IASA Bienniel Conference
On
Planetary Futures and the
Global South
At
Mohanlal Sukhadia University
Udaipur, Rajasthan
16-18 January 2018
In association with
DAAD-Global
South Network, University of Tuebingen
JNU-UPE-II
Project “Asian Crossroads: Indic Neighbourhoods, Global Connections,”
Project
on Science and Spirituality, JNU
Samvad
India Foundation, New Delhi
CALL FOR PAPERS
India has been called
the “cross-roads” of the entire region of the Indian ocean oecumene, literally
on the “road to everywhere.”1 For almost every important intellectual,
political, and cultural current from East to the West and from West to the
East, India became the point of transition, mediation, or even fruition. This
is as true of the evolution of British colonialism in Asia and Australia as it
is of prior times. The question, however, is how these connections might play
out in the future, but also in terms of how futures are to be imagined,
designed, and executed from hereon. It is this exciting discursive terrain of
future studies that this conference fouces on, with special referene to India,
Australia, and the Global South.
The aim of this
conference is to study some of these cross currents of Global Futures, to
document available knowledge about them, explore alternative futures for
Indic-Australian inter-relationships, and to create new paradigms for
understanding the globalisation of both India and Australia in this light. Our
main objective, then, would be to try to explore Indic-Australian connections
from colonialism to global futures and begin to explore the range of ideas and
processes implicit to these processes. With this view we plan to engage with
the history, politics, and cultural formations of cross-connections between
India, Australia, and the Global South, giving primacy to oceanic and
cross-continental intellectual and cultural traffic. In addition, the
conference will focus on issues such as traditional knowledge systems,
spiritual and sacred practices, Indo-Australasian nationalisms, transfers of
science, technology, and culture, and relations in social practices, arts, and
media in the region, especially as they impact our thinking on Global Futures.
At its most ambitious,
this project is about “re-presenting” India, Australia, and the Global South
not just in a post-imperialistic, increasingly globalized world-system, but
beyond these into systematic thinking and planning of planetary futures. The
word “represent” is used here in both its commonly understood senses, as
likeness, bringing to life or going back to its Latin root esse or presence,
represent as making present. But every description is, necessarily, also an
interpretation. So to represent Indo-Australian connections in their oceanic,
global, and futures contexts would also be to reinterpret them. The other
meaning of represent is to stand or speak for; to resisting others’ definitions
of us, so that we, in India, Australia, and others in the Global South, speak
for ourselves, taking charge of how we represent ourselves.2 Indeed, both ways
of looking at Indic-Australian connections are relevant to our conference.
