Call for Papers - Countercurrents: Pasts Present in the Future

14th to 16th of September 2023 at SOAS, University of London

The South Asia* of today manifests through a multitude of imaginations and encounters between the future, past and present. There is a resilience with which South Asia is imagined, as well as a slipperiness to its social and political communities, both within the region as well as across its diasporic arborescence. If the past informs the future, the future might equally influence the past, and the present is but one of the many actors and discourses within this dynamic. We are surrounded by countercurrents, rooted in a juxtaposition of technology and society, historicities and aspirations, otherings and negotiations, belonging and estrangement.

SAAG 2023 explores narratives of a South Asia being manifested, imagined, and practiced today, to construct the South Asia of tomorrow. We look towards what the future of the subcontinent looks like in the rhythms, ebbs, and flows of tempestuous change.

We invite papers from doctoral and early career scholars doing ethnographic work in South Asia that explore a range of themes like, but not limited to;

1. The State and the making up of citizens
2. The law, il/legalities, constitutions Borders and margins (physical and epistemic)
3. Marginalised and militarised zones 
4. Urban relationships, spatiality, geographies
5. Communities and loneliness
6. Wellbeing, mental/health, and infrastructure
7. The search for ‘indigenous’ cultures and rights
8. Ecology, sustainability and the lived experiences of climate change
9. The ‘techade’: technology in society, society in technology
10. Knowledge (co)production and participation
11. Artmaking, curation, and archiving Experiences of de/anti/post coloniality
12. Nostalgia, ‘old’ times, and modernity; reconstructions of the past
13. (Multiple) futurities, ancestries

SAAG 2023 is taking place on the 14th, 15th, and 16th of September 2023 at SOAS, University of London, WC1H 0XG. We invite interested scholars to submit a title and abstract of no longer than 250 words, along with your name, a short biography and institutional affiliation to saagconference2023@gmail.com by the 15th of April 2023. Full papers are due by the 30th of June 2023.

*South Asia: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Maldives, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and their diasporas.