[Reader-list] SociologySeminar at SAU: Dr Jules Naudet

[Diya Mehra]

The
Department of Sociology, South Asian University cordially invites you to a
seminar:

 

 

'All of
us have closed ourselves into a Cacoon': Self-Segregation and Representations
of Poverty Upper Class Neighborhoods in New Delhi

 

by Dr.
Jules Naudet, Centre for
Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), New Delhi

 


Wednesday, October 29 2014, 2.30 pm, FSI Hall, South
Asian University, 

Akbar
Bhawan, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi 110021

 

 

Abstract: How do the inhabitants of the most
privileged neighborhoods of big metropolises see the poor? How do they distance
themselves (both physically and symbolically) from them? Can their representations
of the urban poor be analyzed as part of traditional or neoliberal repertoires
of action and justification? To answer these questions, this paper will be
drawing on the Delhi part of a comparative research on upper-class and
upper-middle-class residents of the most socially selective areas (both in the
inner-cities and in the suburbs) of Paris, São Paulo and New Delhi. The paper
will explore the articulation between five themes, whose possible mobilization
as subjective reasons for self-segregation has been systematically tested in
the interviews. These topics are: (1) insecurity and crime-exposure, (2)
hygiene and the risks of contamination, (3) the attachment to a moral order
that would need to be protected, (4) the naturalization (or racialization) of
poverty, and (5) the various valuations of competition and merit vs.
solidarity.

 

Dr. Jules Naudet studied at Sciences Po. Paris and the Institut National
des Langues et Civilisations Orientales. His research has been published in
several journals including Contributions to Indian Sociology. His book "Entrer
dans l’élite : Parcours de réussite en France, aux Etats-Unis et en Inde"
was published in 2012 by the Presses Universitaires de France. He is currently
the head of the ‘Politics and Society Division’ at the CSH.