The conference organizers call for papers on the following themes:
- Democracy as a political vs. ethical project: How is the democratic project realised through representation and participation? What is the inter-play of gender, caste, religion, class, etc. in the democracy? Constitutional Identity: relevance, crisis and contradiction (explored through concepts such as Secularism, Federalism, Rights/Directive Principles, efficacy of tripartite Legislature/Executive/Judiciary)
- Temporal Constructs: How is democracy constructed through deploying the notions of past, present and future, through invocations of civilizational and historical imperatives, visions for the future, notions of crisis and progress?
- Modes and Materials of constructing democracy: How is democracy shaped in the fields of culture and society? What are its modes and the forms it takes? The electoral process and the negotiations of representation, census and statistics, governmentality and civility, law and public policy, language and public discourse, media and production of knowledge, cultural artefacts and identities, scientific discourse and notions of development.
- Institutions and Institutionalisation: What is the role of State, civil society and other institutions in the experience and production of democracy? How do they affect the State? How do they interact with social and political realities?
- Boundary-making and Spatial Control: How are the limits of the democratic nation invoked through territoriality, morality, disciplining, criminalisation and emerging spaces of the Internet and digital media?
- Conflict and Conflict-resolution: How does the democratic nation resolve conflict? What is the role of institutions and civil society in conflict resolution?
- Condition, possibilities and expressions of democratic practices in everyday life: how are the ideals of the democratic state practised? What are the ways in which these ideals inform society and culture? Dissent and Resistance
- How do the market and processes of globalisation affect democracy?
Send your abstract at latest 15 March 2017 to gradforumkii [at] gmail [dot] com (gradforumkii[at]gmail[dot]com)