Rajesh Kasturirangan, Research Affiliate
| Jan/09 | Sat | 10:00AM-02:00PM | 4-145 |
Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up
Prereq: Open to Everyone
South Asia will dominate the Anthropocene in several ways: for one, it will have more people than any comparable region in the world, making it the most anthropocentric place in the anthropocene. Second, many of the challenges of this era will arguably surface first in South Asia: conflict over air, water and other natural resources, climate adaptation and migration, human non-human conflict and ideally, new ways of living within our means and with harmony in nature. The South Asian Anthropocene poses theoretical as well as empirical challenges to social scientists and humanities scholars who specialize in the sub-continent. Whether that scholar is an economist, a historian or an anthropologist, s/he will have to grapple with ideas that have traditionally been neglected in their scholarly communities. They will have to expand their horizon to include the non-human world in unprecedented ways; they will also have to create new philosophical and political conceptions for understanding these new developments. This seminar is an attempt to understand the South Asian Anthropocene by bringing together scholars working in the humanities and the social sciences. Our hope is that by exchanging ideas and empirical findings across disciplines, we will be better positioned to understand the future of South Asian societies.
Contact: Rajesh Kasturirangan, 617 253-8024, KASTURI@MIT.EDU