Keynote: Online Conference on Reimagining citizenship in South Asia

Описание: Keynote:
The keynote was delivered by Prof. Faisal Devji, University of Oxford, UK. The title of the deliberation is “1971: The end of the postcolonial state”. Prof. Faisal Devji argued, “one of the most significant global events in the second half of the twentieth century, the violent founding of Bangladesh in 1971 has nevertheless received little scholarly attention. What exists of it has been dominated by the international community’s vocabulary of genocide and crimes against humanity that found one of its earliest causes in the 1971 war.
Yet it is the only country in South Asia not to emerge directly from the region’s decolonization. And its nationality was in fact constructed against that of the postcolonial state even as it assumed many of the latter’s characteristics. Might 1971, then, be understood as closing the postcolonial period that had opened with the independence of India and Pakistan? I shall argue here that Bangladesh represents the inauguration of a new kind of nation for which imperialism and anti-colonialism have been replaced by civil war as both the chief problem and possibility of liberation globally”.

About the “Reimagining citizenship in South Asia” Conference:
The Reimagining Citizenship project, based at the University of York, and supported by funding from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, together with the South Asia Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association is co-convening an online conference on “Reimagining citizenship in South Asia”.
South Asia today bears witness to profound contestations over ideas and practices associated with citizenship. Notions of rights, presence and membership in the political community are being interrogated. As the 1.5 billion people of the region negotiate their states, societies and territories in a quest for better lives, they imbue citizenship with meanings that extend far beyond its original conception as a status bestowed by governments upon populations. This conference invites reflections on contemporary imaginations of citizenship in this geopolitically explosive, economically precarious and ecologically fragile region.
The conference was co-convened by Dr. Indrajit Roy, University of York, UK; Dr. Buddhadeb Halder, University of York, UK; Dr. Filippo Boni, Open University, UK; and Dr. Rudabeh Shahid, Atlantic Council, USA.
Website: https://reimaginingcitizenship.org/
Facebook:   / yorkcitizenship  
Twitter:   / yorkcitizenship