[Reader-list] SociologySeminar at SAU: Dr. Rohit Negi

[Diya Mehra]

The Department of Sociology, South Asian University cordially invites you to a seminar:Copper’s Materiality and the Making of Urban Space in Zambiaby Dr. Rohit Negi, Ambedkar University Delhi Wednesday, March 18 2015, 2.30 pm, FSI Hall, South Asian University, Akbar Bhawan, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi Abstract: A fundamental and foundational binary in the organization of academic knowledge is the nature/society divide. It has come under attack recently by panoply of scholars as being both artificial and, ultimately, a limiting framework given that several concerns of scholarly interest today—including urbanisation, climate change and extractive economies—involve an essential intertwining of social and natural worlds. Of less critical interest though has been a second binary—object/subject--that has been historically mapped on to the nature/society split. It follows that agency is located squarely within the social world, while biophysical environments and material landscapes are considered either the raw materials to, or outcomes of, human rationality, ingenuity, and/or contestations. Academic understandings theorize from these basic assumptions, and so histories and conceptions of the world reproduce these binaries. A more holistic view that pays attention to the socio-materiality of phenomena, however, adds significantly to conceptions of historical geographies and contemporary political forms. This paper advances such an understanding by considering the materiality of copper in the making of Zambian mining towns.Rohit Negi is Assistant Professor in the School of Human Ecology at Ambedkar University Delhi. His interests hinge on the intersections of capitalism, urbanism and nature. Rohit’s writings have appeared in publications like the Journal of Southern African Studies, Geoforum, Review of African Political Economy and African Geographical Review.