Abstract

At least two things are self evident: Human rights have become the predominant conceptual language of modernity, and around the globe, one is witnessing multitudinous struggles over rights and human rights, including in South Asia. But, how useful is the human rights framework and ‘global human rights’ scholarship for thinking about the stakes and struggles over rights and human rights in South Asia? And, more importantly, how do we conceptually capture these rights struggles in what Partha Chatterjee has called ‘most of the world’? Through ethnographically tracking ‘vernacular rights cultures’ mobilised around grassroots citizen movements in South Asia, I will argue that this is a key epistemic and political question in thinking about political modernity in the region, and one consisting of a two fold challenge: to produce scholarship that will produce a shift in the epistemic centre of human rights, and to generate conceptual work supportive of those involved in challenging complex inequalities and the intersectional nature of oppression at the frontline.

Dr. Sumi Madhok

Sumi Madhok's research interests lie at the intersection of feminist political theory and philosophy, gender theories, transnational activism, rights/human rights, citizenship, activism, postcoloniality, developmentalism and feminist ethnographies. In particular, she is interested in questions of agency and coercion, in the new citizenship movements and in the genealogical investigations of rights discourses, cultures and subjectivities, especially within Southern Asia.

This is an open lecture but with limited seats so please register at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/seminar-on-the-concept-of-human-rights-in-s...