300150 Inequality, Conflicts and Social Movements in South Asia (S) (SoSe 2014)

South Asian societies are enigmatic examples for high levels of cultural, religious and ethnic diversity. They are also often depicted as zones prone to social and political conflicts, where plurality is generally believed to be the motivation of socio-political antagonisms. Indeed, social and economic mobility in South Asia (but elsewhere also) is determined by affinities to certain demographic as well as cultural categories such as gender, class, caste, age, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, or territoriality. Nevertheless, the cause of conflicts is not simply societal diversity, even if standard demands are often formulated in a collectivizing manner and they buttress differentiations and social divisions. But rather a variety of underlining socio-historical and economic factors connected to the contradictions of political life, to the everyday struggles for resources, to political participation, or to claims for recognition. This means that various forms of inequality are related to multiple mechanisms by which disparity is not just (re)produced and sustained, but also contested through different practices of protest, collective rights activism as well as individual actions and aspirations. An additional factor to the contentious politics in South Asia is created by the contemporary processes of globalization, which connects different parts of the world not just through capital, but also stimulates interconnectedness through rapid exchange of information, thus providing social movements with an impetus and some times even rejuvenation by means of globally circulating ideas of justice or human rights, and supplying them with new and popular frames of agency.
In this seminar we will take a look at different forms of inequality in South Asian societies and political activism, which evolve around the topic of collective discrimination and popular articulations of ‘grievances’. The seminar will be divided into three parts. The first cluster will introduce to the circumstances of four main South Asian countries, Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Students are given the opportunity to familiarize themselves in depth with specific national contexts, but also to create regional as well as global comparisons and cross-references. The second part will concentrate on different forms of inequality and their intersections with demographic and cultural categories. In the final and third part, we will analyze different modes of collective action and individual agency through which socio-economic discrimination is contested and chances for social mobility are pursued. The examination of inequality and plurality draws on a wide body of theoretical approaches, including ethnicity and gender studies, theories of caste society, social movements and identity politics, conflict studies and approaches of legal pluralism. Major importance will be given to theoretical approaches of post-colonialism and ‘subaltern studies'.
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