[Reader-list] SociologySeminar at SAU: Pradeep Jeganathan

[Diya Mehra]

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

 

When
Words Will Not Do: Sinhala Buddhist Monks and the Emergence of Violence

by Pradeep
Jeganathan, Shiv Nadar University

 

Wednesday, April 1, 2015, 2:30 pm, FSI Hall, South Asian University,
Abkar Bhavan, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi

 

Abstract:
This paper is an attempt to re-visit an old chestnut in anthropology,
most famously addressed by the renowned S.J. Tambiah,“if Buddhism preaches
nonviolence, why is there so much political violence in Sri Lanka today?” My
attempt is to think the emergence of violence, in relation to Sinhala Buddhist
practice; I do not address the question of ‘quantity.’ I do so by marking a
dispersed set of objects which form an archive of the practice of a particular
set of Sinhala Buddhist monks. I excavate sites in this archive, thinking the
imbrication of perlocutionary utterance and gesture, in each instance. It is my
contention, that this mode of analysis, taken as a whole, will illuminate the
emergence of violence, in relation to particular configurations of Theravada
Buddhism, in Sri Lanka.            

 

Pradeep
Jeganathan is Professor in the Department of Sociology, School of Humanities
and Social Sciences at Shiv Nadar University. His research interests focus on the perpetration of
violence, survival and bad death. Simultaneously he also has begun research on
familial and romantic love. He also has continuing interests in colonial forms
of knowledge, post-colonial nationalism and subalterneity and Theravada
Buddhism. Cyber-sociality and cyber-subjectivity is another interest. While in
Sri Lanka he took an active role in public intellectual life, writing a regular
op-ed column in a major Sunday newspaper, and appearing occasionally on TV
shows, and blogging. His book ‘At the Water’s Edge’, was short listed for the
Gratiaen Prize in 2004.