The Association Jeunes Etudes Indiennes (AJEI) is pleased to invite you to its 2021 webinar series:

India Matters 

In the past few years, the AJEI has found it difficult to hire new members. In 1998, its founders had seen India as peculiar enough to justify a related association for the young French researchers, but it would seem that this interest has faded away.

Is it because neoliberal globalization erased some of the national specificities over the past 30 years? Or is the country better studied as part of larger areas such as South Asia or the “global South”? Is it that India, with its myriads of regional and social divisions, is too diverse to develop an area-specialist knowledge? Or has the continuous rise of monodisciplinary approaches been fatal to Indian studies?

As a scientific field with origins that can be traced back to the end of the 18th century, the contemporary importance of Indian studies is seemingly attested by the works of India scholars from the country and abroad. This webinar is an attempt to consolidate some of the contemporary studies on India. We will hear presentations on current Indian themes every first Tuesday of the month at 1:00 pm CET/ 5:30 pm IST, this:

On January 5^th, political scientist Khaliq Parkar will inaugurate the webinar series with a talk on the governance of India’s smart cities. He will tell us more about the Indian specificities of these new urban models specifically related to technology and data based on his current PhD work on the topic.

On February 2^nd, members of a Franco-Indian research collective will talk about the political, geopolitical and socioeconomic impact of the Covid-19 in India. Stemming from different disciplines, they will sketch research perspectives on the topic.

On March 2^nd, GIS specialist Alexandre Cebeillac will talk about the issues of collecting and analyzing quantitative data from India. He will draw on his experience with geotagged social media data as well as government databases in a timely contribution as the 16th Indian Census, will be taken in 2021. 

April 6^th will call for a debate on the relevance of area studies in Asia and their French networks with representatives of areal associations. It will include Johan Krieg from the French Academic Network of Asian Studies, Rémi Desmoulière, from the Association française pour la recherche sur l’Asie du Sud-Est (AFRASE), and Yves-Marie Rault Chodankar from the Association des Jeunes Etudes Indiennes (AJEI).

On May 4^th, socioeconomist Floriane Bolazzi by talking about a classic subject in Indian studies, at least since Louis Dumont — that is social stratification. Drawing on her extensive PhD research on Palanpur, she will particularly focus on the issue of upward mobility and discuss to what extent the analytical models invented in the global North can also be valid in India.

On June 7^th, we will eventually listen to sociologist Roland Lardinois. He’s a well-known India scholar and has extensively researched on the history and epistemology of Indian studies. Drawing on his personal experience and work, he will tell us about the structuration of the field in France.

The sessions will take place on Zoom, are open to all, and will last about an hour. If you wish to attend, please register here. We will send you a Zoom link one day before each session.

To add our seminars’ calendar to your Google Calendar, click here.
And for the iCal file of our “India Matters” Calendar, click here.

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