[Reader-list] SociologySeminar at SAU: Community identity, cosmopolitanism and the city

[Diya Mehra]

The Department of
Sociology, South Asian University, New Delhi cordially invite you to a
seminar: 

 

Community
identity, cosmopolitanism and the city: being Anglo-Indian and Chinese in
Calcutta/Kolkata

 

Dr. Jayani Bonnerjee,
Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi

 

Wednesday, March 5
2014, Wednesday 2:30 PM FSI HALL, South Asian University,  Akbar Bhawan, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi 110021

 

This paper focuses on what it means to be
Anglo-Indian and Chinese in Calcutta, through an exploration of intersections
between community identity, cosmopolitanism and the city. As minorities, as
well as diasporas, both Anglo-Indian and Chinese communities negotiate their
position within ideas of a cosmopolitan Calcutta in various ways. This paper
will explore such negotiations that include a politics of community identity,
within both spatial and temporal frameworks. Whilst these politics are specific
to either community, this paper also draws on narratives of everyday
cosmopolitan connections that cut across community identities. Focusing on two
different, yet connected identities of being ‘Changlo-Indian’ and ‘Anglo-Chinese’
that draw on an idea of cosmopolitan Calcutta, this paper questions whether the
politics of envisaging cosmopolitan Kolkata in the present day draws on
stricter community identities.