| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday, November 4, 2014 | 2:00PM - 4:00PM | Seminar Room 108N, Munk School of Global Affairs 1 Devonshire Place |
Constructing Asian Infrastructures: Politics, Poetics, Plans
Where does the call for new, “planetary” humanities leave area studies? What does “South Asia” mean, in the Anthropocene? A partial answer to that question lies in the South Asian Monsoon. Crucial to food and human security, changes in the monsoon are an uncertain outcome of planetary warming. But does South Asia shape the monsoon as much as it is shaped by the monsoon? Long before global recognition of anthropogenic climate change, the uncertainties of the monsoon stimulated thinking about poverty and inequality in South Asia. The paper examines how monsoon-related dreams and fears shaped Indian meteorology. The quest to “liberate” South Asia from the monsoon inspired repeated attempts to conquer nature and harness water, with unintended consequences—consequences that suggest the need for a more flexible definition of the region: one that overlays ecological and cultural maps to incorporate spaces like the Bay of Bengal or the terrain of the Himalayan rivers, which transcend political borders.
Sunil Amrith is Reader in Modern Asian History at Birkbeck College, University of London. His work focuses on the circulation of people, ideas, and institutions between South and Southeast Asia. His most recent book is Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants (Harvard, 2013). He is currently working on the environmental history of India’s eastern seaboard, supported by the European Research Council
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