'The Other from Within' 2022 Conference, University of Leeds, 7 – 8 July

Concept Note:

This conference is part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council project ‘The Other from Within: Indian Anthropologists and the Birth of the Nation’. Over the two days, we will contribute to some larger research themes through more specialised panels. The larger themes of the project trace the development of anthropology as an academic discipline in India and as an instrument of state formation across the transition to independence, ca. 1900 to 1970. Historians of India and other postcolonial contexts have been increasingly interested in the intellectual bases for state formation and social policy, as unique projects of the Global South. Rather than simply looking at anthropology as an outgrowth of colonial ideas, we will explore the many circulations, networks and movements of ideas, intellectuals, and their practices, in forming distinctive academic fields. We see this as a vital means of tracing out the distinctive intellectual and ideological underpinnings of the state idea, independently and autonomously from the West. The conference has three broad themes: Profiles, Ideas, and Institutions (Museums).

In this conference, we will interrogate these larger themes by looking at the profile of Indian ethnographers and social scientists and their interventions in specific areas of physical anthropology and its support in state institutions. In terms of ideas, the conference will consider how early understandings of concepts such as race, caste, untouchability and gender shaped anthropological research and knowledge in colonial and postcolonial India. The conference’s interest in institutions attempts to interrogate the site of the museum and the practice of curation. In the latter area, we will examine the evolving idea of co-curation as it applies to erstwhile marginal Indian citizens, and draw some comparisons between Indian and European approaches to restitution or repatriation, both historically and in contemporary times.

See the Conference Programme at the project website: https://www.theotherfromwithin.com/