Upcoming Public Lecture
Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India
Professor Akhil Gupta
Date: Monday 11th June, 2012, 6.30-8.00pm
Venue: Old Theatre, Old Building, LSE
This event is co-hosted with the Department of Geography and Environment|.
Sixty years after liberation from colonial rule, why has the Indian state been unable to eradicate extreme poverty? Although poverty rates have been falling sharply in the last twenty five years, almost a quarter of the Indian population still lives in conditions that can only be described as inhumane. How does one conceptualize the violence of poverty? I attempt to understand the mechanisms that help normalize such violence through the category of biopolitics. Engaging Foucault and Agamben, I argue that the very mechanisms of care that are used by the Indian state to look after the poor systematically produce arbitrary outcomes, whose consequences are catastrophic for those who do not receive the care. The reason for such arbitrariness often lies in the routines by which state bureaucracies function. An ethnography of bureaucracies, therefore, gives us insights into how structural violence is reproduced.
Akhil Gupta is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for India and South Asia (CISA) at UCLA. He obtained his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from Western Michigan University, his Master's in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, and his Ph.D. in Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford University. He has taught at the University of Washington, Seattle (1987-89), and at Stanford University (1989-2006) before coming to UCLA.
Full details about the event and venue can be found here|.
Other Upcoming Events
Workshop on Irony, Cynicism, and the Chinese State
|Monday 4th and Tuesday 5th June 2012
Anthropology in London 2012: Certainty? A one-day conference at UCL.
|Monday 11th June 2012
Forum on Religion Events|
Recent Public Events
Malinowski Memorial Lecture 2012
Dr Alpa Shah
'The Muck of the Past': Revolution, Social Transformation and the Maoists in India
Date: Thursday 17 May 2012, 6.00-7.00pm
Venue: Old Theatre, Old Building, LSE
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Alpa Shah teaches anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is the author of 'In the Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism and Insurgency in Jharkhand, India' and co-editor of 'Windows into a Revolution: Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal.'
Full details about the event and venue can be found here|.
God's Money Makers: Volatile Markets and the Problem of Planning a Life
Caitlin Zaloom
Date: Friday 16 March 2012, 6:00-8:00pm
Venue: NAB 1.04, New Academic Building
Caitlin Zaloom is Associate Professor at NY University. Her areas of research/interest are: culture and economy; cities and globalization; financial markets; technology and cities; science and technology studies; social theory.
Podcast| of Caitlin Zaloom's lecture.
For further information please follow this link |.