Sovereignty,
Territory and Citizenship: SOUTH ASIA in an Age of Globalisation
Visiting
lecturers from the Calcutta Research Group and the Punjab University,
India
Place:
University of Tampere, Linna building
Time: 7.9.2006 9:00 - 12.9.2006 14:00
Sovereignty,
Territory and Citizenship: SOUTH ASIA in an Age of Globalisation
Professor
Ranabir Samaddar/Dr. Sanjay Chaturvedi Thursday, 7 September to Tuesday,
12 September 2006
Credits:
2 ECTS
Times
and places:
Thu
7.9. at 9-11 and 12-14 in Linna 5026
Fri
8.9. at 9-11 and 12-14 in Linna 6017
Mon
11.9. at 12-16 in Linna 6017
Tue
12.9. at 9-11 in Linna 5026 and at 12-14 in Linna 6017
Please
note! There are two sets of the below mentioned reading materials in the
ISSS office which students and borrow and copy for themselves.
South
Asia as any other post-colonial region faces the realities of
globalisation, some of which are within its control, but some, possibly a
large part of these realities, are beyond the control of the countries of
the region. How can India and other countries of this region face these
realities, how are they faring, and what lies ahead of them in this world
of globalisation? While globalisation seems to be the golden age of the
economists for they are the chosen people asked to provide wisdom and
insight on character of this phase of globalisation, consequences of this
unheard degree of globalisation of capital, new information technologies,
and the inexorable need for financial-economic-structural reforms for the
countries to cope with globalisation and world trade regime and its rules,
popular attention is less drawn on its political implications.
However,
how South Asia will fare in this age of globalisation depends on the
post-colonial countries' political capacity and political attributes too.
And in a sense this is more or at least as significant as the economic
question. But, clearly in this case, the traditional way of seeing
politics need to be reviewed, and reframed - critically, in the light of
comparative knowledge, and historically - to make sense of new global
realities, and to attempt at understanding, how much of the so-called new
global reality is "new"?
This
series of lectures aims at providing precisely such a political
understanding by re-examining three of the most classic attributes of
politics in the light of South Asia's history and society, namely
sovereignty, territory, and citizenship. Nothing could be more timeless
than these three ideas and concepts, and nothing could be, as these
lectures demonstrate, more contentious and relevant today than these three
realities and the consequent knowledge. Critical thinking has provided
genealogical insights into the histories of these three great political
questions, whereby nations, peoples, countries, and states can be seen in
a fresh light, global realities can be judged in a refreshing way, and
most important, politics can answer the great question of our time, namely
what will happen to democracy in this age of globalisation? It is an
important question because not only the fortune of democracy is linked to
these three issues, but also because they entangle the fate of millions
and millions of people, involving besides other things, the second most
populous country and the "largest democracy" (admittedly by a
questionable yardstick) on earth.
This
set of lectures (the other set on the same theme will take up the issue of
territory exclusively) will attempt this critical review with the aid of
four (4) lectures (of 2 hours each) devoted to four (4) sub-themes:
1.
Sovereignty in a historical frame
2.
Laws, colonial and post-colonial constitutionalism, citizenship,
and rights
3.
Two subjects of the Sovereign: citizen and the alien
4.
Shared forms of sovereignty: autonomy and other concepts
Basically,
as these sub-themes indicate, the series of lectures while speaking of the
careers of sovereignty, territory, and citizenship, will not only discuss
South Asia in the age of globalisation, it will take up centrally the
question of the political subject. Does the political subject die with the
onset of globalisation, and what has been termed as "end of
history"? Or, will South Asia push ahead with new political
practices?
Sovereignty,
rule of law, citizenship, constitutionalism, popular theories of
representation, governmental practices - all these and some more will come
under scrutiny in these lectures which will try to suggest alternative
ideas of politics as they emerge out of South Asian realities. In view of
the supposed dissimilarities of the relevant situation in the metropole
and the ex-colonies, it is fascinating to note the convergence of two
histories today at least in some respects in the context of globalisation
- European history and post-colonial reasoning; and it is in this
background that the lectures will raise various relevant inquiries in
terms of a new perspective of politics and the political subject.
The
great promise of democracy is the unlimited horizon of citizenship, an
unending expansion of political society not necessarily in area but in the
scale of social quality. In other words, if we rework the democratic
theory of citizenship, we can say that the historical mission of
citizenship is on the whole fulfilled with the coming of democracy. Even
if this is taken as true, what happens to the post-colonial political
subject in this fantastic democratic destiny? Will she/he get a share, a
seat? An expansion of democracy, yes - what does it hold for the political
subject of our time and place, the subject who is not
"unfortunately" yet the citizen, yet who sits at the heart of
the problem of democracy? What happens to "our" possibilities of
trans-national citizenship?
Another
set of will critically examine the following four sub-themes with the aid
of four (4) lectures (of two hours each).
1.
Sovereignty and the Challenge of Excessive Geopolitics: Lessons of
Partition
2.
Clash of Geopolitical Visions: The Sacred and the Secular
3.
Making of South Asian Borders
4.
Quest for Environmental Justice: Rhetoric and Reality
One
of the key arguments in this set of lectures is that various discourses of
territory and territoriality in contemporary South Asia, and the practices
that flow from them, are better understood and analyzed by combining post-partition
perspectives with better known post-colonial perspectives. The
post-partition world is governed by mystified ethno-national (and often
ethno-religious) assertion for domination over "our" exclusive
and `rightful' space. It is a territorialized world of endless
contestation and struggles against new patterns of local (gender,
religious and economic) control/domination enabled by the new geometry of
power. The post-partition South Asia remain in a constant state of flux
due to the near impossibility of most state actors to achieve legitimacy
in the eyes of marginalized minorities, and because of ongoing
interventions/intrusions by miniaturized identities below the mystified
state level. The predominant singular-affiliation view insists that every
one belongs to one group and one group only. Such a reductionism further
promotes the illusion of unique identity, seriously impairs choice and
reasoning and makes the South Asian world much more flammable. The
post-partition perspective also compels us to look beyond the place and
space of visible borders and bring under critical scrutiny the symbolic
lines between neighbouring states and cultures, most often producing and
representing `Otherness'. The final lecture in this set of lectures
examines (a) environmental justice as part of social justice; (b) dominant
spatialities and hierarchies articulated through mainstream notions and
their critiques emerging from different geographies of resistance in
various parts of South Asia; and (c) reconfiguration of space in the wake
of Tsunamis and natural disasters and (d) impact on coastal communities.
Information:
Eveliina Permi
eveliina.permi@uta.fi
(03) 3551 7197