Call for papers: Risky Business: Perspectives on Governance of South Asian Ecologies
Call for Papers
Across South Asia, ecological risk mapping and mitigation is part of the vocabularies of local and national governments. Ecological management by governments is not new to South Asia and has long shaped legal, social and economic infrastructures of governance. The business of assessing and mediating risk involves multiple actors, institutions, practices and technologies both within and outside formal state bureaucracies.
In this workshop, we bring together scholars from multiple disciplines working on these historical and contemporary risk calculations, programmes and policies. We are interested in thinking beyond sovereign boundaries and contributing to a conceptualisation of ecological risk from a regional lens. These meso-level analyses aim to eschew the frequently repeated binaries of global-local in ecological discussions.
Towards this end, the workshop proposes to address:
- How has ecological risk manifested at the ‘regional’ level in South Asia? What forms of prevailing regional politics does it have to contend with?
- What actors, institutions and practices have constituted the mapping of such risk? How have they interacted with hierarchies of power in sovereign governance as well as vulnerable populations in the subcontinent’s colonial and postcolonial histories?
Format of the workshop
The workshop is limited to a maximum of six presentations focusing on in-depth discussion on work-in-progress writing by the early career researchers. The participants will be asked to pre-circulate a paper of 3000-5000 words ahead of the workshop (by 20 August 2023). The researcher will make a 15 minute presentation, following by comments from discussants and other presenters. There will also be time for plenary discussion between all the participants to explore synergies and possible collaborations.
Please send across an abstract of an article, dissertation chapter or essay that you would like to present and get feedback on at the workshop. The abstract should be of no more than 300 words and sent to Maansi Parpiani at maansi.parpiani@sund.ku.dk by 31 May 2023. There is possibility to cover travel and accommodation expenses for one selected participant.
Sponsored by the Asian Dynamics Initiative, University of Copenhagen.