[Reader-list] Talk: 'I am Gulf': The Production of Cosmopolitanism in Calicut, Kerala

[Shilpa Phadke]

*PUKAR*

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presents a talk

by



*Filippo Osella*

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'I am Gulf': The Production of Cosmopolitanism in Calicut, Kerala**





Date:               Tuesday, 13 December 2005

Time                6.30 pm

Venue:             PUKAR Office

Address:          2nd Floor, Kamanwala Chambers, Opposite Strand Book Stall,
Sir. P M Road, Fort, Mumbai 400001. Tel: 5574-8152



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*Abstract*

This paper explores the production of cosmopolitan identities in Calicut,
Kerala.   We find that the diverse experiences of the past -  when commerce
brought to Calicut traders from far and wide - and the present - when
Calicut migrants travel to the Gulf to work and live alongside people from
all over the world - are brought together in popular discourse to highlight
the 'cosmopolitanism' of the city and its inhabitants.  But for Calicut
Koyas - the Muslim community with whom I conducted fieldwork from 2002 to
2004 - cosmopolitanism goes beyond a celebration of cultural
sophistication.  It is a discourse through which a specific and exclusive
local identity is objectified and valorised, at the same time assimilating
and distinguishing Koyas from other Muslim and non-Muslim communities in
Calicut and beyond.  The Koya residential area of Calicut - Thekkepuram,
with its highly specific matrilineal joint households - and the Gulf -
connected historically to Calicut through trade and migration - become
inseparable, braided reference points of Koya identity and claims for
superior status.  In turn, however, the experience of contemporary Gulf
migration re-aligns historical notions and practices of urban
cosmopolitanism through which Koyas define their own and their city's
identity.**

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*Filippo Osella studied at the **London** **School** of Economics (PhD in
Anthropology 1993), and is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the
**University** of **Sussex**.  He has carried out several periods of
extended
fieldwork in Kerala and the **Persian Gulf** since 1989, and has published
on
social mobility, migration, agrarian relations, masculinities and
sexuality, popular religion and the body.  His most important publications
to date are: Osella, F & Osella, C. 2000 Social Mobility in Kerala:
Modernity and Identity in Conflict, (Pluto); Chopra R, C Osella & F Osella
(eds.) 2003 Masculinities in South Asia, (Kali for Women); F Osella & K
Gardner 2003 Migration, Modernity and Social Transformation in South Asia
(SAGE).  He is currently working on contemporary consumption practices and
ways in which they impact upon identities in the contexts of economic
liberalisation, high migration and Islamic reformism, with fieldwork in
Kerala and the **Persian Gulf**.*
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