Presented by the UNESCO Chair in Transnational Diasporas and Reconciliation Studies; the Hawke Research Institute, University of South Australia; and in collaboration with

the International Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding, University of South Australia

ReOrienting DiasporaSymposium4–5 September 2012

City West campusAdelaide, South Australia

Australia

Program

DAY 1 - TUESDAY 4 SEPTEMBER VENUE: LB1-29/30, LAW BUILDING, CITY WEST CAMPUS

8:45 - 9:15 REGISTRATION

9:15 - 9:30 Welcome address

Professor Pal Ahluwalia, Pro Vice Chancellor

Division of Education, Arts and Social Sciences (University of South Australia, Australia)

SESSION 1

9:30 - 10:15 The Time of the Diasporic

Professor Michael Dutton

(Goldsmiths, University of London, UK)

10:15 - 11:00 At Home in Motion: Evolving Identities in the Age

of Globalisation

Professor Pal Ahluwalia

(University of South Australia, Australia)

11:00 - 11:30 MORNING TEA BREAK

SESSION 2

11:30 - 12:15 Migrants, settlers and the (post-)colonial order: critical

reflections on the Diaspora today

Dr Heloise Weber

(The University of Queensland, Australia)

12:15 - 13:00 A Liberalism Gone Wrong? ‘Muscular Liberalism’ and the

Return of the Repressed

Associate Professor Jim Jose

(University of Newcastle, Australia)

13:00 - 14:00 LUNCH BREAK Kerry Packer Civic Gallery

Program

SESSION 3

14:00 - 14:45 Reorienting the Mahatma: The Indian Ocean Diaspora

and the Making of Hind Swaraj

Professor Makarand R Paranjape

(Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India)

14:45 - 15:30 Transformation of Diaspora: Indian Experience

Professor Priyankar Upadhyaya

(Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India)

15:30–16:00 AFTERNOON TEA BREAK

SESSION 4

16:00 - 16:45 The fissures between citizenry and fresh migrants – Case Study of the

Non- Resident Indians (NRIs) to Singapore

Dr Arunajeet Kaur

(Institute of South East Asian Studies, Singapore)

Program

DAY 2 - WEDNESDAY 5 SEPTEMBER VENUE: BRADLEY FORUM, LEVEL 5, HAWKE BUILDING, CITY WEST CAMPUS

SESSION 1

9:30 - 10:15 In the Skin of Revolutionary IslamS

Professor Mustapha Marrouchi

(University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA)

10:15 - 11:00 Political technologies and the Postcolonial/Posturban World

Professor AbdouMaliq Simone

(Goldsmiths, University of London, UK)

11:00 - 11:30 MORNING TEA BREAK

SESSION 2

11:30 - 12:15 Reorienting Diaspora: Cycles of Transformations - the case

of Kerala-India

Professor K T Ravindran

(Urban Designers, India)

12:15 - 13:00 Living Death Camps: The Archaeology of Conflicts

in Former Yugoslavia

Professor Eyal Weizman

(Goldsmiths, London University, UK)

13:00 - 14:00 LUNCH BREAK Kerry Packer Civic Gallery

SESSION 3

14:00 - 14:45 “The Model of Political-Performative Imagination

in the Diaspora” The Israeli/Jewish case

Dr Shahar Burla

(University of New South Wales, Australia)

14:45 - 15:30 ‘Placing the Jewish People: Two Concepts of Diaspora’

Dr Brian Klug

(University of South Australia, Australia/Oxford University, UK)

15:30 - 16:00 AFTERNOON TEA BREAK

SESSION 4

16:00 - 16:45 Reflections on ReOrienting Disaspora

16:45–17:00 Closing address

Professor Ashis Nandy

(Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, India)

All Symposium delegates are invited to attend the 4th UniSA Nelson Mandela Lecture:

Walls and wars, rights and ruins: the revelations of forensic architecture

The lecture will be delivered by Eyal Weizman, Professor of Visual Cultures and Director of the Centre for Research

Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London.

The lecture, presented by The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre, will be held on Wednesday 5 September at 6.00 pm in the

Allan Scott Auditorium.

Registration essential via the Hawke Centre website at www.hawkecentre.unisa.edu.au or phone 8302 0215.

Abstracts

Day 1 - Tuesday 4 September 2012Session 1: 9.30–11.00

The Time of the DiasporicProfessor Michael Dutton

The paper begins with a migrant recollection of a forest ‘back home’ sitting alongside a description of topiary. What is at stake in that juxtapositioning? ‘Forests’ tamed by the greenhouse as plants are turned into topiary. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness tells the story in reverse. They both bring to the fore, in almost opposite ways, the conditions of emergence of an extension of the term ‘diasporic’ in the western world. Where once it was very narrowly defined, Webster’s Dictionary now tells us it is ‘the movement, migration, or scattering of people away from an established or ancestral homeland’. It is to live, in part and imperfectly in cultural dislocation. Yet it is a story of dislocation only available to modernist discourse because, at heart, diaspora is a modernist condition. The conditions that make this term possible will be explored in this paper.

At Home in Motion: Evolving Identities in the Age of GlobalisationProfessor Pal Ahluwalia

It is now commonplace to speak of a global culture, the global village as well as the speed and spread of globalisation processes that are gripping the world. Globalisation is not an entirely new phenomenon. Nevertheless, new information, communication, transport and manufacturing technologies as well as trade regimes, effected through such multi-lateral organisations as the GATT and tariff reductions, have allowed production, commerce and finance to be organised and operated on a global scale. The rise and spread of multi-national corporations operating across nation-state boundaries raises questions about the capacity of the state to function within the national interest. In addition, the mass migrations of peoples from different parts of the world have intensified. The multiplicity of identities which we all embody, with allegiances to kin, group and nation, has meant that we always are negotiating and putting forward different identities at different times. While such identities were at one time largely based in a single-nation state, the process is now more complicated due to the changes in global cultural processes, rapid economic changes, communications, travel and migration. Clearly, it is in this multiplicity of identities that the processes of globalisation are being carried out. These processes and the sheer complexity entailed within them, necessitate that we reassess and rethink and indeed re-imagine the manner in which cultural diversity is experienced as well as interpreted. This paper will consider two dimensions to evolving diasporic identities that are firmly anchored in being at home whilst in motion. These two dimensions are rooted in culture and religion. The ways in which culture travels and evolves is illustrative of post-colonial transformations and largely dependent on the host culture as well as the product of being part of either an ‘old’ or ‘new’ diaspora – that is, being a diaspora that has been forged in either the age of colonization or the age of globalization. While it remains to be seen how a diasporic identity will be shaped in the future, it is apparent, that diasporic processes will be played out on a global stage as communications between peoples throughout the world are further revolutionized.

Session 2: 11.30–13.00

Migrants, Settlers and the (Post-)Colonial Order: Critical Reflections on the Diaspora TodayDr Heloise Weber and Samid Suliman

The idea of the diaspora has become increasingly salient in the study and practice of politics in a number of contexts, especially in engagements with national security, the future(s) of citizenship, and the crisis of ‘Third World’ development in an age marked by accelerated and intensified global relations and flows. At the same time, however, accounts of international political relations continue to refer to the Westphalian cartography of state, citizen and territory. Against this backdrop, ‘the diaspora’ has become a conceptual cipher for those who have moved from one national political community to another, as members of a broader migratory flow out of their (national) homeland(s). In the post-1945 context, the diaspora refers to the aggregation of erstwhile colonial subjects and Third World citizens in the First World, and their ambivalent and precarious positions have been the basis for both multicultural and anti-immigrant politics alike. In the contemporary context, the term connotes a very specific form of migrant life, and thus denotes very specific notions of who constitutes the ‘diaspora’, and who does not. We argue that this distinction is founded upon the omission of the importance of the migrations of colonial settlers in constituting the contemporary order, so that the notion of the diaspora is divorced from its colonial history, in which movement, mobility and settlement were at once instrumental and constitutive. We seek to open a space to rethink the political coordinates within which conventional understandings of the diaspora have been located, and to consider the theoretical, practical and political implications of doing so. In particular, we suggest that conventional usages of this term maintain highly territorialised and insufficiently historicised understandings of the migrant condition, despite the fact that the diaspora are often cited as the vanguard of a nascent ‘post-national constellation’.

A Liberalism Gone Wrong? ‘Muscular Liberalism’ and the Return of the RepressedAssociate Professor Jim Jose

On 5 February 2011 British Prime Minister David Cameron addressed the Munich Security Conference on the theme of ‘radicalisation and Islamic extremism’. In his view this was the ‘root cause of the problem’ of ‘home-grown terrorism’ that allegedly thrived in an environment of passive tolerance, a liberalism gone wrong. The solution, asserted Cameron, was for British society (and by extension Western societies in general) to promote those values that allegedly defined it. What was needed was ‘a much more active, muscular liberalism’. This was a curious suggestion harking back to a much earlier time when Britannia still ruled the waves. It might well be dismissed as a throwaway line, a curious discursive anachronism being trotted out to make a rhetorical point, if it were not for the fact that it was presented as a solution to a specific problem allegedly rooted in the context of managing diasporas and their attendant identities. But what is this idea of ‘muscular liberalism’? What does the resurrection of this mostly forgotten idea of ‘muscularity’ signify in the current era? What might the Prime Minister’s appeal to this sort of language, in effect the language of colonialism, mean in terms of illuminating the temper of our times? This paper aims to explore those questions. It will be argued that the invocation of ‘muscular liberalism’ is more than a revealing discursive shift exposing the insecurities generated by the presence and political influence of diasporic cultures, as others have rightly noted. Beyond these insecurities lie even deeper fears, specifically that liberalism may be empowering those who have previously been considered unimportant or unworthy of inclusion within the idea of British identity. Muscular liberalism, it will be argued, is all about ensuring that the very values taken to be archetypically liberal are simultaneously applauded and neutralised.

Abstracts

Session 3: 14.00–15.30

Reorienting the Mahatma: The Indian Ocean Diaspora and the Making of Hind SwarajProfessor Makarand R Paranjape

Responding to the call to ‘reorient’ diaspora studies, this paper offers a re-reading of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Considered the ‘father’ of the Indian nation, Gandhi and his works are read as normatively constitutive of such a project. I argue, however, that they are actually part of an older, looser and more fluid Indian Oceanic diasporic space of cultural formation and circulation which, in great measure, was lost with the end of the empire and the birth of the Indian nation. Such a move frees diaspora studies of the over-determinations of the ‘master narratives’ of empire and nation, doing justice to the specificities of the varied lifeworlds of its subjects. Perhaps, revisiting worlds system theories, given the allusion to Andre Gunder Frank in the title of the symposium, might be another way to analyse larger formations. In this paper I find it helpful to invoke Janet Abu-Lughod’s influential intervention, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350 (1989), to try to recapture the feel of the oecumene of the Indian Ocean diaspora prior to colonialism. My contention is that both Gandhi and his politics were formed not by subcontinental compulsions or contingencies but by a very special Indian Ocean diasporic cosmopolitanism which is very difficult to recover now. The Mahatma, in other words, was formed not in India, but in the diaspora. Gandhi’s writings thus belong to a lexical and conceptual universe that signifies a diasporic Indian Ocean imaginary of nation, state and society as an alter-modern and plural territory. Indeed, it is possible to see Gandhi’s major writings less as subcontinental than as diasporic, Indian Ocean texts. On closer examination, they instantiate not so much an oceanic hybridity, but a special type of anti-imperial diasporic cosmopolitanism, which became crucial to shaping of the new India and the postcolonial world.

Transformation of Diaspora: The Indian ExperienceProfessor Priyankar Upadhyaya

The problematic of diaspora has lately evoked a fresh surge of interest in policy and academic circles. The proliferation of new images and roles of diaspora in their ‘home’ as well as ‘host’ settings have challenged and transformed the traditional stereotypes of diasporic communities with alarm and anxiety. With the globalisation spurt, the scope and impact of diaspora has grown in a range of areas. There is a fast-growing recognition of the multiple ways through which the diaspora could enrich the multicultural fabric of the host country and also boost the technological, trade and investment climate through border crossing networks. These new understandings have certainly posited the diasporic communities in wider perspectives, expanding their identity ramifications as also the policy choices of both the ‘home’ and ‘host’ governments towards these communities. The case of Indian diaspora in Australia could serve as a template to examine many aspects of such transference ushered in by the diasporic communities in the host country. For instance it could be instructive to explore the ways in which the Indian diaspora has interceded and influenced the streams of multiculturalism in Australia. Some of the queries that we propose to detangle are: Does the Indian diaspora have unique cultural streaks given the diversities mediated by them in the home setting? Are there any discernible patterns that relate to their social and economic background and their role in both ‘home’ and ‘host’ settings? How do these new understandings impinge on policy making about the diasporic communities? These and allied issues will form the core of the presentation.

Abstracts

Session 4: 16.00–16.45

The Fissures between Citizenry and Fresh Migrants: Case Study of Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) in SingaporeDr Arunajeet Kaur

The incumbent People’s Action Party (PAP) within the Singapore government is caught between the policy of allowing ‘foreign talent’ into the country to boost economic needs and the reactions of its citizenry, who feel that as a result of the influx of fresh immigrants they have to endure a diminishing pie of economic and social benefits. This presents an interesting ‘ethnoscape’ for fresh immigrants to Singapore, who have to negotiate the global employment market and the obligation to participate in the social contract of Singaporean citizens that binds one to compulsory national service, a Central Provident Fund and dealing with ethnic stereotypes. Taking the case study of NRIs in Singapore, this paper aims to evaluate how these fresh immigrants have managed to reside in Singapore without engaging in the expected assimilation processes, through the availability of networking with other NRI communities and the creation of ‘virtual neighbourhoods’. This lack of assimilation with the settled Singaporean Indian community has highlighted noticeable differences in class, sub-ethnic divides and culture leading to serious parliamentary debates in 2007 over the issue. This phenomenon supports Aihwa Ong’s perspective of ‘transnationalism not in terms of unstructured flows but in terms of the tensions between movements and social orders’ as the NRI flow into Singapore challenges the norms and expectations associated with the traditional Singaporean Indian community.

Day 2 - Wednesday 5 September 2012Session 1: 9.30–11.00

In the Skin of Revolutionary Islams Professor Mustapha Marrouchi

Until recently, the possibility of revolution was globally discredited. And then came the 2011 Arab Spring, an event in the Alain Badiou sense of the word, a rupture that saw the mere suffering victim become the ‘active, determining subject of judgment’. Today we celebrate, commemorate and reflect upon the event, we turn to its program of complete disorder, an overturning order, often against the odds, to speak about how the national consciousness in the Arab world rose to claim radical change. The people rejected once and for all the repressive collectivism that had trampled individual liberty for a long time. In the process, it brought about an end to the passive, pathetic subjectivity of a whole nation. On 14 January 2011, suddenly, the Arab people rose against tyranny, paving the way for other uprisings in the Arab world, an Arab world thought to be incapable of aspiring to and achieving freedom. Still, the questions remain: What made postcolonial Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, to name but a few, spearhead the first revolution of the twenty-first century? What were the causes beyond the socioeconomic explanations, themselves insufficient for this crucial moment in history? We must ponder the dimensions both political and subjective of this incredible tour de force in order to understand the reality on the ground. I will strive to answer the question: How can postcolonial men and women avoid falling to the level of ‘victims’ and seek to prove themselves as ‘immortals’? The post-1/14 Arab world (Syria notwithstanding) is no longer hemmed in and constrained but freely thinking and moving through space and time. This is an open acknowledgement of democracy from below; a democracy developed by the will of the people. I will also address the inadequacies and weaknesses of these new beginnings.

Abstracts

Political Technologies and the Postcolonial/Post-urban WorldProfessor AbdouMaliq Simone

Taking field materials from mixed-use, mixed-income districts in several key metropolitan areas of the so-called ‘majority world’, the presentation endeavours to develop the notion of ‘political technologies’ as a way of examining how different material, discursive and human environments affect and connect with each other in ways that potentially go beyond the demarcation of scales, sectors, and formal and informal economies. As cities are constructed through the complex intersections of materials of all kinds – things, bodies, signs, infrastructure, intensities, machines and formulas – what it is possible to do, think and claim has much to do with the process of constellating relationships among these materials. Political technologies, then, refers to devices for interconnecting such systems. Much of the ways cities like Jakarta, Sao Paolo, Lagos, Mexico City and Hyderabad, the target cities for this presentation, have been constructed and lived remain relatively invisible to urban analysis and not always reliant upon conventional forms of institutions and politics. Thus, the presentation focuses on how more detailed elaborations of political technologies might account for how an urban population, neither strictly poor nor middle class, has been able to make viable urban lives.

Session 2: 11.30–13.00

Reorienting Diaspora: Cycles of Transformations – The Case of Kerala, IndiaProfessor KT Ravindran

The title of the seminar appears to contain multiple layers of meanings. This paper attempts look at the diaspora and its cyclical impact on the home turf in the state of Kerala, India. Kerala, which was in foreign trade and diasporic interchange for centuries before Christ, continues to have a large number of immigrants abroad from almost every household in the state. The focal areas of this diasporic interchange has been changing though modern historic times, shifting from the eastern countries to the Middle East and then to the United States, Europe and Australia. The impact of these sustained interactions has been largely viewed from economic dimensions of a remittance-based economy, while their impact on social, cultural and familial life in Kerala has been largely ignored. The transformations that have come about in the visual culture of the state and complete reversal of the traditional notions of ‘good taste’ also remain as intangible, but definitive and experiential shifts in the home environment. The transformation that the diaspora undergoes in the ascending side of the cycle, first while coming into contact with alien cultures through work practices, new social structures and above all new found wealth, takes on curious hues when the new transformations are reoriented to the home turf in the descending side of the cycle. The changes have both an interiority and an exteriority which often manifest as neo-nationalism, religious recoil and cultural inversion. The shifts that occur in the internal environments of peoples find direct resonance in the external physical and social environments of the ‘home’ territory. Global transformations in the economic domain accelerate the process, with increased presence of external cultures and the aggravated materiality that accompanies globalisation. Reorientation of the diaspora is then inevitable.

Abstracts

Living Death Camps: The Archaeology of Conflicts in Former Yugoslavia Professor Eyal Weizman

The lecture will describe the project - undertaken in the context of the Forensic Architecture research at Goldsmiths and together with Four Faces of Omarska and the Monument Groups in Belgrade - dealing with the remains of two former concentration camps - Omarska in Bosnia and Staro Sajmiste in Belgrade. Both Camp sites are now occupied by different functions - Staro Sajmiste is inhabited by artists and Roma people and Omarska has returned to its original function as an iron ore mine operated by Mittal. The quest to study the history as written by the architecture and archaeology of the sites and to commemoration them are each trapped by the whirlwind of contemporary politics in the region.

Session 3: 14.00–15.30

‘The Model of Political-Performative Imagination in the Diaspora’: The Israeli/Jewish CaseDr Shahar Burla

‘Agents of diasporic imagination’ are what turn a minority group into a diaspora. They enable the establishment of a political imagination that creates the diaspora. These agents include images, myths and practices. The distinctiveness of these agents lies in their ability to create a collective transnationalist frame of reference; the ability to connect two communities that are located in different territories. In its attempt to construct identity in the diaspora, the homeland elite attempts to adjust its agents of imagination to the transnational characteristics and its specific political goals that the home country elite chooses to promote. The political goal that the hermeneutical community of the home country chooses to promote in the diaspora stands above all other characteristics that affect the imagination of the diaspora, and participates in a bi-directional relationship with the imagination agents employed in the diaspora. On the one hand, the political goal influences the choice of imagination agent and its shaping; on the other hand, it is intended to be a product of the very employment of the imagination agent. Ultimately, the employment of a political goal in the shaping of political imagination in the diaspora necessitates the modification of the imagination agents and the narratives they construct to achieve this very goal. This modification will stand at the heart of the model termed ‘The Model of Political-Performative Imagination in the Diaspora’, which will be presented in the paper and exemplified through the relationship of the state of Israel with its diasporas. In the exemplification I will examine the nature of the imagination agents that are transferred from the state of Israel to the diaspora, the narrative constructed by them and the anticipated political goals to which they are modified.

‘Placing the Jewish People: Two Concepts of Diaspora’ Dr Brian Klug

In the Jewish case today, there is a concept of diaspora that is associated with a certain idea of the relationship between Jews in general and the State of Israel. This idea, a blend of political and cultural Zionism, can be summed up this way: Jews, whoever they are and wherever they live, constitute a single nation – the Jewish people – and Israel is the state that both belongs to this nation and is the centre of its collective life. Thus, those Jews who do not live in Israel inhabit the periphery of Jewish national life. On this view, the territory of the diaspora (a) comprises all lands outside the State of Israel and (b) has a lower status than that of the State itself. Taking my cue from a remark by David Grossman in conversation with Amos Oz (“We have been unable to decide: Are we a people of place or of time?”), I shall locate the Jewish people differently and explore an alternative concept of diaspora.

Abstracts

Professor Pal Ahluwalia has been Pro Vice Chancellor of the Division of Education, Arts and Social Sciences at the University of South Australia since March 2008. His main research interests lie in the areas of African studies and social and cultural theory, and his work is widely published and internationally renowned for breaking down disciplinary boundaries and challenging orthodoxy. In October 2008 Prof Ahluwalia was appointed Chair in Transnational Diasporas and Reconciliation Studies for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

Dr Shahar Burla holds a Master’s degree in Political Science and Philosophy from the Hebrew University and a PhD in political science from Bar-Ilan University. His book, titled The Jewish Homeland and the Diasporic Jewish Identity, is going to be published in Hebrew in 2012. He currently lives in Sydney and is a researcher and tutor at the University of New South Wales.

Professor Michael Dutton is Professor of Politics at Goldsmiths, University of London. Editor of the journal Postcolonial Studies, he is also the author of a number of books on China, the most recent being Beijing Time (Harvard, 2008) and Policing Chinese Politics (Duke, 2005). The latter book won the 2007 American Asian Studies Association’s 2007 Joseph Levenson Prize for the best book on modern China.

Associate Professor Jim Jose is Associate Professor in Politics in the Discipline of Politics and International Relations in the Newcastle Business School at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia. He has taught politics at a number of universities in Australia and is the author of Biopolitics of the Subject: An Introduction to the Ideas of Michel Foucault (1998), and was also a contributor to Anarchists and Anarchist Thought: An Annotated Bibliography, edited by Paul Nursey-Bray (1992). He has published numerous articles on political theory, feminist theory/gender politics, postcolonial politics, and Australian politics and public policy. His research interests include political theory; theories of governance; and postcolonialism and the imperial imagination.

Dr Arunajeet Kaur is a fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Singapore. She recently graduated from the Australian National University. Her doctoral dissertation was entitled, ‘From Independence to Hindraf: the Malaysian Indian Community and the Negotiation for Minority Rights’. She has also recently co-authored a book, The Migration of Indian Human Capital: The Ebb and Flow of Indian Professionals in Southeast Asia (New York: Routledge, 2011).

Dr Brian Klug is a Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at St Benet’s Hall, Oxford, a member of the philosophy faculty of the University of Oxford, and Honorary Fellow of the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations, University of Southampton. Currently, he is a Visiting Scholar at the International Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding, University of South Australia, Adelaide, where he is teaching a seminar on ‘Wittgenstein on Culture and Religion’. His published writing on Judaism and Jewish identity include Being Jewish and Doing Justice: Bringing Argument to Life (2011) and Offence: The Jewish Case (2009).

Professor Mustapha Marrouchi is Professor and Rogers Fellow in Postcolonial Literature, Research Associate at ISS (Claremont, California), as well as the coordinator of The Graduate Circle at UNLV. He is the author most recently of The Fabric of Subcultures: Networks, Ethnic Force Fields, and Peoples without Power (New York: Lang, 2011) and editor of Embargoed Literature: Arabic (West Chester: WC Press, 2010), winner of the 2010 Horizon Award. An influential cultural critic, Professor Marrouchi has written widely on Islam(ism), terrorism, African-American literature, the Arab revolution, Arabic literature, theory, colonial

Presenters

discourse, couscous, war and soccer. Professor Marrouchi is currently working on a book he calls Unspeakable Things Spoken at Last as well as on an essay tentatively titled The Clash of Ignorance in the Global near Future and another on The Arab Spring: Between Hopes and Impediments.

Professor Ashis Nandy is Emeritus Senior Fellow and Member of the Board of Governors, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi; Distinguished Fellow of the Institute of Postcolonial Studies, Melbourne; Chair of the Executive Committee of the Centre for Environment and Food Security, New Delhi; and a member of the Global Scientific Committee on Higher Education (UNESCO). Professor Nandy was educated in sociology and clinical psychology at Calcutta, Nagpur and Gujarat universities. He has worked for more than three decades on two diametrically opposite domains of social existence – human potentialities or creativity and human destructiveness, particularly mass violence. The oscillation between these two domains has defined his life and work. During the past 30 years Professor Nandy has served on commissions, hearings and investigations into communal riots, violence of development, crimes against women and electoral malpractices, and has been an office bearer in important human rights organisations. In 2007 the jury of the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize awarded Professor Nandy its Grand Prize and in 2008 Foreign Policy magazine listed him as one of the world’s top 100 public intellectuals).

Professor Makarand R Paranjape is Professor of English in the Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He was educated at St Stephen’s College, University of Delhi (BA Hons) and at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA (Masters and PhD). He is the author/editor of over thirty-five books which include works of criticism, poetry and fiction, and has also published over a hundred academic papers in books or journals published from India and abroad. His latest work includes Another Canon: Indian Texts and Traditions in English (2009), Altered Destinations: Self, Society, and Nation in India (2010), and Acts of Faith: Journeys to Sacred India (2012).

Professor KT Ravindran is an urban designer and had taught urban design for three decades in the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi. He is the founder president of the Institute of Urban Designers – India, a professional association of qualified urban designers. He is a member of the academic boards of a number of universities in India and lectures in various universities around the world. His practice includes design of greenfield cities, cultural buildings and memorials, adaptive reuse as well as urban conservation. He was the Vice Chairman of the Environmental Impact Assessment Committee of the Government of India as well as the Chairman of the Delhi Urban Art Commission. He is at present Chairman of the Architectural Heritage Division of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH). He is a Member of the Advisory Board for the United Nations Capital Master Plan, a five member committee, advising the Secretary General of the United Nations on the ongoing UN project in New York. His research and publications include contemporary urban history, indigenous urbanism, vernacular building traditions, and sustainability and urban form.

Professor AbdouMaliq Simone is an urbanist in the broad sense that his work focuses on various powers, cultural expressions, governance and planning discourses, spaces and times in cities across the world. Simone is presently Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and has taught at New School University, the University of Khartoum, University of Ghana, University of the Western Cape, University of the Witwatersrand and the City University of New York, as well as working for several African NGOs, municipal governments and regional institutions, including the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa and the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements. Key publications

Presenters

include In Whose Image? Political Islam and Urban Practices in Sudan (University of Chicago Press, 1994) and For the City Yet to Come: Changing Urban Life in Four African Cities (Duke University Press, 2004), and City Life from Jakarta to Dakar: Movements at the Crossroads (Routledge, 2009).

Professor Priyankar Upadhyaya currently holds the UNESCO Chair for Peace and also serves as the Professor of Peace Studies and Coordinator of Malaviya Centre for Peace Research at Banaras Hindu University. He has done postdoctoral studies at London University and Woodrow Wilson Centre for International Scholars, Washington, DC and holds a PhD and MPhil from Jawaharlal Nehru University and Advance International Diploma(s) in Conflict Resolution from Uppsala University, Sweden. Dr Upadhyaya has been honoured with the Guest Scholar Award of the Woodrow Wilson Centre of International Scholars at Washington, DC, Faculty Research Award, Canadian Government, Senior Fulbright Award and Australia–India Council Senior Fellowship. Dr Upadhyaya has made a foundational contribution to the growth of peace and conflict resolution studies in India. He has participated in various track II dialogue between India and Pakistan and authored/co-authored several books published by Routledge, Ashgate, Oxford University Press and Information Age, and research articles in reputed international journals such as the Denver Journal of International Law & Policy; International Studies (Sage) and Strategic Analysis (Routledge). He occasionally serves as a subject expert at various news channels including Star News and the BBC.

Dr Heloise Weber is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Development Studies in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland. Dr Weber’s main research interests are the global politics of development/critical development studies and international political theory, with strong overlaps with non-mainstream approaches to international political economy. She is particularly interested in the relationship between global ‘structures’ and everyday lived experiences. In this context, she has focused on some of the problems and limitations of conventional theoretical approaches in the study of ‘South–North’ relations, including the analytical utility of the concept of the ‘Third World’. Among her published research projects are detailed studies on the following: the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper initiative [PRSPs]; the global politics of microcredit/microfinance schemes; and the WTO (trade) and development. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Review of International Studies, Review of International Political Economy, Third World Quarterly and Globalizations.

Professor Eyal Weizman is an architect, Professor of Visual Cultures and Director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. Since 2011 he has also directed the European Research Council–funded project ‘Forensic Architecture’ on the place of architecture in international humanitarian law. Since 2007 he is a founding member of the architectural collective DAAR in Beit Sahour/Palestine. Weizman has been a professor of architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and has also taught at Bartlett (UCL) in London and the Stadel School in Frankfurt. He has worked with a variety of NGOs worldwide and was a member of B’Tselem board of directors. He is currently on the advisory boards of the ICA in London, the Human Rights Project at Bard in NY, and of other academic and cultural institutions. Weizman is the recipient of the James Stirling Memorial Lecture Prize for 2006–2007, a co-recipient of the 2010 Prince Claus Prize for Architecture (for DAAR) and has delivered the Rusty Bernstein, Paul Hirst and the Edward Said memorial lectures amongst others. He studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London and completed his PhD at the London Consortium/Birkbeck College.

Presenters

Notes