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.
Concept Note
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, including Africa and Latin America, 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.
In our shared contexts, this might imply the constructing of new disciplinary paradigms or institutional apparatuses. It might also mean competing for legitimation in how our regions are understood or studied, finally to declare ourselves as interested parties or stake-holders in such a process of designing Global Futures. It would also implicate us in challenging other, for example, imperial representations and to offer alternatives to them. The composition of research groups, with experts from the various communities of India, Australia, and the Global South, to examine their inter-
Themes of the Conference
1. Global Futures for India, Australia, and other parts of the Global South, including Africa and Latin America
2. Crossroads – roots and routes in the India-Australia dialogue
3. Global-Local knowledge flows
4. Alternative Global South: Who’s Futures?
5. Indian Ocean: Culture, Geography, Security
6. Heritage Futures: Epistemology and Identity
7. History and its Shadows
8. Spiritual Pragmatics
9. Traditional Knowledge, Sacred Practice and Spirituality
10. Nationalisms and Beyond: The Politics of local-global interaction
11. Hybrid Knowledge Futures: Science, culture, technology in the India-Australia context, and the Global South, including Africa and Latin America
12. Representations- Media and the Arts – Re-Orient
13. Research as Resistance: Voice and Optimism in a shrinking world
14. Pathways to Meaning and Co-Creation – research collaborations across borders
Important Dates:
Last date for the submission of Abstract (300 words): 30 September, 2017.
Approval of abstracts: 15 November, 2017.
Last date for the submission of Conference Paper (5000 words): 10 December, 2017.
Registration Fee:
Foreign Delegates (with accommodation): USD300
Foreign Delegates (without accommodation): USD 80
Indian Outstation Delegates (with accommodation): INR 5000
Indian Delegates (without accommodation): INR 2500
Special discounted fee for students (without accommodation): INR 1000.
Contact:
General Secretary, IASA and Conference Coordinator,
Professor Pradeep Trikha, Mohanlal Sukhadia University, Udaipur: iasapradeeptrikha@gmail.com
Cell: #91-9460112468
