues have crowded the field of migration studies. Ethnography, in general anthropology and later on cultural studies have also made their distinctive marks. Of more contemporary interest however is the phenomenon of forced migration. The attention on forced migration in recent time is due to the surge in human rights movements, and thus the awareness of the need to protect the victims of forced migration. This has resulted in theories, laws, policies, and practices relating to vulnerability, care, protection, boundary making exercises, citizenship, and most importantly displacement. A great number of institutions of human rights and humanitarian work now mark the field. National, regional, and international regimes of protection have emerged. Yet this begs the question, how far can we differentiate between voluntary migration and forced migration particularly in the light of recent massive and mixed population flows? Labour has remained through all these debates and discussions the silent other name of the figure of the migrant. When mostly this migrant labour appears as illegal, what sense shall we make of the issue of trafficked labour, who should have died with the emergence of free contract-bound labour appearing often in the juridical figure of the citizen? This complicates the scenario even more, and makes the world of settled production even more contingent on several factors including labour flows. In today’s world of globalisation, many may ask, are we really far away from the nineteenth century world of indentured labour that marked entire world of production? Also, with migrant labour marking the capitalist production system what will happen to settled forms of democracy, according to some, bourgeois democracy? Should we not study older histories of empires, which were characterised by mobility in more pronounced ways? Empires bring the issues of globalisation of various kinds and centuries. Migrations connote borders, mobilities, and their governing. Empires govern migrations, states govern migrations. Is there any common ground between the two ways of governing? And once again significantly, do all these mean that we take border as a method of study? The Third Critical Studies Conference proposes to discuss all these questions we have sought to assemble under the title, Empires, States, and Migration. Scientific disciplines will help us to understand some of the questions raised, inter-disciplinary approaches will help even more. Critical ways of interrogating and analysing will enable us to go further and allow us to raise new questions while making sense of the earlier ones. About five years ago the Calcutta Research Group (CRG) started hosting meetings to link with various strands of critical thinking on issues of our time and having great stakes in our lives. The First Critical Studies Conference (29 –30 July 2005) deliberated on What is Autonomy? The Second Critical Studies Conference (20-22 September 2007) focused on Spheres of Justice. Research papers, discussion notes, commentaries, and volumes came out of these meets. More important, scholars and thinkers from various countries including large numbers from within India cutting across the post-colonial divides attended the two deliberations, and were able to forge links and exchanged ideas. The Second Conference had an additional programme. It was a one day workshop with Etienne Balibar – a day long exchange of ideas between a select group of conference participants and Kolkata scholars and the philosopher. For reports of these two conferences, and the workshop interested people may visit the CRG website:
http://www.mcrg.ac.in/dg.htm 2. Necessary details of the Third Conference The Third Critical Studies Conference will be held in Kolkata on 11-12 September 2009. CRG invites individual proposals for papers and desirably panels. Each panel will consist of three papers and a moderator. There will be special lectures as part of the conference. The Conference will not be able to offer any travel assistance; there will be modest accommodation arrangements for three nights for outstation participants. Registration fee for Indian participants will be Rs. 300/ (Three hundred only) and for participants outside India the fee will be USD 100 (USD one hundred only). Below is an indicative list of sub-themes and issues to be covered at the Conference. CRG welcomes other suggestions as well. The last date for submitting proposals for panels and papers will be 15 April 2009, submitting abstracts 15 May 2009, and for full papers 10 August 2009. Inquiries about themes and panels are welcome. All inquiries may be addressed (with copies) to: -
Sanam Roohi:sanam.roohi@gmail.com 3. Some of the probable themes and Issues a) Imperial formations and Migration (migrations in and under empires, modern empires and new slavery, plantation economies, neo-imperial formations and flows of labour, Diasporas, etc.) b) States, Nations, Migration, and Citizenship (violence, displacement, and citizenship, the right to return, sacred space of the nation, citizenship laws, autonomous flows of migration, globalisation and forced migration, trafficking, possibilities of a differently structured world factoring in mobility, etc.) c) Economies and the government of Population Flows (discussion on governmental technologies to make migration a part of the market, migration markets, migration in a police planet) d) Beyond Economics and Anthropology? Narratives of Forced Migration (gendered narratives, the multi-layered messages, partition narratives, camp lives and experiences, narrative as a method to understand forced migration and its trauma, etc.) e) The World of Humanitarianism - Institutions of Care and Protection (institutional studies, critiques of humanitarian ideologies, case studies) f) Gender and Forced Migration. Migrant as the abnormal (settled formations as the normal and the figure of the migrant as the abnormal – historical overviews)
Annexure 1 –
Programme Schedule and Details |
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Second Critical Studies Conference on
"Spheres of Justice", Kolkata ,20-22 September 2007 1. The Calcutta Research Group plans to hold each alternate year a conference on critical thinking. The First Critical Studies Conference was held on July 2005 in Kolkata on the theme, “What is Autonomy?” The first conference was for 2 days. In all 18 papers were discussed and participants were from different parts of the country with five scholars from abroad (Nepal, Hong Kong, United States, Italy and France). One from St. Petersburg was refused visa by the Indian Embassy. The conference produced some exciting papers. There is a proposal to bring out a publication on the basis of the demand that this be turned into a series on critical thinking. Paula Banerjee, Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury, and Samir Das are in charge of this publication. Details of the conference can be found on CRG website - http://mcrg.ac.in/CS.htm 2. The second conference will be held on 20-22 September 2007. It will be held on the theme of justice. The provisional title of the Conference is “Spheres of Justice” or “Justice: The Other Faces”. The philosopher Etienne Balibar will deliver a public lecture as a keynote address. The public lecture will be held in Rotary Sadan Auditorium, Kolkata. 3.Though the theme of justice has occupied a high ground in philosophical discussions since the beginning of political philosophy, yet in terms of democracy and popular politics its exact meaning and implications have been nebulous, one of the reasons being the fact that justice in reality is a meeting ground of many ideas, situations, concepts, expectations, mechanisms, and practices. Many things intersect to form the context of social justice – ethical ideas of the people, laws, the evolving nature of claims, and the pattern of collective claim making politics, institutional issues relating to the delivery mechanisms of justice, ideas about rights and entitlements, ideas among the citizens about responsibility of the rulers towards them, plus many situations generating many conditions of justice. All these contribute in making the social context of justice, also the social form and social site of justice. Situations of marginality produce ideas of justice. Lack of access to means of representation / resources / means of survival such as education, health, etc. produces marginality. Similarly displacement creates marginal situations. Likewise minority status engenders marginal existence. Hereditary discriminations have the same effect. Gender has the same role. These marginal situations have one thing in common – they speak of power matrix. And they produce specific calls for justice. Different marginalities generate different expectations and forms of justice – thus gender justice, justice for the indigenous people, justice for those denied of dignity for long, justice in the form of certain socio-economic rights, justice for people starving to death or for people living below poverty line – all of which mean justice for those who cannot access the mechanisms for justice. Justice also means doing away with what is perceived as injustice, removing our blindness to injustice. The thing to note here is that while constitutions have provisions of justice in their articles and clauses, unlike in the case of rights justice does not have a compact formulation, even though justice is at times considered as one of the founding provisions. Given the significance of the notion of justice in various anti-colonial movements and in its associated ideas and thoughts, and the wide demand for justice from each of the underprivileged sections of the post-colonial societies today, and the recurring incidents of communities assuming the responsibility of delivering direct justice in the background of perceived delays and determining their own norms of justice, the proposed deliberation in the conference assumes significance. Apart from intellectual, theoretical, and literary exercises, other discursive and institutional exercises have been marked by popular thoughts and ideas. Various manifestos, leaflets, pamphlets, popular writings, sketches, songs, newspaper articles, speeches, films, theatres, etc. have been the other sites where ideas of justice at the popular level have been articulated. We have to further note that justice, particularly social justice is an arena only partly covered by law; rest is covered by social and political ideas and practices. Ethical ideas about honour, right, respect, autonomy, claim, share, revenge, and shame also play significant role in determining mores of justice. A sense of entitlements also has a role to play. Justice thus propels variety of forms – from social-economic rights, to forms of justiciability, forms of redistribution of wealth, the form of due process, subjective experiences of justice, and as distinct from these experiences the objective tests of justice. In this context one has to note the parts played by social movements and social mobilisations in determining the popular concepts of justice.
4.
There are several routes to approach the issue of justice – several
ways of engagement. The philosophical path may tell us to go back to
ancient philosophers whose theories of justice tell us of the
correctness of social order and the virtue in maintaining it, or to
the middle age theorists who combined religion, virtue, and justice
in a comprehensive theory of ethics where justice had no special
place, or to the modern day social theorists in whose works justice
becomes a complex arithmetic and a strenuous human effort to
maintain it in a world marked by hierarchies and illiberalism. A
slightly historical twist to the philosophical path can be found in
Michael Walzer’s Spheres of Justice (1983). One can also have
a sociological route, which enables one to identify various social
notions of justice, the “habitations of justice” we may say in the
sense in which Bourdieu used the word “habitation”, and this enables
us to see justice and its demand and procedures as a social
phenomenon. The ethnographic method may help us to map these
habitations, and help us to see what one can call the ethnographies
of justice. There is a route grounded in ethical readings also.
Finally, there is a historical route, which allows one who takes it
to see in a historical glance what can be called the “regimes of
justice” and a “regime of justice” which has in it several notions,
institutions, discourses, and agencies of justice existing
simultaneously but in a relation of power and subsidiarity. 5. The Conference will be ready to discuss whatever critical thought and approach generate on the broad theme of justice in our minds. With the spirit of the approach, we may have in mind the following problematic to be addressed in the conference. The list is however only indicative and does not exhaust the possible themes and sub-themes. It is also not necessary that there will be a separate panel for deliberation on each of these issues. Participants and panel conveners can get idea of the issues likely to be critically discussed in the conference.
6.
Structure of the Conference: 7. The conference will be held in either the National Library seminar room or the Academy of Fine Arts seminar hall. Outstation guests will be lodged in Hotel Sojourn and Hotel Stadel in Salt Lake and Akashdeep in Park Circus, Kolkata. 8. The Second Critical Studies Conference will be preceded by discussions on the relevant themes at a smaller scale where other institutions can also participate.
9.
The Second Conference will have a special feature. Just after the
conference there will be “A Two-Day Workshop with Etienne Balibar”
on 24-25 September 2007. A select group of participants will be
invited to join the workshop. On the first day Etienne Balibar will
speak on his research interests, current research work, and his
reflections on past work; and on the second day there will be
question and answer session. In order to have an engaging workshop,
CRG will the help of friends and well-wishers will hold a series of
“Reading Balibar” sessions as preparatory to the workshop. Some of
the participants may be asked to present papers on Balibar there for
discussion. The organizers plan to record and publish the
proceedings of the workshop. 10. For any communication regarding the entire programme pl. write at sanam@mcrg.ac.in
for Report on Second Critical Studies
Conference
Click Here
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First
Conference on Critical Thinking
What is Autonomy?
Venue:
Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata Conference Statement In the first decade of the twentieth century where we live in, autonomy has become one of the major concerns of our social and political existence. Right to autonomous life is now a political, cultural, and social call of both individual and the groups - a rare conformity that points to the critical importance of the problematic of autonomy in the agenda of critical thinking. As is currently understood, the notion of autonomy, both as something that belongs to human beings and human nature, and as something that is the source or basis of morality, that is, duty, is bound up inextricably with the philosophy of our time. The term began to be applied primarily or even exclusively in a political context, to “civic communities” possessing independent legislative and self-governing authority. Then the term was taken up again in the context of individual rational persons that is in the context of their individual rights and existences, for their individual modes of behavior. In the background of the upsurge of anti-colonial movements the term gained new perspectives and meanings, which would now imply not only new rights, but also new responsibilities (autonomy of whom, for whom, in respect to what?). It became the emblem of group rights, in particular minority rights. In time the idea of autonomy became not only the standard of rights or responsibilities, but also an issue of govern mentality - something that denotes transaction, government, negotiation, and relating to others on the basis of set rules. So we have now the questions: If autonomy has been emblematic of rights, does it take into account the gendered nature of the term? Can we trace the birth of the autonomous subject? What are the relevant constitutional and juridical thoughts shaping the universe of autonomy? Why is autonomy, an idea that holds universal attraction for mass politics, related to so much violence? Is autonomy one more regulated term, or is the concept autonomous, so that we can speak of autonomy of the autonomies? And, is private property, to go the fundamentals, a problematic for autonomy? What is autonomy without access to resources? On the other hand, if forms of ownership of resources determine autonomy, what is left of autonomy as a norm? If we relate the concept of autonomy to the more familiar notions of freedom or self-determination, we can locate in this case the questions of responsibility and the conditions of freedom. Autonomy generally is held as a valued condition for persons in liberal cultures. We uphold autonomous agents as the exemplar of persons who, by their judgment and action, authenticate the social and political principles and policies that advance their interests. But the sceptic may ask if we are not being “blinded” by the ideal of autonomy, and therefore the question, what happens if we value autonomy too much? In autonomous action the agent herself directs and governs the action. But what does it mean for the agent herself to direct and to govern? In the context of the emerging demands for group autonomy, the further question to be probed is if this is not now the occasion to investigate and re-envision the concept of democracy with the norm, principles, and various forms of autonomy and more importantly in a way, where the standards of minimal justice become the foundation for a new democratic outlook inscribed by practices of autonomy perched on understanding of each other. Accommodation becomes the form of responsibility for the agency that wills autonomy. In the history of thought reason has co-opted our conception of autonomy. Given this history, it can be argued that the task is now to set autonomy free. But the question is how? Surely, the problem is in the way the self defines the claims for autonomy, the way in which it relegates the issue of justice and understanding from considerations of autonomy. Law becomes in such conditions the most assured site of autonomy, and the juridical arrangement handed down from the top becomes the only possible form of autonomy. The paradox is then: if we are governed by reason in what we choose and how we choose, that means that we subject ourselves to reason in this business of what and how we choose; we are not in that case autonomous. Yet, if we say that we are not governed by reason but by desires and passions, then in that case we are not governing ourselves in what we choose, and we are not therefore autonomous. The way out of the closure has to be sought in historical understanding of the way in which the two principles of autonomy and accommodation have worked in political life, and the way in which standards of justice have negotiated the relation between autonomy and accommodation. We require both historical and analytical understanding of the issue for such a critical enterprise. We require moreover deeper and rigorous understanding of the geo-political and ethno-political grounds on which the call for autonomy is now articulated and which modulate the self’s understanding of the norm. Similarly the need is to inquire into the ethical grounds on which the call for autonomy is given and practices of autonomy continue. The purpose of the conference is to inquire into conditions and dimensions of autonomy, their historical nature, and their political significance in terms of enriching democracy. The conference will be held in Kolkata, India, on 29-30 July 2005. Structured around panel discussions, the conference will deal with six themes, which will form the panel sub-themes:
The Birth of the Autonomous Subject (Panel
Convener: Samir K. Das –
samir@mcrg.ac.in) Various experiences on movements for autonomy will be discussed in the context of the sub-themes. The conference is part of a research and dialogue programme on autonomy, which CRG has been conducting with the support of the Ford Foundation. Interested paper contributors may contact the panel conveners. Inquiries are welcome and all other inquiries can be addressed at mcrg@mcrg.ac.in Registration charge for the conference is Rs. 100/ per person. Copies of the papers will be available on payment of photocopying charge and on the CRG website. Panels will be finalised by 30 April 2005, and papers will have to be submitted by 30 June 2005. The conference will not have general travel support fund. But it will provide full accommodation for the participants during their stay for the conference. In case of partial or exceptional travel support inquiries can be addressed to panel conveners or at mcrg@mcrg.ac.in The Conference on “What is Autonomy?” will be the first in a series of annual conferences that CRG will hold on critical thinking in India. Organising Committee: Members: Samir Kumar Das, Paula Banerjee, Sanjay Barbora, Sanjay Chaturvedi, Arun Kumar Patnaik, and Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury,
Convener: Ranabir Samaddar
Director
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