[Reader-list] SociologySeminar at SAU: Venugopal Maddipati

[Diya Mehra]

The Department of Sociology, South Asian University, New Delhi cordially invite you to a seminar: Subordinate Spatialities: Historicizing Housing, Language and Identity in Wagdara: A Kolam Village in Wardha, India by Dr. Venugopal Maddipati, School of Design, Ambedkar University, Delhi Wednesday, March 26 2014, 2:30 pm, FSI HALL, South Asian University,  Akbar Bhawan, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi 110021 This study explores the manner in which the Kolams, a tribal community based in the village of Wagdara in west-central India, subordinated their own spatial imaginings to the spaces of a frequently reproduced low-cost house designed in 1980 by the Gandhian Centre of Science for Villages (CSV), an organization based in the outskirts of the nearby city of Wardha. The study reflects on how the Kolams of Wagdara permitted the spaces of these houses to delineate the spatial grammar of their own households in the 1990s. The study suggests that an increasing emphasis, in the 1990s, among the Kolams, on their language as the domain of their identity, led to the diminishment of their investment in space as the domain of their identity. The study strives to contribute to the theme of the correspondence between language and spatial culture in South Asian architectural historiography. Dr. Maddipati is an Architectural Historian. He has previously held fellowships at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi.